🔗 Share this article

Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a modest clearing deep in the Peruvian Amazon when he detected movements drawing near through the dense jungle.

He became aware that he had been hemmed in, and halted.

“A single individual was standing, aiming with an bow and arrow,” he remembers. “Unexpectedly he became aware that I was present and I started to escape.”

He had come confronting the Mashco Piro tribe. Over many years, Tomas—who lives in the modest village of Nueva Oceania—had been practically a local to these wandering people, who avoid interaction with outsiders.

A new study by a human rights organisation states exist a minimum of 196 termed “remote communities” in existence worldwide. The group is considered to be the most numerous. The report says half of these communities might be wiped out over the coming ten years unless authorities don't do further measures to safeguard them.

It claims the biggest dangers are from timber harvesting, mining or drilling for crude. Isolated tribes are highly at risk to common sickness—therefore, the study states a danger is presented by exposure with religious missionaries and digital content creators looking for engagement.

In recent times, the Mashco Piro have been appearing to Nueva Oceania more and more, based on accounts from inhabitants.

Nueva Oceania is a angling hamlet of several clans, perched high on the banks of the local river in the heart of the of Peru jungle, a ten-hour journey from the nearest town by canoe.

The area is not designated as a safeguarded zone for uncontacted groups, and deforestation operations operate here.

Tomas says that, at times, the noise of industrial tools can be heard around the clock, and the community are seeing their woodland damaged and destroyed.

Within the village, residents state they are conflicted. They dread the Mashco Piro's arrows but they also have strong respect for their “brothers” residing in the forest and want to safeguard them.

“Allow them to live according to their traditions, we are unable to change their traditions. 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 threat of violence and the likelihood that timber workers might expose the community to diseases they have no immunity to.

At the time in the community, the tribe appeared again. Letitia, a resident with a two-year-old girl, was in the forest picking produce when she noticed them.

“There were cries, cries from others, many of them. As though there was a crowd yelling,” she informed us.

This marked the first instance she had come across the Mashco Piro and she escaped. An hour later, her mind was still throbbing from fear.

“Because exist deforestation crews and companies clearing the forest they are fleeing, perhaps because of dread and they end up near us,” she said. “We are uncertain how they will behave to us. That is the thing that scares me.”

Two years ago, two loggers were attacked by the Mashco Piro while fishing. One man was wounded by an arrow to the stomach. He lived, but the other man was located deceased subsequently with multiple arrow wounds in his body.

The administration has a strategy of avoiding interaction with isolated people, making it prohibited to initiate interactions with them.

The strategy originated in a nearby nation subsequent to prolonged of lobbying by community representatives, who saw that first contact with isolated people lead to entire groups being wiped out by illness, hardship and starvation.

During the 1980s, when the Nahau community in Peru made initial contact with the outside world, 50% of their people succumbed within a short period. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua tribe suffered the same fate.

“Secluded communities are highly at risk—in terms of health, any exposure might introduce sicknesses, and even the basic infections may wipe them out,” says a representative from a local advocacy organization. “Culturally too, any contact or disruption can be highly damaging to their life and well-being as a group.”

For local residents of {