Peruvian Amazon

Rare photos highlight threats to isolated Indigenous people

Images of an isolated and rarely seen indigenous group in the Peruvian Amazon get massive media coverage and highlight the threats to the group from loggers and drug smugglers. Rainforest Foundation Norway demands that the Peruvian authorities stop logging operations and extend the protected Indigenous territories.

ISOLATED: Men and boys from the isolated Mashco Piro appeared on a riverbank in the Peruvian Amazon in a rare event. Photo: Survival International

By Regnskogfondet.

Around 50 members of the Mashco Piro people appeared two days in a row between 26 and 27 June on the opposite side of the Las Piedras River from the remote indigenous village of Monte Salvado in the Madre de Dios region of southeast Peru. Two weeks later, the same thing happened again when 17 Mashco Piros appeared at the nearby village of Puerto Nuevo.

The organisation Survival published images of the Mashco Piro communicating with members of the local Yine people and asking for bananas and rope.

The Mashco Piro people make rare appearances and live as nomadic hunters and gatherers in the Madre de Dios reserve, a protected area roughly the size of the island of Puerto Rico (8300 km2), and in adjacent areas.

LOGGING: A logging base on Mashco Piro traditional land. Loggers threaten the Mashco Piro, who are suscpectible to outside diseases to which they have no natural immunity. Photo: FENAMAD

Loggers and smugglers threaten the Mashco Piro

The Madre de Dios reserve was created in 2002 to protect the Mashco Piro. The reserve was initially intended to be much larger but was scaled down after lobbying from the timber industry.

Peruvian authorities granted forestry concessions in areas that overlap with the Mashco Piro's traditional lands, creating problems for the isolated group.

"Contact between the Mashco Piro and loggers and criminals is increasing in the eastern parts of the Madre de Dios reserve bordering the forest concessions. This means a greater risk of violent conflict and the spread of diseases to which the isolated Indigenous peoples lack natural immunity," says Beatriz Huertas, RFN expert on isolated Indigenous peoples in Peru.

The location where the recent photos of the Mashco Piro were taken is some distance from the forest concessions. Still, the appearance by the Mashco Piro occurred against a backdrop of ever-increasing pressure on their territory from drug traffickers, legal and illegal loggers and gold miners.

Video - Mashco Piro

Logging concessions on Indigenous peoples' traditional lands must be cancelled

A 2023 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples expressed concern about the overlap and the fact that Indigenous peoples' lands were not demarcated despite reasonable evidence of their existence in these areas as early as 1999.

It was not until 2016 that Peruvian authorities recognised the existence of the Mashco Piro in areas where logging concessions were granted.

One of these is the Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT) concession, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international NGO certifying sustainable and ethical timber extraction.

The Rainforest Foundation's partner organisations in Peru, the Indigenous organisations FENAMAD and AIDESEP, in cooperation with Survival International, are working to stop logging and expand the reserve for indigenous peoples.

"Peruvian authorities must expand the Madre de Dios reserve eastwards to cover the traditional lands of the isolated Indigenous peoples. All overlapping forest concessions must be withdrawn, and the protection of isolated Indigenous peoples must be strengthened so that they can live in peace," says Toerris Jaeger, executive director of RFN.

Sources: Survival International and Mongabay

Mashco Piro

  • Live in the Madre de Dios Territory and Manu National Park and in adjacent areas, southeastern Peruvian Amazon.
  • An estimated 750 people divided into several smaller groups
  • Possibly the world's largest group of indigenous people living in voluntary isolation.
  • Several violent conflicts have occurred between the Mashco Piro and loggers from the 1980s to now.
  • They have previously made it clear that they want to live in peace and maintain their way of life.

RFNs work with isolated Indigenous Peoples in Peru

  • RFN works with Indigenous partner organisations in Peru to protect the right of isolated indigenous peoples to live without contact with the outside world, retain their way of life and maintain their cultural integrity.
  • RFN cooperates with and provides financial support to the Indigenous movement in Peru, which, through rights work, lobbying, and research, fights to secure the territories of isolated Indigenous groups.
  • RFN's partner organisations in Peru staff a checkpoint in Monte Salvado, where the pictures were taken. The checkpoint is one of five established by RFN and local partners to stop loggers illegally attempting to enter territories established to protect Indigenous peoples living isolated in the Peruvian rainforest.
  • RFN and local Indigenous partners are working to establish a large, contiguous protection area for isolated Indigenous peoples and rainforests on the border between Peru and Brazil. The world's largest groups of isolated Indigenous peoples live here.

Ines Luna Maira

Team Leader, Peru and Colombia Program
(+47) 452 48 654
ines@rainforest.no