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Title: Regresión Magazine 1
Author: Anonymous
Date: 2014
Language: en
Topics: eco-extremism, ITS, wildness, green, indigenous, anti-civ
Source: http://regresando.altervista.org/

Anonymous

Regresión Magazine 1

Editorial

Why and for whom is “Regresión”?

Regresión is a publication consisting of content critical of the values

and the material basis of the techno-industrial system. We propagate

these ideas (by means of the Internet and in print) not so that others

may adopt our positions. We aren’t looking for sympathizers, nor for the

approval of those who call themselves “radicals” and “revolutionaries.”

We publish these texts because we have something to say, because in the

context of so much hypocrisy and so many lies, we must shout the TRUTH.

It is important to point out that, even though these texts are available

to all, they aren’t intended for the society at large. This is an

intervention from our individuality to those few who dare to think

beyond typical “radical and revolutionary” criticism. It is for those

who have understood that the root of all the evils of our situation lies

in the techno-industrial system and the civilization that drives it. It

is for those who have left the utopias of old ideologies behind and have

assumed their role as individuals within this complex reality. It is for

those individuals who are tired of speaking, reading, and being

“critical spectators,” and who believe that theory is only part of the

foundation of their acts against the system. More than anything,

however, the content of this journal is for those few people who are

familiar with this discourse and practice, and for those who are new to

these topics, we hope to be explicit enough so that they catch on

quickly.

Why regression

The word “regression” can mean many things to various disciplines or

sciences, but we are using it as the antonym to “progress”, specifically

civilized and artificial techno-industrial progress. For us, it is

important to look back to see how humans lived in the past, how they

developed, and how they died from the beginning of the species until the

present. It is only in this way that we will shed light on our present

situation: how we have gone from being human to being simply an

instrument of the system. The irresistible advance of technology (as it

has been formulated by critics of civilization) is generating serious

problems for the environment and human beings, problems which range from

physical to psychological damage. The consequences of following the same

path will lead us toward unimaginable catastrophes. Some advocate a

revolution or the building of a movement that would contribute to the

overthrow of the techno-industrial system. We refer specifically to the

ideologues who follow the words of Theodore J. Kaczynski literally. To a

certain extent, it is understandable that they assert various

propositions to resolve the central problem. Our position, however, does

not see the formation of an international movement to overthrow the

system as being viable. For that reason, we renounce the term

“revolution.” The strategy, like the term itself, is too fanciful, it

lacks a realistic view of things, and that is why we renounce it.

For many moons now, we have stopped dreaming of a “better world,” which

is either politically or “primitivistically” correct. Today, all we see

is our present, the pessimist present to which we are condemned, and

even though this is what we assume, we don’t surrender before it:

-The system always goes in the same direction, progress stops for no one

and nothing.

-Wild nature for the most part will be exterminated or subjugated in the

coming years. In our modern context, only the most deluded minds think

that trying to “liberate” it is even possible.

-Maybe in 30 or 40 years (considering the current situation) all of the

wild nature that is left will be reduced to recreational or tourist

areas. “Ecological” or “conservationist” organizations governed by

“green” bureaucrats will regulate them as they see fit, so that those

spaces are preserved for scientific and economic purposes. This has

already happened in Europe, and in Mexico it is the current trajectory

of things.

-The behavior of the human being is being domesticated to a deplorable

and maddening degree. Only the strongest and most intelligent will be

able to not fall for the system’s games, trying to resist and cling to

their nature.

-The whole system (or most of it) will not fall to a movement that

accelerates a revolutionary process. The only thing that can overturn

this complex system is wild nature itself or its very own complex

technology causing collapse.

-We do not trust nor do we hope for a movement, a “great crisis,” or the

“revolution.” We do not hope for change. The present is all that we

have.

We have no certainty that “revolutionaries” will hasten “the destruction

of the system.” Frankly, we think that if one day a movement emerges

that seeks to destroy the system, it will be crushed immediately. Would

the nuclear, timber, pharmaceutical, automobile, mining, and oil

industries allow such a movement to exist, a movement that seeks to halt

the forces that propel science and technology? Would they allow that

movement to obtain victories that destroy the techno-industrial system

that they have forged over the decades? No, they would not allow it,

unless they could find a manner to profit from the situation after the

supposed “destruction” of the system. The reality of things is rather

bleak for those of us who criticize the techno-industrial system and

want it to collapse one day. We have realized this, and we accept the

situation as it unfolds before us. We assume our contradictions without

falling into them, nor do we resign ourselves to accept what is being

imposed on us.

For years, within political movement and intellectual circles of any

given ideology, solutions to the problems of the time have been

proposed, for example:

-According to the history of Mexico, after the arrival of the Spanish

and the death of the governor of Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma (1520), the

Mexica warrior Cuitláhuac led a war against the invasion. This leader

led his men in a war against the Europeans with the aim of reviving that

great Mesoamerican civilization. Cuitláhuac died of smallpox without

achieving anything.

