Brothers in the Forest: This Battle to Safeguard an Secluded Amazon Community

The resident Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a tiny clearing deep in the of Peru rainforest when he noticed movements drawing near through the thick jungle.

He became aware that he stood surrounded, and stood still.

“One person positioned, directing with an bow and arrow,” he recalls. “Somehow he became aware that I was present and I began to run.”

He ended up encountering the Mashco Piro. Over many years, Tomas—residing in the tiny village of Nueva Oceania—served as virtually a neighbour to these itinerant individuals, who reject interaction with foreigners.

A recent document from a rights organisation claims exist at least 196 termed “remote communities” left globally. This tribe is believed to be the largest. The study claims 50% of these tribes could be decimated within ten years if governments fail to take further measures to safeguard them.

It argues the biggest risks stem from timber harvesting, extraction or exploration for crude. Remote communities are highly susceptible to common disease—therefore, it says a danger is posed by interaction with religious missionaries and online personalities seeking clicks.

In recent times, members of the tribe have been venturing to Nueva Oceania with greater frequency, based on accounts from residents.

This settlement is a fishing hamlet of a handful of households, sitting elevated on the shores of the Tauhamanu waterway in the center of the Peruvian Amazon, 10 hours from the closest settlement by watercraft.

The area is not designated as a safeguarded zone for remote communities, and timber firms operate here.

Tomas reports that, at times, the noise of logging machinery can be noticed continuously, and the community are observing their jungle disturbed and ruined.

Within the village, people state they are divided. They dread the projectiles but they also have deep respect for their “relatives” who live in the jungle and want to safeguard them.

“Allow them to live as they live, we can't change their way of life. That's why we keep our separation,” says Tomas.

The people in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the damage to the community's way of life, the risk of aggression and the likelihood that deforestation crews might expose the tribe to illnesses they have no resistance to.

At the time in the community, the Mashco Piro made their presence felt again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a young mother with a young girl, was in the woodland gathering food when she detected them.

“There were calls, shouts from people, a large number of them. As though there was a whole group yelling,” she told us.

This marked the first time she had encountered the group and she fled. After sixty minutes, her thoughts was persistently pounding from fear.

“As exist timber workers and firms clearing the woodland they are fleeing, maybe due to terror and they end up close to us,” she said. “We don't know how they will behave to us. This is what frightens me.”

In 2022, a pair of timber workers were assaulted by the tribe while catching fish. One man was struck by an bow to the stomach. He lived, but the second individual was located lifeless subsequently with multiple puncture marks in his frame.

The administration has a policy of no engagement with remote tribes, establishing it as prohibited to start encounters with them.

The policy was first adopted in a nearby nation after decades of advocacy by tribal advocacy organizations, who observed that initial exposure with remote tribes lead to entire groups being wiped out by sickness, poverty and malnutrition.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau people in Peru first encountered with the broader society, a significant portion of their people perished within a matter of years. During the 1990s, the Muruhanua community faced the same fate.

“Secluded communities are very at risk—in terms of health, any contact could introduce sicknesses, and including the simplest ones could wipe them out,” states Issrail Aquisse from a local advocacy organization. “In cultural terms, any contact or intrusion may be highly damaging to their existence and health as a community.”

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