Cool Earth's indigenous partner in Peru

Cool Earth's community led projects are effective because of the indigenous people we work with. Javier Dril Bustamante is a powerful pioneer of rainforest protection who has been on an extraordinary journey to safeguard the forest where he lives.  

Javier Dril Bustamente is just 28 and was born in the village of Tinkereni in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon.

Javier lives there with his wife Yolanda, an Ashaninka woman and their three children. His parents Anna Maria and Cesar, and grandmother Noemi who is one of the few remaining shamanic healers, live nearby.

Left, Javier's grandmother, a shamanic healer.

Javier's has spent his whole life in the rainforest and it has been his family's home for generations. But, at the tender age of seven, Javier, along with his family, had to flee their settlement as a result of the Shining Path terrorists violently pushing their community off their traditional land. His family set up home in the Otishi hills, above the Rio Ene, hiding away from the terrorists.

Javier addressing the community.

Javier's community regained their land four years later, and, at the age of 11, Javier spent the next six years studying in a secondary school at the nearby village of Cutivireni, where, instead of their usual settlement pattern of small dispersed villages scattered throughout the rainforest, the Ashaninka tribe stayed close together, with 2,000 people living in one main village for security.

During this time, the tribe began to repopulate the rainforest and today only a few hundred individuals remain in the gateway village of Cutivireni (where there is a river port and a small grassy airstrip).

Javier left Cutivireni to study agro-forestry at a local technical college in the frontier town of Satipo. After graduating in 2006, he was elected as ‘Regidor' (assistant) to an indigenous Mayor of his district of Rio Tambo, one of the largest regions in the whole of Peru.

Left, deforested area over the Peruvian Amazon.
Javier is also President of the first Ashaninka Bioclimatic Association of Cutivireni (called Tsimi, which means ‘forest sanctuary' in the local language). Established two years ago, the Association provides an on-the-ground mechanism for continued protection and conservation of around 60,000 hectare of rainforest. The forest - and its community - is under severe and constant threat from loggers (legal and illegal), oil companies and massive hydro dam projects who all want to cut down their trees.

The Association is highly democratic, involving representatives from all of the eight main villages in the region. Externally, it is supported by Cool Earth and Ecotribal, both UK based.

Javier and the Ashaninka Bioclimatic Association of Cutivireni is working with Cool Earth to protect their land, their communities and the trees from the loggers. So far, the charity has provided support to build a local school, provided money for them to grow cocoa plants for chocolate makers and generate income so that they remain guardians of the rainforest, the lungs of the world.
All Javier wants to do is to live like his ancestors have done for the last 5,000 years, in peace in their forest. His community is passionate about protecting it - if they are allowed to as they have done for thousands of years.