maybe disaffected white people looking for a cosmic experience should just stick to doing acid in their fucking backyard and maybe go to church once in a while.
But no, instead they travel around the world, disrupt communities and sometimes commit literal murder, and I’m supposed to feel sympathetic because he cried for his mama shortly after killing a medicine person?
Her name was Olivia Arévalo. At 81, she was not only an Elder but the spiritual mother of the Shipibo-Konibo Nation. This wasn’t a one-off occurrence. Indigenous spiritual leaders are being targeted and assassinated throughout Latin America.
Indigenous leaders & spiritual figures are murdered for political reasons, for capitalist reasons, and generally both where land or water disputes arise— particularly where human rights violations come into play, as well. And there’s your “standard,” local anti-Native hate crimes and violence. And then there’s this.
Tourism to consume and use pieces of a culture to ~decorate / enrich~ paying visitors, particularly “visitors” with colonial intent or privilege, often walks hand in hand with racialized violence & exploitation, whether it’s sexual in nature (“sex tourism” or out and out sexual assaults & abuses) or non-sexual violence— like these kind of targeted murders, tantamount to & continuing legacies of both physical and cultural genocides, fulfilling tourists’ fantasies of conquest or supremacy; or just reinforcing the disposability of “visited” peoples whose reliance on tourism makes them easy targets for abuse by people who will never face the consequences of their actions.
When indigenous peoples must turn their culture into a sideshow & open themselves up to vulnerability to the highest bidder just in order to subsist, that is a kind of occupation.
It is an inherently neocolonial capitalist racial violence, with a very real body count.
I hope Olivia Arévalo’s surviving family finds peace in the wake of the injustice & violence they endured and avenged. I hope Olivia’s spirit finds a kinder fate in her next life than this.
Also it mentions in the article that the community tried to report the tourist to the police on several occasions for other bad behavior but the police didn’t do anything. The MP to the region called the community “savages” as well. I understand why the community wanted to take matters into their own hands considering how little institutional support they get because they’re indigenous.
Peru’s brutal murders renew focus on tourist boom for hallucinogenic brew
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