- The construction of the Pakitzapango hydroelectric dam in Peru’s Junín region
should be a matter of national interest, according to a bill proposed in February that claims the project would boost national energy security. - The dam would be constructed on a sacred gorge on the Ene River that is central to the mythology of the local Indigenous Asháninka population. The reservoir would flood homes and ancestral territories of more than 13 communities, as well as cemeteries where many Asháninka people who were killed during a recent internal war are buried.
- The proposal is a revival of a project that was canceled more than a decade ago due to environmental irregularities and local rejection.
- Community members speaking to Mongabay are worried they will be forced to move, while environmental experts challenged the project’s energy security rationale.
Back in 2010, Peru and Brazil signed an energy agreement that included the construction of several hydroelectric power plants in the Peruvian Amazon, which were meant to provide power to neighboring Brazil. One of the projects, the Pakitzapango dam, planned in Peru’s Junín region, drew intense criticism for its environmental implications and was eventually archived in 2011 after opposition from the local Asháninka population. But earlier this year, in February, Congressman Waldemar Cerrón Rojas from the Peru Libre party introduced a bill that would revive the Pakitzapango project and present its construction as a matter of national interest, reigniting communities’ worries over their future.
According to the bill (No. 10349/2024-CR) presented to the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM), the project would guarantee the country’s energy security, strengthen its economy through energy commercialization and promote local development. But Asháninka Indigenous leaders and members of the Indigenous organization Central Asháninka del Río Ene (CARE) told Mongabay it would flood their homes, destroy ancestral territories and threaten their cultural existence.
“Imagine they entered your house and displaced you,” Yanet Velasco Castillo, from the Asháninka community of Puerto Shampintiari and a member of CARE’s board of directors, told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages. “It’s a tremendous injustice. These places are sacred to us.”
The bill presented to MINEM states that the hydroelectric dam will affect approximately 10,000 Asháninka people and will flood an area of land about 95 kilometers (59 miles) long. The site is the ancestral home of the Potsoteni, Meteni, Saniveni, Quiteni and Cutivireni Asháninka communities and others that make up the buffer zone of the Asháninka Communal Reserve and Otishi National Park.
The 165-meter- (541-foot-) high dam would be constructed on a gorge that is sacred to the Asháninka. It is also the burial ground of the many Asháninka people who were killed during an armed conflict that began in 1980.
Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Junín regional government and Congressman Cerrón did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time of publication.
The bill was presented to the Energy and Mines Commission of the Congress of the Republic on Feb. 26 and is now awaiting a decision. If approved by the committee, it will then be presented to the full Congress for voting.
House of the Eagle under threat
The dam would be constructed in a sacred gorge, known as Pakitzapango, which is the mythological birthplace of other Amazonian tribes. According to oral history, the gorge was the home of a human-eating eagle (Pakitza) that was later trapped by the Asháninka, killed and thrown into the Ene River Basin. Its feathers then transformed into other Indigenous people, such as the Shipibo, Machiguenga and Yine peoples.
“It is a place of creation,” Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti, a scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), said over a video call. “That is the area where everyone else comes from. That is why it’s so traumatic to even think that it could be blocked, that it could be made into something else.”
Flooding and other changes to the surrounding area, including the Tambo River, may also impact the habitat for several threatened species, such as the white-bellied spider monkey (Ateles belzebuth) and the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus).
Carlos Quispe Dávila, project leader at the environmental organization Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, told Mongabay that Cerrón’s justification for building the dam, which include energy shortages in the region, lacks sufficient technical support. “The problem in Peru is not a lack of energy, but rather an inadequate redistribution and commercialization of the existing energy,” he said over WhatsApp voice messages.
José Carlos Ugaz Peña, a postdoctoral researcher at the Intelligent Electrical Networks Laboratory (LabREI) at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), told Mongabay that energy demand in Peru is not met at a local level, and therefore the generation of 1,379 megawatts in Junín to meet the region’s demand “makes no sense.”
Energy produced in Peru is transported to an entity called the National Interconnected Electric System of Peru, which then distributes it around the country. “The project for a dam of the aforementioned dimensions is only justified within Peru’s energy planning as a nation, not by a regional need,” Ugaz Peña said over email. “It is worth remembering that any hydroelectric plant of this capacity is a monumental project with a high impact on the environment, in addition to requiring long construction and commissioning times.”
While hydroelectric dams are needed for energy, agriculture and to meet water needs, they can also have adverse impacts on ecosystems, aquatic biodiversity, land use and freshwater. Hydroelectric power generation also depends on sufficient water flow, which can be affected by climate changes, such as prolonged drought, increased evaporation and more extreme weather events.
Waldo Sven Lavado Casimiro, the deputy director of Hydrological Studies and Research at the National Meteorological and Hydrological Service of Peru (SENAMHI), told Mongabay over email that “climate change can impact the amount of water that ultimately translates into hydroelectric power” and “a power plant can always impact the environment.” Ecuador’s electricity crisis in 2023 and 2024, sometimes for up to 14 hours per day, was caused by a severe drought that depleted water levels at hydroelectric plants.
War trauma
More than 6,000 Asháninka people were forcibly recruited, killed and disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s during an internal war between the communist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, and the Peruvian government. For many Asháninka, the proposed Pakitzapango dam project represents a continuation of the violence experienced by their communities during that time.
“We don’t want to relive the pain,” Velasco said. “It has left scars on many of our brothers and sisters. I was little at the time. We don’t want any more suffering or forcibly displaced children.”
During the Shining Path, many Asháninka were buried in cemeteries along the Ene River. “There are a lot of bodies of the people that died during the war that are still there,” Sarmiento explained. “When I was in the region, they found a mass grave that had at least 1,200 bodies. We don’t even know how many Asháninka people were killed during the internal war.”
To recover their territories and rebuild their lives after the conflict, many Asháninka returned to the traditional economic activities they depended on for subsistence and to preserving their cultural conception of kametsa asaike, or good living, such as hunting, fishing and gathering fruits and plants. To generate income for basic services and goods, such as fuel and medicine, many families sold coffee and cacao.
But restoring peace in the region also meant it was safe for the government and corporations to develop infrastructure projects in these areas. “The way in which the [Asháninka] understand the reconstruction of social life after the war with the Shining Path is about reconstructing relationships between people and the spirits,” Sarmiento said. “[The Pakitzapango dam] prevents them or negates their capacity to be able to reconstruct life after war. It just continues to postpone any kind of reconciliation or any kind of return to kametsa asaike.”
Citations:
Santos, R. E., Pinto-Coelho, R. M., Drumond, M. A., Fonseca, R., & Zanchi, F. B. (2020). Damming Amazon Rivers: Environmental impacts of hydroelectric dams on Brazil’s Madeira River according to local fishers’ perception. Ambio, 29;49(10): 1612-1628. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01316-w
Hauser, M., Doria, C. R. C., Pécheyran, C., Ponzevera, E., Panfili, J., Torrent-Vilara, G., et al. (2024). Quantitative impacts of hydroelectric dams on the trans-Amazonian migrations of goliath catfish. Conservation Letters, 17:5, e13046. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.13046
Sarmiento Barletti, J. P. (2020). War by other means at the extractive frontier: the violence of reconstruction in ‘post-war’ Peru. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 27:1, 146-164. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13433
Banner image: The proposed Pakitzapango hydroelectric dam is located on the Ene River, in an area that is considered sacred to the Asháninka people. Image by Pamela Cifuentes / DAR.
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