-During the independence movement, the priest Miguel Hidalgo led revolts

against the Spanish crown (1810). He assembled men who wanted to be free

of the creole ruling elite. They wanted to form a government not imposed

on them by Westerners. They wanted mestizo rulers, etc. After a bloody

war, they shot the priest and cut off his head. Did they achieve

independence? Maybe we should ask the Spaniards who are still owners of

a large part of what is considered Mexican territory.

-In 1910, there was the “Mexican Revolution”. Emiliano Zapata was one of

the most representative leaders who organized an armed struggle against

the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, as well as the rulers who followed

him. He and his soldiers wanted a new constitution, one which granted

land to the peasants and would create modern public services

(electricity, water, sewage, education, etc.) They asked for democracy

and not a dictatorship. They betrayed Zapata in an ambush and killed

him. Did he accomplish his task? Maybe we should ask the current

inhabitants of the region where Zapata fought, one of the poorest and

most degraded regions of the country today in 2014.

-In 1968, the student movement spread throughout Mexico in the midst of

a communist revival. These ideas were the tip of the iceberg after the

October 2nd massacre [in Tlatelolco] in that year. Various guerrilla

groups formed and waged a war to the death against the regime of the

Institutional Revolutionary Party [PRI], the party that emerged after

the Mexican Revolution. One of these groups was the Communist League of

September 23rd (1973), and, as its name indicated, its goal was to

implant socialism in Mexico. Its leader, Ignacio Salas Obregón,

organized kidnappings, armed robberies, gun smuggling, prison breaks,

armed uprisings in the countryside and the city, attacks on politicians

and businessmen, executions of police, etc. They disappeared Obregón

once his group was defeated by the government, the paramilitaries, and

infiltrators. Socialism never came to Mexico.

-In 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), led publicly

by Subcomandante Marcos, took control of various municipal houses of

government in response to the North American Free Trade Agreement

(NAFTA), as well as to the maltreatment of indigenous people and the

poor of Chiapas by consecutive federal governments. The initial goal of

the EZLN was to “go to the capital and defeat the Mexican army.” The

EZLN waged war on the government, and the government counterattacked.

After days of shootouts, downed helicopters, deaths, kidnappings, and

tortures, a truce was called. The government offered reforms and rights

to indigenous peoples, as well as autonomy to the Zapatistas for their

“liberated spaces”. The initial goal of the EZLN was to overthrow the

government. That didn’t work out, and they remain in their communities.

Their “revolution” was only local.

-In 2006, there were many popular uprisings (the striking miners in

Michoacán, the peasants of Atenco, etc.) that had the goal of creating a

political crisis and accelerating the fall of the government. This

occurred after a political campaign undertaken by the EZLN throughout

the country. The movement of teachers in Oaxaca was an example of this.

Out of a failed expulsion of the municipal and state police, the

teachers were able to draw in the masses and forge a popular movement

(the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca / APPO) that aimed at

overthrowing the state government of Ulises Ruiz. After months of armed

street battles, deaths (on both sides), and disappearances of activists,

the federal police removed the protesters by force from all of their

strongholds. Everything appeared to return to normal. At the end of the

ordeal, President Ruiz was still in office, and various leaders of the

APPO joined political left parties. Did they achieve their goal of

popular government? Of course not.

-During the presidential term of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), the

government waged a war against the drug cartels, which left 60,000 dead

(not counting those buried in hidden graves). The power of the drug

lords is such that they have been able to buy off municipal and state

presidents, politicians, the police, and even the army. This left the

populace completely abandoned by the government. That’s how the current

self-defense groups arose, principally in Michoacán. These are armed

groups in towns defending themselves from cartel assassins,

extortioners, and informers for the narcotraffickers.

The goal of these groups is for everything to go back to normal in their

communities. Unfortunately, Michoacán, until recently, was considered

one of the most violent states in Mexico, and even the Americas.

What these historical cases have in common, and the reason we bring them

up, is that, for many years, mass movements and ideologies have aspired

to something more. They have defined ends, and many of them are so

complex that they become illusory or impossible to achieve. Seen from a

more realistic point of view, they seem well beyond the realm of

possibility. Along with the historical events, there is the proposing of

a “revolution against the techno-industrial system.” This position has

been advocated by Mr. Theodore Kaczynski since the publication of his

article, “Industrial society and its future”, in 1995. We repeat that we

don’t believe in this revolution, nor do we think it is ever going to

happen one day, not in 1000 years. The system’s current state is

untenable, and trying to overthrow it is just perpetuating the same

self-deception into which leftist revolutionaries past and present have

fallen. That is why we don’t advocate for a total collapse. We aren’t

out to win the battle, we aren’t aspiring to “liberate” the earth from

the technological yoke so that wild nature can rise from its concrete

tomb. We propose a criticism embodied in practice, in individual attack,

without anything to show for it, without any hope of winning or losing.

