Brothers in this Forest: The Battle to Defend an Remote Amazon Group

The resident Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a small clearing deep in the Peruvian jungle when he heard sounds drawing near through the lush woodland.

It dawned on him that he had been surrounded, and stood still.

“One person stood, pointing with an arrow,” he remembers. “Unexpectedly he noticed of my presence and I commenced to run.”

He ended up confronting members of the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—who lives in the small community of Nueva Oceania—was virtually a neighbor to these wandering tribe, who avoid interaction with foreigners.

An updated document by a human rights group indicates there are a minimum of 196 of what it calls “uncontacted groups” left in the world. This tribe is thought to be the biggest. The study states half of these tribes may be wiped out within ten years unless authorities fail to take additional measures to safeguard them.

It argues the most significant risks stem from logging, mining or operations for crude. Isolated tribes are extremely at risk to ordinary illness—as such, the report notes a risk is posed by interaction with evangelical missionaries and online personalities in pursuit of clicks.

Recently, Mashco Piro people have been appearing to Nueva Oceania with greater frequency, based on accounts from locals.

The village is a fishermen's community of a handful of households, located atop on the shores of the Tauhamanu River in the center of the Peruvian Amazon, half a day from the closest town by watercraft.

The territory is not classified as a protected zone for uncontacted groups, and deforestation operations function here.

Tomas says that, at times, the sound of logging machinery can be noticed day and night, and the Mashco Piro people are seeing their forest damaged and devastated.

Within the village, residents state they are divided. They are afraid of the projectiles but they hold strong respect for their “brothers” dwelling in the woodland and wish to defend them.

“Allow them to live in their own way, we must not alter their culture. This is why we maintain our distance,” states Tomas.

The people in Nueva Oceania are worried about the harm to the tribe's survival, the risk of aggression and the likelihood that loggers might subject the tribe to sicknesses they have no immunity to.

At the time in the settlement, the group made themselves known again. Letitia, a woman with a two-year-old girl, was in the jungle picking produce when she detected them.

“We detected calls, cries from people, many of them. As if there were a whole group shouting,” she told us.

That was the first instance she had come across the tribe and she ran. After sixty minutes, her mind was still throbbing from anxiety.

“Since there are loggers and companies destroying the forest they're running away, perhaps because of dread and they arrive close to us,” she stated. “We are uncertain how they will behave to us. This is what terrifies me.”

Two years ago, a pair of timber workers were assaulted by the Mashco Piro while catching fish. One was wounded by an projectile to the gut. He lived, but the other man was discovered dead after several days with nine arrow wounds in his frame.

The administration maintains a approach of avoiding interaction with remote tribes, making it forbidden to commence encounters with them.

The policy originated in a nearby nation following many years of lobbying by community representatives, who saw that early interaction with secluded communities lead to whole populations being decimated by illness, destitution and starvation.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau people in Peru first encountered with the broader society, a significant portion of their population succumbed within a short period. During the 1990s, the Muruhanua people faced the identical outcome.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are very vulnerable—in terms of health, any contact could spread diseases, and even the most common illnesses might eliminate them,” says a representative from a tribal support group. “In cultural terms, any contact or intrusion can be extremely detrimental to their existence and health as a community.”

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