🔗 Share this article

The resident Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a small glade within in the Peruvian Amazon when he heard sounds coming closer through the dense forest.

He realized that he had been surrounded, and froze.

“One was standing, pointing with an arrow,” he remembers. “Unexpectedly he noticed I was here and I started to escape.”

He found himself face to face members of the Mashco Piro. Over many years, Tomas—who lives in the small community of Nueva Oceania—served as virtually a neighbour to these nomadic individuals, who reject contact with outsiders.

A recent study from a rights organization claims there are at least 196 of what it calls “isolated tribes” remaining globally. The group is thought to be the most numerous. The report says a significant portion of these groups might be eliminated over the coming ten years unless authorities don't do further to protect them.

It argues the biggest dangers come from logging, extraction or exploration for oil. Remote communities are extremely vulnerable to ordinary disease—consequently, it states a risk is presented by interaction with religious missionaries and digital content creators seeking attention.

Lately, the Mashco Piro have been appearing to Nueva Oceania increasingly, as reported by residents.

Nueva Oceania is a fishing community of a handful of clans, sitting atop on the shores of the local river in the heart of the of Peru jungle, a ten-hour journey from the closest settlement by watercraft.

This region is not classified as a safeguarded zone for uncontacted groups, and deforestation operations function here.

According to Tomas that, on occasion, the noise of logging machinery can be noticed around the clock, and the community are seeing their forest damaged and ruined.

Within the village, inhabitants say they are conflicted. They fear the tribal weapons but they also possess profound respect for their “relatives” dwelling in the woodland and desire to safeguard them.

“Allow them to live in their own way, we must not modify their way of life. This is why we keep our space,” explains Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are worried about the damage to the tribe's survival, the danger of aggression and the chance that timber workers might expose the Mashco Piro to sicknesses they have no immunity to.

During a visit in the settlement, the tribe made themselves known again. Letitia, a woman with a two-year-old child, was in the jungle picking food when she heard them.

“We heard shouting, cries from individuals, a large number of them. Like there was a whole group yelling,” she told us.

That was the initial occasion she had encountered the group and she escaped. An hour later, her thoughts was still racing from fear.

“As operate loggers and operations destroying the jungle they are fleeing, maybe out of fear and they end up close to us,” she explained. “We are uncertain how they might react to us. This is what scares me.”

Recently, a pair of timber workers were confronted by the group while catching fish. One was struck by an projectile to the abdomen. He lived, but the second individual was located lifeless subsequently with several injuries in his body.

Authorities in Peru maintains a policy of avoiding interaction with remote tribes, establishing it as forbidden to initiate interactions with them.

This approach originated in the neighboring country following many years of advocacy by tribal advocacy organizations, who saw that initial contact with remote tribes lead to entire communities being decimated by sickness, poverty and hunger.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau community in Peru made initial contact with the world outside, half of their population perished within a short period. A decade later, the Muruhanua community suffered the similar destiny.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are extremely susceptible—in terms of health, any interaction might transmit illnesses, and even the basic infections might eliminate them,” says Issrail Aquisse from a tribal support group. “Culturally too, any exposure or interference could be extremely detrimental to their life and health as a group.”

For the neighbours of {