Disinterested attack, guided by reason and feeling, is what

characterizes us. We are human beings who refuse to form part of any of

this. We refuse artificiality in our bodies and our environment with all

of our being.

Regresión is not a magazine containing criticism for the consumption of

the passive. It does not contain tame articles for those who do nothing.

It is for the lone wolves or the clans of accomplices who cast off fear

and decide to burn machines and place bombs in institutions that attack

nature. It is for those who decide to plan the murder of a particular

scientist in the shadows… In Mexico, from 2011 onward, some groups have

come to light who align with how we think and act. These are the

Individualities Tending Toward the Wild (ITS), the Direct Attack

Terrorist Cells – Anti-Civilization Faction (CTAD-FA), the N.S.

–Fera–Kamala y Amala (NS-F-KA), and now the Obsidian Point Attack Circle

(CA-PO). All of these groups have carried out physical criticism against

technology and civilization. They have done so not expecting anything to

change, they have attacked for the sake of attack and to deliver blows

to the megamachine. It is for this reason that one of the central aims

of this publication is the creation of new groups that attack the

material basis of the techno-industrial system and those who foster it.

The terrorist war to the death against the system began in 2011 with

these groups, and we would like to continue it. Thus, we support their

attacks, their arson, and the execution of those who deserve it; those

who have committed offenses against wild nature for years.

Let us continue on the war path, the same as that of our hunter

ancestors. May society and civilization tremble at our exploding

dynamite. If technology doesn’t stop, neither will our war against it.

If technology keeps advancing, so will terrorist groups opposed to it. -

The Regresión Editors April 2014.

Chilcuague, Chichimecas and Cinvestav

The Chilcuague is an ancient native plant, also called the “Aztec root,”

“pelitre,” or “golden root.” It is a natural antibiotic used for

digestive tract and respiratory infections. The root aids in treating

inflamed gums, tooth decay, toothache, and lesions to the tongue, gums,

and palate. Its extract helps to treat external wounds. The leaves are

used by people in the Bajío (lowlands) of Mexico in hot sauces and

alcoholic drinks. It is also used as insect repellent.

The Chichimecas The nomadic and semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers of what is

now called Mexico (specifically in the central and northern part of the

country) had comprehensive knowledge of their environment (as most

native peoples around the world have had). They also knew the benefits

and usage of the medicinal plants that grew in their region.

One of these plants was the chilcuague. The hunter-gatherers like the

Guachichiles, the Zacatecos, the Guamares (the three Chichimeca groups

that most ferociously resisted the Spanish invasion) used this plant for

the hunt, but it proved useful in their fight against the invading

Spaniards. The natives made a concentrate from the root and soaked their

obsidian, bone, or wooden arrow points in it. When a Spaniard was shot

with such an arrow, his muscles were paralyzed and he could no longer

move, after which he was completely vulnerable to the attacking Indians.

It should be pointed out that the Chichimecas not only attacked the

Spaniards, but also anyone who accompanied them: black slaves,

mulattoes, mestizos, young women, indigenous people, etc. The foreigners

were all indiscriminately killed in ambushes in the desert and forests,

since they all represented for the Chichimecas an invading foreign

people. They were a threat to the tribe and their way of life in the

midst of wild nature. It is said that when the Chichimecas had captured

a fallen enemy alive who was incapacitated by the root, they took out

the tendons from his back and used them to tie the arrowheads onto their

arrows, atlatls, and axes, or they made strings for their bows.

The Chichimecas also used the root to escape when they were captured.

They would store a piece of the root in their clothes (though many went

about naked) or in their long hair and chew it when captured; within

minutes they would start sweating profusely and foaming at the mouth, as

well as crying and urinating all over themselves. The Spanish would

think that they had a strange contagious illness and then leave the

prisoner outside the city to die. After a while, however, the symptoms

ceased since chilcuague causes the body to purge liquids but doesn’t

harm it in any other way. Thus, the savage, through his exceptional

knowledge of his environment, was able to escape without being enslaved

or shot.

The Cinvestav The Center of Investigation and Advanced Studies

(Cinvestav) depends on the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), which

is one of the most respected institutions in biotechnology, chemistry,

genomics, etc. at the national level.

Cinvestav has changed and genetically altered a number of wild native

and foreign plants. One of these plants has been the chilcuague, the

root of our ancestors, the one by which many were saved from death in

their war against civilization; for we can say that the Mixtón War

(1540-1541), the Chichimeca War (1550-1600), and the Guamares Rebellion

(1563-1568) were all authentic wars against civilization, progress, and

technology. The wild Chichimecas did not want the new rulers or even

better ones for their land. They did not want to live in or defend the

cities or the settlements of the defeated Mesoamerican civilizations.

