Kin within the Forest: The Struggle to Safeguard an Isolated Amazon Group

The resident Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a small open space within in the Peruvian Amazon when he noticed footsteps approaching through the lush jungle.

It dawned on him he was surrounded, and froze.

“One person positioned, directing using an arrow,” he recalls. “Somehow he detected that I was present and I began to flee.”

He found himself confronting the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—dwelling in the tiny community of Nueva Oceania—was virtually a neighbor to these nomadic tribe, who reject interaction with outsiders.

A recent report issued by a human rights group indicates remain no fewer than 196 of what it calls “remote communities” remaining worldwide. The group is considered to be the largest. It states 50% of these tribes could be decimated in the next decade unless authorities fail to take more to protect them.

It claims the greatest risks come from deforestation, mining or drilling for oil. Uncontacted groups are highly susceptible to ordinary disease—therefore, the report states a danger is presented by interaction with evangelical missionaries and social media influencers looking for attention.

Lately, the Mashco Piro have been coming to Nueva Oceania more and more, as reported by residents.

This settlement is a angling village of a handful of households, perched elevated on the edges of the Tauhamanu River in the center of the Peruvian jungle, half a day from the nearest settlement by canoe.

The area is not recognised as a protected area for uncontacted groups, and deforestation operations function here.

According to Tomas that, sometimes, the noise of logging machinery can be detected day and night, and the tribe members are observing their forest disturbed and devastated.

Within the village, inhabitants say they are conflicted. They fear the tribal weapons but they also possess deep regard for their “kin” who live in the jungle and want to safeguard them.

“Let them live as they live, we can't change their traditions. This is why we preserve our separation,” states Tomas.

Inhabitants in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the damage to the tribe's survival, the threat of violence and the chance that loggers might expose the tribe to sicknesses they have no defense to.

At the time in the village, the Mashco Piro made their presence felt again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a woman with a young daughter, was in the woodland picking food when she noticed them.

“We detected calls, cries from people, many of them. As if there was a whole group shouting,” she told us.

That was the first time she had encountered the tribe and she escaped. Subsequently, her head was still racing from terror.

“Because exist loggers and companies clearing the forest they are fleeing, maybe because of dread and they end up close to us,” she stated. “It is unclear how they might react with us. That's what terrifies me.”

In 2022, a pair of timber workers were assaulted by the tribe while catching fish. One man was wounded by an arrow to the gut. He survived, but the second individual was found deceased days later with nine puncture marks in his frame.

The Peruvian government follows a policy of avoiding interaction with isolated people, making it illegal to commence encounters with them.

The strategy was first adopted in Brazil following many years of campaigning by community representatives, who saw that early interaction with isolated people resulted to entire groups being wiped out by disease, hardship and starvation.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau tribe in Peru made initial contact with the outside world, half of their population died within a few years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua tribe experienced the similar destiny.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are highly vulnerable—epidemiologically, any contact could transmit illnesses, and even the basic infections could wipe them out,” states a representative from a tribal support group. “In cultural terms, any exposure or interference could be extremely detrimental to their life and well-being as a group.”

For local residents of {