🔗 Share this article

Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a modest open space within in the Peruvian Amazon when he detected footsteps drawing near through the thick woodland.

It dawned on him he was hemmed in, and stood still.

“One positioned, aiming with an bow and arrow,” he states. “And somehow he detected I was here and I began to run.”

He found himself face to face the Mashco Piro. Over many years, Tomas—who lives in the small community of Nueva Oceania—served as almost a local to these wandering tribe, who avoid contact with outsiders.

An updated document by a human rights organization claims there are at least 196 termed “remote communities” remaining globally. This tribe is thought to be the largest. The report states 50% of these groups might be eliminated within ten years if governments don't do further actions to defend them.

It argues the greatest risks are from logging, mining or operations for oil. Remote communities are extremely susceptible to ordinary sickness—consequently, the study states a risk is posed by exposure with religious missionaries and online personalities looking for engagement.

Recently, Mashco Piro people have been coming to Nueva Oceania more and more, based on accounts from locals.

This settlement is a fishermen's village of several families, perched high on the banks of the Tauhamanu waterway in the heart of the of Peru jungle, half a day from the closest town by watercraft.

The territory is not designated as a protected zone for isolated tribes, and logging companies operate here.

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

Within the village, people state they are conflicted. They fear the Mashco Piro's arrows but they also have deep regard for their “relatives” who live in the woodland and wish to protect them.

“Allow them to live according to their traditions, we can't modify their way of life. That's why we keep our space,” explains Tomas.

The people in Nueva Oceania are concerned about the destruction to the tribe's survival, the threat of aggression and the chance that loggers might subject the Mashco Piro to illnesses they have no defense to.

At the time in the village, the tribe made themselves known again. A young mother, a young mother with a toddler daughter, was in the forest collecting produce when she heard them.

“There were cries, sounds from others, numerous of them. As if there was a whole group calling out,” she shared with us.

This marked the first time she had encountered the group and she fled. Subsequently, her head was still throbbing from terror.

“Since exist timber workers and companies destroying the forest they are fleeing, maybe due to terror and they end up near us,” she said. “We don't know how they might react to us. That's what scares me.”

In 2022, two loggers were confronted by the tribe while fishing. A single person was wounded by an bow to the abdomen. He lived, but the other man was discovered lifeless days later with nine puncture marks in his frame.

Authorities in Peru follows a strategy of no engagement with remote tribes, making it illegal to initiate interactions with them.

This approach originated in Brazil after decades of advocacy by community representatives, who saw that early exposure with isolated people resulted to entire communities being eliminated by illness, poverty and hunger.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau people in the country came into contact with the world outside, 50% of their people succumbed within a matter of years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua people faced the identical outcome.

“Remote tribes are highly susceptible—in terms of health, any contact may introduce diseases, and even the basic infections may wipe them out,” explains Issrail Aquisse from a tribal support group. “Culturally too, any interaction or disruption may be very harmful to their existence and survival as a community.”

For those living nearby of {