They did not seek victory. They sought to attack those who attacked and

threatened them. They looked for confrontation, as one can gather from

their cry, “Axkan kema, tehuatl, nehuatl!” (Until your death or mine!)

Ambitious investigators like Abraham García Chávez, Enrique Ramírez

Chávez and Jorge Molina Torres of the Biotechnology and Biochemistry

Laboratory at the Cinvestav-Irapuato are only some of those responsible

for having converted the ancient chilcuague root into a simple

commercial anesthetic for dentists.

The wild nature of the root has been perverted, and it has been

converted to a product mixed with addictive chemicals for the

propagation of civilization. The scientists with their technology have

offended even that which is found under the earth. Using humanitarian

and altruistic justifications, they cover up the true reality of

domestication of the wild under the yoke of technoindustrial

artificiality.

For this reason and many others, Cinvestav and similar institutions have

been the target of many extremist cells from 2011 onwards:

-Beginning of April 2011: An explosive device was detonated in front of

the National Institute of Ecology (INE) in Mexico City. The INE is the

federal institution in charge of “environmental authorization” at

centers such as the Cinvestav, allowing them to experiment and

investigate wild flora and fauna on the biotechnological level. The “The

Terrorist Cells of Direct Attack – Anti-Civilization Faction” claimed

responsibility for the attack on September 5th, 2011 in an extensive

communique. The group also noted that it had been operating for months

but had not to that point issued any claims for their responsibility for

their actions. It was only with the emergence of ITS activity that they

decided to issue a formal communication.

-February 27th, 2011: The Earth Liberation Front took responsibility for

the attack on a lab at the Inifap (National Institute for Forest,

Agrarian, and Aquacultural Investigation). The individuals placed

explosive devices in warehouses, greenhouses, and in the entrance of one

of the buildings. Also, they left identifying and threatening graffiti

against the scientists who work at that facility. Since 2005, the Inifap

has collaborated with Cinvestav on experiments concerning genetically

modified organisms, especially corn.

-August 9th, 2011: Hours after the group Individualities Tending Toward

the Wild (ITS) published its communique taking responsibility for the

attack on the Monterrey Institute of Technology campus in Mexico State,

an attack that gravely injured the technologists, Alejandro Aceves López

and Armando Herrera Corral, the alarms went off at the Cinvestav in

Mexico City, since the brother of Armando Herrera, the world-renowned

physicist Gerardo Herrera, was frightened by action along with the

murder of the biotechnologist Salinas in 2011. The investigator left

Morelos for the city of Ensenada in Baja California where he currently

works at the Center for Nanosciences and Nanotechnology of the UNAM.

-December 28th, 2011: The military police was alerted to the presence of

a suspicious package in the Cinvestav facility in Irapuato (Guanajuato).

The security cameras showed a man dressed in black who got past security

and entered the facility. Soldiers removed the package and increased

security around the facility. They also carried out an operation which

consisted of helicopter patrols and checkpoints on the highway going

towards Querétaro. The group ITS took responsibility for this action in

its sixth communique (January 28th, 2012), as well as other attacks.

-November 8th, 2011: The noted biotechnology investigator at the

National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) campus in Cuernavaca,

Morelos, Ernesto Méndez Salinas, was shot in the head while driving his

truck on one of the principal avenues of the city. According to the

press and police reports, two men on motorcycle drove by and shot him,

killing him instantly. The group ITS later took responsibility for the

attack. The Biotechnology Institute of the UNAM where Méndez worked,

along with the Cinvestav of the IPN, are the principal institutes for

biotechnological study in Mexico. These two institutions constantly

collaborate on the development of this technological evil.

-August 20th, 2012: The “Anti-Civilization Faction of the Earth

Liberation Front” (FA-FLT) took responsibility for an attack with an

incendiary device in front of the Mexican State Council of Science and

Technology (Comecyt) in Toluca, Mexico State. The blast dealt damage to

the building. Comecyt is another institution connected to Cinvestav. One

of the most significant joint projects is “Abacus”: an investigative

space that contains a supercomputer. Among the applied mathematical

tasks being worked on by this computer are: the development of new

medicines and surgical procedures, genetic sequencing, the study of gas

contamination, subsurface model analysis, seismic movements, petroleum

extraction, finance, market economics, the aeronautic and automotive

industry, nanotechnology, and logistics. The Abacus Center is found in

the middle of the forest of Ocoyocac, in Mexico State.

-September 4th, 2012: The FA-FLT was attributed with the arson of a

Cimmyt truck (Investigative Center for the improvement of corn and

wheat) in the municipality of Toluca, Mexico State. Cimmyt along with

Cinvestav focuses on biotechnology and advanced genetic engineering, and

also collaborates frequently with Cinvestav.

