🔗 Share this article

A man named Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a modest open space deep in the Peruvian Amazon when he detected sounds approaching through the thick jungle.

He became aware that he had been surrounded, and stood still.

“A single individual was standing, pointing with an projectile,” he recalls. “Somehow he noticed that I was present and I started to escape.”

He had come encountering members of the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—residing in the tiny community of Nueva Oceania—had been virtually a local to these itinerant individuals, who avoid contact with outsiders.

A recent document by a human rights group states there are no fewer than 196 termed “remote communities” remaining globally. This tribe is believed to be the largest. The study says a significant portion of these groups might be decimated in the next decade unless authorities don't do further to protect them.

It argues the greatest risks are from logging, mining or exploration for crude. Uncontacted groups are extremely vulnerable to basic illness—as such, it says a danger is presented by exposure with proselytizers and social media influencers seeking attention.

In recent times, the Mashco Piro have been coming to Nueva Oceania increasingly, according to inhabitants.

This settlement is a fishermen's village of several households, located elevated on the shores of the Tauhamanu River in the heart of the of Peru jungle, half a day from the closest settlement by canoe.

This region is not designated as a safeguarded zone for remote communities, and timber firms operate here.

Tomas reports that, on occasion, the racket of heavy equipment can be noticed continuously, and the Mashco Piro people are seeing their jungle disturbed and devastated.

Within the village, people report they are torn. They dread the projectiles but they also have strong admiration for their “relatives” who live in the jungle and want to defend them.

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

Residents in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the harm to the Mascho Piro's livelihood, the risk of violence and the chance that timber workers might introduce the Mashco Piro to illnesses they have no defense to.

While we were in the village, the Mashco Piro made their presence felt again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a young mother with a toddler daughter, was in the jungle picking food when she heard them.

“We heard calls, sounds from others, many of them. As if there were a whole group shouting,” she told us.

It was the first time she had come across the Mashco Piro and she escaped. An hour later, her mind was still throbbing from anxiety.

“Because operate timber workers and companies destroying the forest they are fleeing, possibly out of fear and they arrive close to us,” she said. “It is unclear how they will behave with us. This is what terrifies me.”

In 2022, a pair of timber workers were attacked by the tribe while angling. One man was hit by an bow to the gut. He recovered, but the other man was found deceased after several days with several arrow wounds in his body.

The administration has a approach of avoiding interaction with isolated people, establishing it as illegal to initiate interactions with them.

This approach was first adopted in a nearby nation after decades of advocacy by tribal advocacy organizations, who saw that first exposure with remote tribes lead to whole populations being eliminated by illness, destitution and starvation.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau community in Peru came into contact with the broader society, half of their people succumbed within a short period. During the 1990s, the Muruhanua people suffered the identical outcome.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are extremely vulnerable—from a disease perspective, any interaction might transmit diseases, and even the basic infections might wipe them out,” states an advocate from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “In cultural terms, any interaction or disruption can be extremely detrimental to their way of life and health as a group.”

For those living nearby of {