🔗 Share this article

A man named Tomas Anez Dos Santos was laboring in a small glade deep in the Peruvian rainforest when he detected footsteps approaching through the dense woodland.

He became aware that he had been surrounded, and froze.

“One stood, pointing with an arrow,” he states. “And somehow he detected I was here and I started to run.”

He had come confronting the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—who lives in the small community of Nueva Oceania—was almost a neighbour to these wandering tribe, who avoid contact with outsiders.

A recent study issued by a rights organization claims remain no fewer than 196 described as “uncontacted groups” remaining worldwide. The Mashco Piro is believed to be the biggest. The report claims half of these communities could be decimated within ten years if governments fail to take further actions to defend them.

The report asserts the greatest dangers stem from logging, mining or operations for petroleum. Isolated tribes are highly susceptible to common sickness—therefore, the report says a danger is caused by exposure with evangelical missionaries and digital content creators looking for engagement.

Lately, the Mashco Piro have been venturing to Nueva Oceania with greater frequency, based on accounts from residents.

This settlement is a fishing hamlet of seven or eight clans, sitting elevated on the banks of the local river in the center of the of Peru jungle, half a day from the nearest settlement by boat.

The area is not designated as a protected reserve for uncontacted groups, and deforestation operations work here.

Tomas reports that, sometimes, the noise of logging machinery can be noticed day and night, and the Mashco Piro people are witnessing their jungle disturbed and devastated.

In Nueva Oceania, residents say they are torn. They dread the tribal weapons but they hold deep admiration for their “relatives” residing in the woodland and wish to protect them.

“Permit them to live according to their traditions, we can't alter their way of life. For this reason we preserve our separation,” states Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are concerned about the damage to the community's way of life, the risk of aggression and the possibility that timber workers might expose the community to sicknesses they have no defense to.

While we were in the community, the group appeared again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a resident with a two-year-old child, was in the forest collecting food when she heard them.

“We detected calls, cries from others, a large number of them. Like it was a whole group yelling,” she told us.

That was the first time she had encountered the group and she ran. Subsequently, her head was continually racing from fear.

“As there are deforestation crews and firms clearing the jungle they are escaping, maybe because of dread and they arrive close to us,” she explained. “We don't know how they will behave with us. This is what scares me.”

Recently, two loggers were confronted by the group while catching fish. One man was wounded by an bow to the abdomen. He survived, but the other person was located deceased subsequently with multiple puncture marks in his body.

Authorities in Peru maintains a policy of avoiding interaction with remote tribes, making it forbidden to start encounters with them.

This approach originated in Brazil after decades of campaigning by community representatives, who saw that initial exposure with remote tribes resulted to whole populations being decimated by disease, hardship and hunger.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau people in Peru first encountered with the broader society, half of their population succumbed within a matter of years. During the 1990s, the Muruhanua community suffered the same fate.

“Remote tribes are extremely at risk—epidemiologically, any exposure might spread diseases, and even the simplest ones might wipe them out,” explains an advocate from a local advocacy organization. “Culturally too, any contact or disruption may be highly damaging to their life and health as a society.”

For those living nearby of {