-September 2012: In an article published in the scientific journal,

Nature, the biotechnology investigator of the Cinvestav, Beatriz

Xoconostle Cázares, condemned the arson of her laboratory and a similar

arson of the laboratory of her friend a month afterward. These acts were

not publicized by the press, nor did anyone take responsibility for

them.

-February 11th, 2013: A package bomb arrived by messenger to the

nanotechnology investigator, Sergio Andrés Águila of the Biotechnology

Institute of the UNAM in Cuernavaca, Morelos. The package failed to

explode and the investigator was unharmed. The military police arrived

at the institute and evacuated hundreds. ITS claimed responsibility for

this

-June 16th, 2013: FA-FLT claimed responsibility for the second

detonation of an explosive device at the installations of the Comecyt in

Toluca, Mexico State.

-February 18th, 2014: ITS claimed responsibility in its eighth

communique for the sending of a package bomb on September 2012, along

with two other attacks. This attack was directed to neurologists of the

Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) in Mexico City. The

ITAM’s specific areas of research are Neuronal Adaptive Behavior,

Neuroscience, and Simulations (Cannes). ITAM collaborates frequently

with Cinvestav in projects involving robotics, neuroscience, and

advanced computing.

-April 14th, 2014: The group, “Attack Circle – Obsidian Point” claimed

responsibility for the sending of a package bomb to the Rector of the

UNAM, José Narro Robles. The Rector is in charge of organizing and

facilitating scientific and technological projects at the distinct

institutions and universities, among which is the Cinvestav.

These attacks are wholly justified. These scientists and academic

leaders – along with their laboratories, institutions, and universities

– deserve to be hit in one way or another. Wild animal and human nature

will not be totally domesticated while individuals like this exist:

those who oppose completely the techno-industrial system.

Mahogany’s Last Stand

Illegal logging has all but wiped out Peru’s mahogany. Loggers are

turning their chain saws on lesser known species critical to the health

of the rain forest.

Mahogany is the crown jewel of the Amazon, soaring in magnificent

buttressed columns high into the forest canopy. Its rich, red grain and

durability make it one of the most coveted building materials on Earth,

favored by master craftsmen, a symbol of wealth and power. A single tree

can fetch tens of thousands of dollars on the international market by

the time its finished wood reaches showroom floors in the United States

or Europe. After 2001, the year Brazil declared a moratorium on logging

big-leaf mahogany, Peru emerged as one of the world’s largest suppliers.

The rush for “red gold,” as mahogany is sometimes called, has left many

of Peru’s watersheds—such as the Alto Tamaya, homeland of a group of

AshéninkaIndians—stripped of their most valuable trees. The last stands

of mahogany, as well as Spanish cedar, are now nearly all restricted to

Indian lands, national parks, and territorial reserves set aside to

protect isolated tribes.

As a result, loggers are now taking aim at other canopy giants few of us

have ever heard of—copaiba, ishpingo, shihuahuaco, capirona—which are

finding their way into our homes as bedroom sets, cabinets, flooring,

and patio decks. These lesser known varieties have even fewer

protections than the more charismatic, pricier ones, like mahogany, but

they’re often more crucial to forest ecosystems. As loggers move down

the list from one species to the next, they’re cutting more trees to

make up for diminishing returns, threatening critical habitats in the

process. Primates, birds, and amphibians that make their homes in the

upper stories of the forest are at increasing risk. Indigenous

communities are in turmoil, divided between those favoring conservation

and those looking for fast cash. And some of the world’s most isolated

tribes are in flight from the whine of chain saws and the terrifying

crash of centuries-old leviathans hitting the ground. Illicit practices

are believed to account for three-fourths of the annual Peruvian timber

harvest. Despite a crackdown on mahogany logging that began five years

ago and a sharp decline in production, much of the timber reaching

markets in the industrialized world is reported to be of illegal origin.

Most of those exports have gone to the U.S. but are now increasingly

bound for Asia.

A short distance southeast of the Alto Tamaya, a 15,000-square-mile

mosaic of protected areas known as the Purús Conservation Complex teems

with gigantic trees that first sprouted from the jungle floor centuries

ago. This region embraces the headwaters of the Purús and YurúaRivers,

and tribes living in extreme isolation maintain a presence in its rugged

upland folds. It is also believed to hold as much as 80 percent of

Peru’s remaining big-leaf mahogany. Illegal loggers are using

surrounding Indian settlements as a back door into the protected lands.

