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Indigenous Peoples: 'We Are Fighting for Our Lives and Our Dignity'

Natives set up a road block at the entrance of the Amazonian town of Yurimaguas, northern Peru. \"For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests,\" said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. \"This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity.\" (AFP/Ernesto Benavides)

It has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows and spears.