🔗 Share this article

A man named Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a modest clearing far in the Peruvian rainforest when he noticed footsteps coming closer through the dense forest.

It dawned on him he was hemmed in, and froze.

“A single individual positioned, aiming using an bow and arrow,” he recalls. “Somehow he noticed I was here and I began to escape.”

He ended up encountering members of the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—residing in the tiny village of Nueva Oceania—had been virtually a neighbor to these nomadic tribe, who avoid interaction with foreigners.

A recent report by a rights organization indicates there are a minimum of 196 described as “uncontacted groups” in existence in the world. The group is believed to be the largest. It claims 50% of these groups could be wiped out over the coming ten years if governments don't do further actions to defend them.

It argues the greatest dangers are from logging, digging or operations for oil. Remote communities are extremely vulnerable to ordinary sickness—consequently, it notes a danger is posed by interaction with religious missionaries and social media influencers in pursuit of engagement.

Recently, members of the tribe have been venturing to Nueva Oceania with greater frequency, based on accounts from locals.

This settlement is a angling village of several households, sitting atop on the shores of the Tauhamanu River in the center of the of Peru Amazon, 10 hours from the nearest settlement by boat.

The territory is not classified as a safeguarded reserve for remote communities, and timber firms work here.

According to Tomas that, at times, the racket of logging machinery can be detected day and night, and the tribe members are witnessing their jungle disturbed and ruined.

Among the locals, inhabitants state they are conflicted. They are afraid of the Mashco Piro's arrows but they also possess profound admiration for their “brothers” residing in the woodland and want to safeguard them.

“Permit them to live in their own way, we must not modify their way of life. This is why we maintain our distance,” says Tomas.

The people in Nueva Oceania are worried about the damage to the tribe's survival, the danger of conflict and the possibility that timber workers might subject the tribe to diseases they have no resistance to.

While we were in the village, the Mashco Piro appeared again. A young mother, a woman with a toddler daughter, was in the woodland picking fruit when she detected them.

“There were calls, cries from individuals, many of them. As if there was a large gathering calling out,” she informed us.

It was the first time she had encountered the group and she ran. An hour later, her mind was still pounding from anxiety.

“Since there are timber workers and firms cutting down the forest they are fleeing, maybe due to terror and they come in proximity to us,” she explained. “It is unclear how they will behave with us. This is what terrifies me.”

In 2022, two loggers were assaulted by the tribe while angling. A single person was wounded by an projectile to the gut. He lived, but the second individual was located dead days later with nine injuries in his physique.

Authorities in Peru has a approach of avoiding interaction with remote tribes, making it illegal to start contact with them.

The strategy began in the neighboring country subsequent to prolonged of advocacy by indigenous rights groups, who saw that early contact with secluded communities could lead to whole populations being eliminated by illness, hardship and hunger.

During the 1980s, when the Nahau tribe in Peru came into contact with the outside world, a significant portion of their people died within a few years. A decade later, the Muruhanua community suffered the same fate.

“Secluded communities are extremely susceptible—from a disease perspective, any exposure could introduce diseases, and including the basic infections might decimate them,” says a representative from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “In cultural terms, any exposure or intrusion can be extremely detrimental to their existence and survival as a community.”

For the neighbours of {