Many communities have been tricked by men offering cash for help in

obtaining logging permits, which they later use to launder mahogany

illegally cut inside the reserves. Along the HuacapisteaRiver, a

Yurúatributary that forms the northwestern border of the

MurunahuaTerritorial Reserve, duplicitous dealings have left half a

dozen Ashéninkacommunities impoverished and disillusioned. At the height

of the rainy season I join Chris Fagan, executive director of the

U.S.-based Upper Amazon Conservancy, and Arsenio Calle, director of Alto

Purús National Park, on a foray up the HuacapisteaRiver. Boyish in his

oversize khaki fatigues, Calle, 47, has jurisdiction over much of the

Purús Complex. “Arsenio has done a remarkable job removing loggers from

the park,” Fagan says. “But there is still strong demand for illegal

mahogany.” Fagan’s organization created a Peruvian sister group called

ProPurús to help the park service and indigenous federations protect the

forests. One initiative involves organizing community “vigilance

committees” to patrol around the edge of the national park and keep

intruders out. ProPurús field director José Borgo Vásquez, a crafty

60-year-old veteran of conservation struggles throughout the Peruvian

Amazon, is also aboard one of our motor-powered dugouts.

“The loggers are stealing from you and getting away with it,” Borgo

tells a gathering at our first stop, the Ashéninkavillage of Dulce

Gloria. “Why? Because you are doing nothing to stop them.” Borgo

believes that conservation efforts will succeed only if local

communities take an active role in the defense of their native lands.

Two major obstacles, he says, are poverty and lack of education, which

make the lure of cash so seductive and the need to protect the forest so

difficult for many villagers to understand.A third obstacle is distance,

which gives timber poachers an overwhelming advantage. The Amazon rain

forest is so vast and its farflung river valleys so remote that it is

impossible to patrol everywhere effectively. The absence of authority on

the ground has given rise to a sense among loggers that the forest is

theirs for the taking. A local informant tells us that a logger named

Rubén Campos is using an illegal track farther upriver to drag mahogany

logs over the divide to an adjacent watershed. (Efforts to reach Campos

for comment were unsuccessful.) Such a move would allow him to float any

ill-gotten timber down to the Ucayali River and on to sawmills in

Pucallpa, the regional capital, without the Ashéninkaon the

Huacapisteaeven knowing what he’s taking.

The next day, in a downpour, local guides lead us deep into the forest

in search of the illicit operation. We pass a giant mahogany tree, an X

etched in its bark, apparently slated for cutting. Anchored by sprawling

buttress roots, the great trunk rockets into the canopy, where its

branchesdrip with orchids and bromeliads. A gash in the forest leads

into the rain-soaked jungle and vanishes in a blur of electric green. We

soon find the culprit—a John Deere skidder with outsize tires parked in

a shed made from rusted sheets of corrugated metal. We press on, passing

a dozen massive mahogany and Spanish cedar trunks awaiting removal by

the skidder. Calle measures their diameter—about five feet each. He says

the trees are hundreds of years old.

We reach a clearing dominated by a shaggy thatched shelter. It’s guarded

by a lone watchman, a specter of a man named Emilio, rousted from his

hammock by our approach. “A man needs to work,” he says defensively. “If

there’s no other work, what can one do?” It’s a question that vexes

Calle as well. This logging operation is clearly beyond the bounds of

legality; no one is authorized to cut this forest. But the camp itself

is beyond Calle’s legal reach.

Given the torrential downpour, it would be too difficult to follow the

skidder path across the rain-swollen creek and into the reserve, so we

turn back. Calle will alert authorities once he gets back to Pucallpa,

but no one is likely to have the stomach for charging or prosecuting

anyone. Without hard evidence from inside the reserve, it would be a

tough case to pursue. Loggers are apt to be well connected to power

brokers in Pucallpa. Honest cops often face smear campaigns, even

outright dismissal, if they overstep boundaries. What’s more, the

government in Lima recently shifted forest enforcement responsibilities

back to the regional governments, where officials are often more

susceptible to arm-twisting. “The protected areas are going to be

reduced to fragmented forest if we don’t take a more proactive

approach,” says Calle, who fears loggers will now have even more

latitude to undermine the rule of law.

The bad guys won’t have any freedom at all in Edwin Chota Valera’s

territory, not if he can help it. Chota—a sinewy, 52-year-old firebrand

with rakish, jet-black hair and a hawk’s beak of a nose—is the leader of

the Ashéninkavillage of Saweto, some 60 miles northwest of the Purús

Conservation Complex. Since 1998, when local Ashéninka established

Saweto, they have stood by helplessly as, season after season, logging

crews floated colossal trunks downriver from the headwaters of the Alto

Tamaya and Putaya Rivers to sawmills in Pucallpa.

In the face of these trespasses, a decade ago villagers undertook a

quest to get the regional government in Pucallpa to grant them legal

title to their land—more than 250 square miles of river-laced forest

stretching from Saweto all the way to the Brazilian frontier. Their

claim was ensnared for years in red tape, while poachers pillaged their

forests. It appears their petition may finally be resolved later this

year.

