🔗 Share this article

Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a modest open space far in the of Peru rainforest when he noticed movements drawing near through the thick jungle.

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

“A single individual stood, aiming with an arrow,” he remembers. “And somehow he became aware that I was present and I commenced to flee.”

He ended up confronting members of the Mashco Piro. For decades, Tomas—dwelling in the small village of Nueva Oceania—served as practically a local to these wandering tribe, who avoid interaction with outsiders.

A recent document from a rights group states there are no fewer than 196 described as “uncontacted groups” remaining in the world. This tribe is considered to be the biggest. It claims a significant portion of these tribes could be wiped out over the coming ten years should administrations don't do additional measures to safeguard them.

It argues the greatest dangers come from timber harvesting, mining or exploration for oil. Isolated tribes are extremely at risk to basic disease—consequently, the report notes a risk is caused by interaction with religious missionaries and online personalities in pursuit of attention.

Lately, Mashco Piro people have been venturing to Nueva Oceania more and more, according to locals.

This settlement is a fishermen's village of a handful of families, located atop on the edges of the local river deep within the of Peru jungle, a ten-hour journey from the closest town by canoe.

This region is not classified as a protected zone for isolated tribes, and timber firms operate here.

According to Tomas that, at times, the racket of heavy equipment can be heard day and night, and the community are witnessing their woodland damaged and devastated.

In Nueva Oceania, inhabitants say they are divided. They are afraid of the tribal weapons but they hold profound regard for their “relatives” dwelling in the jungle and desire to defend them.

“Allow them to live as they live, we are unable to change their culture. This is why we preserve our distance,” explains Tomas.

The people in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the harm to the tribe's survival, the risk of violence and the possibility that deforestation crews might introduce the Mashco Piro to illnesses they have no immunity to.

While we were in the village, the Mashco Piro appeared again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a resident with a two-year-old child, was in the forest gathering produce when she detected them.

“There were cries, cries from individuals, many of them. Like it was a whole group yelling,” she told us.

That was the first time she had come across the Mashco Piro and she fled. Subsequently, her mind was still pounding from fear.

“Because exist timber workers and firms destroying the forest they are escaping, possibly out of fear and they arrive near us,” she said. “We don't know how they will behave to us. That's what frightens me.”

Two years ago, a pair of timber workers were confronted by the Mashco Piro while angling. A single person was hit by an projectile to the stomach. He survived, but the other person was found dead days later with several puncture marks in his physique.

The administration follows a approach of no engagement with isolated people, rendering it prohibited to start contact with them.

The strategy originated in a nearby nation following many years of lobbying by indigenous rights groups, who saw that initial interaction with isolated people resulted to whole populations being eliminated by disease, hardship and starvation.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau community in Peru first encountered with the world outside, 50% of their people died within a few years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua tribe faced the same fate.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are very vulnerable—from a disease perspective, any interaction could spread sicknesses, and even the simplest ones might decimate them,” explains a representative from a local advocacy organization. “In cultural terms, any exposure or intrusion could be extremely detrimental to their existence and survival as a group.”

For the neighbours of {