Peru releases images to highlight dangers to ‘uncontacted’ tribes

The “most detailed sightings of uncontacted tribes ever recorded on camera” have been released to illustrate the danger of their lives becoming less isolated.

Taken in Manú National Park, south-eastern Peru, the images show a family from the Mashco-Piro tribe.

Peruvian authorities are struggling to keep outsiders away from the clan of previously isolated Amazon Indians who began appearing on the banks of a jungle river popular with environmental tourists last year.

The behaviour of the small group of Mashco-Piro Indians has puzzled scientists, who say it may be related to the encroachment of loggers and by low-flying aircraft from nearby natural gas and oil exploration in the south-eastern region of the country.

The danger of trying to contact the clan has been exemplified in recent months, with clan members blamed for two bow-and-arrow attacks on people near the riverbank in Madre de Dios state where officials say the Indians were first seen last May.

One badly wounded a forest ranger in October. The following month, another fatally pierced the heart of a local Matsiguenka Indian, Nicolas “Shaco” Flores, who had long maintained a relationship with the Mashco-Piro.

The advocacy group Survival International, which released the photos, said fears are growing the clan could be decimated by disease borne by outsiders, as has occurred with other uncontacted peoples.

The British-based group provided the photos exactly a year after releasing aerial photos from Brazil of another tribe classified as uncontacted, one of about 100 such groups it says exist around the world.

One of the Mashco-Piro photos was taken by a bird watcher in August, Survival International said. The other two were shot by Spanish archaeologist Diego Cortijo on November 16, six days before Flores was killed.

Cortijo, a member of the Spanish Geographical Society, was visiting Flores while on an expedition in search of petroglyphs and said clan members appeared across the river from Flores’ house, calling for him by name.

Flores could communicate with the Mashco-Piro because he spoke two related dialects, said Cortijo, who added that Flores had previously provided clan members with machetes and cooking pots.

The Mashco-Piro tribe is believed to number in the hundreds and lives in the Manu National Park that borders Diamante, a community of more than 200 people where Flores lived.

Although it is not known what moved the Mashco-Piro clan to leave the relative safety of their tribe’s jungle home, Beatriz Huerta, an anthropologist who works with Peru’s INDEPA agency for indigenous affairs, speculated their habitat is becoming increasingly less isolated.

The upper Madre de Dios region where the tribe lives has been affected by logging, she said. “They are removing wood very close.”

Meanwhile, Huerta said, naturalists in the area and Manu National Park officials told her during a recent visit that a rise in air traffic related to natural gas and oil exploration in the region is adversely affecting native hunting grounds, forcing increasing migration by nomadic tribes.

The clan that showed up at the river is believed to number about 60, including some 25 adults, said Carlos Soria, a professor at Lima’s Catholic University who ran Peru’s park protection agency last year.

“The place where they are seen is one of heavy transit” of river cargo and tourist passage, and so the potential for more violent encounters remains high, Prof Soria said.

That is compounded by culture clash. The Mashco-Piro live by their own social code, which Prof Soria said includes the practice of kidnapping other tribes’ women and children.

He said the Mashco-Piro are one of about 15 “uncontacted” tribes in Peru that together are estimated to number between 12,000 and 15,000 people living in jungles east of the Andes.

“The situation is incredibly delicate,” said Huerta.

“It’s very clear that they don’t want people there,” she said of the area where the clan has been loitering, noting that it had ransacked a jungle ranger’s post that authorities later removed.

In response to the Flores killing, authorities sent a team into Diamante to explain to inhabitants that it would be wrong to try to retaliate. Diamante’s residents include ethnic Matsiguenka, traditionally a rival tribe, complicating matters.

Cortijo said Flores’ death makes reaching any understanding with the Mashco-Piro complicated.

“The problem is that ‘Shaco’ was the only person who could talk to them,” he said. “Now that he’s dead it’s impossible to make contact.”