The illegal logging epidemic prompted U.S. lawmakers in 2007 to require

a series of reforms as a condition for approving a free-trade agreement

with Peru. The agreement committed Peru, among other things, to

implement a plan of action on big-leaf mahogany that would comply with

the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild

Fauna and Flora (CITES). Officials in Lima say they are experimenting

with other measures, including an electronic monitoring system, that

will help modernize Peru’s timber industry. Changes have been slow to

take effect and have brought little relief for many remote communities

like Saweto, victims of timber mafias that have already snatched their

mahogany for pennies on the dollar, if they paid anything for it at all.

But this is a new era for the Ashéninkaof the Alto Tamaya. At a meeting

in Saweto’s one-room schoolhouse, a woman named Teresa López Campos

urges her people to stand up to the loggers. “Where are we going to go

if they drive us away from here?” she says vehemently. “This is where we

will die. We have nowhere else to go.”

Two days later ten or so Ashéninkamen and women have come together under

Chota’s direction to follow illegal loggers into the headwaters of the

Alto Tamaya and demand their departure. Since dawn we’ve been following

the twists and turns of the emerald green MashanshoCreek through dense

jungle along Peru’s eastern border with Brazil. Poling dugouts through

sand-rippled shallows, pausing to spear catfish in crystalline eddies,

my Ashéninkahosts are biding their time, confident that somewhere

upstream we’ll confront a band commanded by an elusive man they call El

Gato—the Cat. The expedition is fraught with risk, likely to incur the

wrath not only of the loggers but also of their paymasters in

Pucallpa—the sawmill owners and timber brokers, who are closely

connected to the city’s power elite

The men of Saweto were away when El Gato motored upstream past the

village a week earlier. Ignoring shouts from the women on the embankment

to stay out of their forests upriver, El Gato kept right on going, his

three boats piled high with enough food and fuel to keep his

sullen-faced crew cutting trees in the backwoods all summer long.

“As long as we don’t have title, the loggers don’t respect native

ownership,” Chota says, standing at the rear of the canoe, propelling us

with thrusts of a ten-foot pole. “They threaten us. They intimidate.

They have the guns.” The target of frequent death threats, Chota has

repeatedly been forced to seek sanctuary among the Ashéninka’stribal

relatives in Brazil, a two-day hike from here along ancient footpaths.

“Titling is a critical ingredient in the fight against illegal logging,”

agrees David Salisbury, a University of Richmond geographer who’s

sitting beside me. The lanky, fair-haired Salisbury has served as the

villagers’ adviser since he first learned of their plight while doing

doctoral research in 2004. “The native communities are the ones most

invested in their place,” he says. “They’re the most capable of making

long-term decisions about how to use their homeland and resources in a

sustainable way.”

Peru’s logging industry operates within a framework of concessions and

permits designed to allow a community, company, or individual to extract

a sustainable yield from a given area. Transport permits are also issued

to track the chain of custody of a shipment from stump to sawmill andon

to the point of export or final sale. But permits are easily traded on

the black market, enabling loggers to cut timber in one place and say it

came from somewhere else.The Alto Tamaya area offers a case in point.

The government’s nearest inspection station is several days downriver

from Saweto, Chota tells me. So when it comes time for El Gato to float

his logs out during next year’s rainy season, he can claim that any

timber he illegally cut in Ashéninkaterritory was harvested on a

legitimate concession nearby. “Welcome to the land without law,” Chota

says, with a sweep of the arm. “From that inspection post all the way

back here, there is no law. The only law is the law of the gun.”

As we pole our way up MashanshoCreek, it becomes clear that outsiders

are not the only ones pillaging the forest. We disembark on a beach

where the highpitched whine of a motor reaches us from back in the

woods. Minutes later we come upon five young men, shirtless and

barefoot, in the midst of toppling a massive copaiba tree. They’re all

Ashéninka, all relatives of our party’s eldest member, “Gaitán” (not his

real name). Amid a blizzard of sawdust and flying debris, Gaitán’s son

cuts deep into the trunk. Suddenly it cracks like a thunderbolt.

Everyone dashes for cover, the saw still purring as the behemoth starts

a free fall and lands with an earthshaking thump.

Pungent, pine-scented sap oozes from the fresh stump. The oil is

renowned for its curative properties, and left standing, the tree could

have fetched far more over the years for its medicinal oil than the

onetime cash payout—probably less than a hundred dollars—that Gaitán’s

family will get for its timber. But with El Gato’s crew on the loose in

these woodlands, these men decided to lay claim to it first. Such are

the distortions created by the absence of law; in this jungle

free-for-all, it’s finders keepers. Chota shakes his head in disgust at

the sight of the copaiba stump. “Everyone who logs here is illegal,

period,” he says. “No one hasthe proper permits.” Chota has been trying

to wean the Ashéninka away from such destruction. But he must tread

lightly or risk further dividing his people. Native communities can

subsist on game, fish, and crops if their forests are intact. Still,

they need things like clothes, soap, and medicine, and for many,

logging—or taking handouts to let loggers in—is the only way to acquire

those goods. As the sun drops low, painting the treetops in splashes of

yellow light, the team decides it’s time to leave the canoes behind and

cut a straight line on foot through the jungle. The shortcut will put us

upstream of El Gato. Trudging through dank forest as the last rays of

sun fade from the sky, we ford the winding creek for a third time and

look for a place to camp for the night.

