Brothers within the Woodland: This Struggle to Protect an Isolated Rainforest Community

Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a tiny clearing far in the of Peru jungle when he noticed footsteps approaching through the dense forest.

It dawned on him he was surrounded, and froze.

“A single individual stood, pointing using an arrow,” he remembers. “And 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—who lives in the tiny village of Nueva Oceania—was almost a neighbour to these itinerant people, who shun engagement with outsiders.

An updated document by a rights organisation indicates there are a minimum of 196 described as “isolated tribes” in existence in the world. This tribe is considered to be the largest. The study says 50% of these groups may be decimated within ten years should administrations neglect to implement more actions to defend them.

It claims the most significant threats stem from logging, mining or operations for oil. Isolated tribes are exceptionally at risk to basic illness—as such, the study says a risk is caused by interaction with religious missionaries and online personalities looking for clicks.

Lately, members of the tribe have been appearing to Nueva Oceania more and more, as reported by locals.

Nueva Oceania is a fishing hamlet of seven or eight families, located atop on the banks of the Tauhamanu waterway in the heart of the Peruvian jungle, a ten-hour journey from the most accessible settlement by watercraft.

The territory is not designated as a safeguarded zone for uncontacted groups, and timber firms work here.

Tomas says that, on occasion, the noise of logging machinery can be noticed around the clock, and the tribe members are seeing their woodland damaged and ruined.

Among the locals, inhabitants state they are torn. They are afraid of the projectiles but they also possess strong admiration for their “kin” who live in the woodland and wish to safeguard them.

“Let them live in their own way, we are unable to change their culture. That's why we preserve our separation,” states Tomas.

Inhabitants in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the destruction to the Mascho Piro's livelihood, the threat of aggression and the likelihood that deforestation crews might subject the tribe to diseases they have no defense to.

While we were in the settlement, the group made their presence felt again. Letitia, a resident with a two-year-old daughter, was in the woodland gathering fruit when she detected them.

“There were cries, sounds from individuals, many of them. As though there were a crowd calling out,” she shared with us.

It was the first time she had met the Mashco Piro and she ran. After sixty minutes, her thoughts was persistently racing from fear.

“As there are deforestation crews and operations cutting down the woodland they are fleeing, possibly due to terror and they come close to us,” she explained. “We don't know how they will behave to us. That's what terrifies me.”

Recently, a pair of timber workers were confronted by the Mashco Piro while fishing. A single person was wounded by an bow to the abdomen. He recovered, but the other person was located lifeless days later with multiple injuries in his frame.

The Peruvian government has a approach of no engagement with remote tribes, rendering it illegal to start encounters with them.

The strategy was first adopted in the neighboring country following many years of advocacy by community representatives, who observed that first exposure with isolated people lead to entire communities being decimated by sickness, poverty and hunger.

During the 1980s, when the Nahau community in Peru came into contact with the outside world, half of their community succumbed within a matter of years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua people suffered the same fate.

“Secluded communities are very susceptible—epidemiologically, any interaction could introduce sicknesses, and even the most common illnesses may wipe them out,” explains Issrail Aquisse from a local advocacy organization. “Culturally too, any exposure or intrusion can be extremely detrimental to their way of life and well-being as a society.”

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