Because permits are commonly used to launder wood taken from adjacent

lands, Peru’s concession system has been widely criticized for providing

cover for illegal logging. But the forestry engineers and harvesters

with a company called the ConsorcioForestal Amazónico (CFA) say they are

trying to do things right. CFA operates a huge concession in the dense

woodlands astride the Ucayali River in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon.

The enterprise is the very model of rational exploitation, with

fluorescent-vested saw operators guided to their targets by computerized

maps and databases. Its 455,000 acres of primal forest have been divided

into a grid of 30 parcels, each corresponding to a single year’s harvest

in a 30-year rotation plan.

At a base deep inside the concession, supervisors consult with crews to

plan the day’s work. “Delineators” crouch over drafting tables, updating

computerized maps that crews will take into the forest. Every

harvestable tree is color-coded by species and identified by number.

Each two-man crew will cut approximately ten trees by sundown, working a

line through the forest that matches a strip of the larger map.

Seed-bearing adult trees, which will be left standing to regenerate the

woodland, are also identified.

“We try to leave the forest cover as undisturbed as possible,” says

Geoffrey Venegas, a Costa Rican forestry engineer who oversees the

cutting. “We’re light-years ahead of what I’ve seen elsewhere.”

We clamber out of a pickup truck at an acre-size collection point

fringed with piles of freshly cut logs, three to four feet in diameter,

from trees with unfamiliar names: chamisa, yacushapana,and the aromatic

alcanformoena.There’s hardly any mahogany in CFA’s concession. For

Venegas, the future of tropical hardwoods lies with these less glamorous

trees. “We’ve identified 20 different species with commercial

potential,” he says. “This year we’re cutting 12 of them.” CFA

executives say that making use of multiple species increases the value

of the forest, providing a greater incentive to take care of it, even if

mahogany and Spanish cedar have already been logged out. “Socially

responsible” investors are impressed with the company’s practices, its

potential for long-term profits, and its certification from the Forest

Stewardship Council, an international third-party auditing body that

sets standards and recommendations for sustainable forestry. But the

impact of even these practices comes as a shock to a visitor to a forest

that just weeks ago was an untouched wilderness. In the stillness of

midmorning a screaming piha’scry resounds through the woods. An

iridescent blue morpho butterfly the size of an outstretched hand flits

past, like a kite jerking in the breeze. Monkeys play peekaboo from a

stand of uncut trees. The dry season is already well along, but the

forest floor remains spongy, exuding a damp vitality resistant to

drought—the hallmark of a healthy tropical rain forest. What will this

forest look like 30 years from now, though, when rutted roads and feeder

trails extend into the far corners of the concession, and when men and

machines return here to begin the cycle anew? Will the forest have

regenerated? CFA is banking on it. “If we’re able to do it, the whole

Peruvian timber industry will benefit,” sales manager Rick Kellso says.

“You can get a nice profit by doing things right. You don’t have to be

illegal.”

Back in the upper reachesof MashanshoCreek, beneath a sky blazing with

stars, Edwin Chota Valera and David Salisbury gather the Ashéninkaaround

the campfire to plot tomorrow’s showdown with El Gato. “He’s going to

ask to see your papers,” Salisbury says, referring to the title the

Ashéninkastill do not have. “But remember, he has no papers either. He’s

logging here illegally. He has no justification for being here.” We

enter the logging camp at first light, swarming the squalid huts before

anyone has time to reach for a rifle. A fair-haired man in a yellow

soccer jersey rises to his feet. His green eyes betray bewilderment.

“Are you the man they call El Gato?” Chota asks. “I am,” the man says

warily. Without putting up a fight, he agrees to leave but pleads with

the Ashéninkafor permission to take out the trees he’s already cut

upstream. “We’re just working people trying to put food on the table.”

There’s a ring of defeat in his voice. He says he’s mired in debt to a

man named Gutiérrez, who fronted $50,000 cash for the logging

expedition. “That guy will hound me until the day I die,” he says. Chota

is unmoved. “Things could turn bad for you if you stay up here,” he

warns. The government in Lima, Chota tells him, has promised indigenous

communities a greater voice in their own affairs. “Things are beginning

to turn in our favor.”

But within days of our encounter with El Gato, vandals steal into Saweto

under cover of darkness and sabotage three outboard motors that were

used by Chota’s party, a devastating blow to the impoverished community.

The Ashéninkahave little doubt who did it. Prosecuting the crime will be

another matter entirely.