The Mashco Piro may have been escaping logging operations in their territory: Teresa Mayo

Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous and tribal peoples’ rights, released a series of photos and visuals from the Peruvian section of the Amazon rainforest earlier last week.

The photos and visuals show an uncontacted people, the Mashco Piro, on the banks of the Las Piedras River in the village of Monte Salvado in Peru’s Madre de Dios region. The location is within miles of logging camps.

The photos and visuals drew concerns worldwide. The Amazon, one of the lungs of the planet, is already suffering drought due to human-induced climate change, wildfires as well as biodiversity loss.

It is also home to several indigenous groups, although there were many more half a millennium ago when Europeans landed in the Americas.

The uncontacted tribes of the Amazon, indigenous groups which shun contact with the outside world, are increasingly threatened as companies hack their way into the vast rainforest in search of lumber, minerals or to just clear land and make way for agriculture or ranches for South America’s beef, soy and other agri industries.

Down To Earth spoke to Teresa Mayo, a researcher at Survival International, about the Mashco Piro and the backstory to the photos and visuals. Edited excerpts:

Q. What is the background of the Mashco Piro? Were they always uncontacted?

A. The situation is more or less the same for all uncontacted tribes in the world. They have had some contact in the past, which turned out to be a traumatic experience, of which these people are now survivors.

In the case of the Mashco Piro, it was the rubber boom that took place in the Amazon in the late 1800s. They were tortured, raped and murdered. When they had a chance, they escaped. They now reject any contact with the outside world and have continued living the way they wanted in their forest home.

Q. How did the present state of affairs, of the tribe coming to the banks of the Las Piedras River within miles of logging camps, come about?

A. In 2002, the Peruvian government created the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve for protecting the Mashco Piro and other uncontacted tribes in the area. But it had an arbitrary shape as it was not created as per the advice and requests of indigenous tribal organisations. One can see that if one looks at the eastern border of the reserve on a map. It is a straight line, from north to south, which makes no sense as uncontacted tribes do not know such boundaries.  

The new reserve also divided the ancestral territories of the Mashco Piro since a large part of them now lay outside the officially designated boundaries of the reserve. The government granted logging concessions to companies in these unprotected parts outside the reserve.

By 2016, encounters between the tribe and the outside world, most of which took place in these very parts, convinced the government that it had made a mistake.

That is the current scenario at the moment. The Mashco Piro are highly vulnerable because of the loggers, who may pass on diseases to which the tribe has no immunity. Of course, they could also become victims of direct violence perpetrated by the loggers on them.

At the moment, we have only heard the accounts of the loggers, not of the Mashco Piro. But we do know that the tribe rejects the loggers’ presence as well as joining the outside world.

Q. What is the latest news about the tribe? What do your sources on the ground tell you?

A. The photographs show the Mashco Piro making an appearance in Monte Salvado, a village of the Yine tribe, another indigenous people which does not shun contact with the outside world.

In the past, the Mashco Piro have made such appearances only when they need something or something has happened. In the present case, they asked the Yine for plantains and cassava. On earlier occasions too, they have gathered the food and retreated back to the forest.

The latest photos showed a huge group of Mashco Piro, bigger than the numbers in which they usually appear. They had come to the village from a northerly direction. That is where Canales Tahuamanu, a major logging company, has recently started operations. It is now the dry season, which could be the reason why the company has started operations as loggers stop them during the wet season.

All this leads us to infer, although we do not know for sure, that the Mashco Piro were fleeing the operations of the loggers. This is a very worrying development, if true.

Q. Contact in the Amazon has almost always meant disaster for indigenous peoples. There is the case of the Yanomami. Do you think something similar could happen to this tribe as well?

A. The biggest danger for all uncontacted tribes (as in the case of the Yanomami when contact happened) is they have no immunity to common diseases. We have cases where whole tribes have been wiped out because of this. The Yanomami lost a big proportion of their people due to disease. This was also seen in Paraguay where uncontacted peoples died due to disease upon first contact.

This is one of the greatest fears of those who advocate for the rights of uncontacted tribes. These people come into contact (I would call it ‘forced contact’ as it is not of their own volition) with the world outside and die as a result.

Now, of course, there are people who say the outside world could help such tribes with Western science and medicine. But there will simply be no time for that. We have seen this happen and it has made states change their policies from ‘controlled contact’ to ‘no contact’. Because once contact happens, there is no going back.

We know the Mashco Piro do not want anyone into their home since they mark the forest with spears. It is a warning to others to keep away. Because they have experienced trauma in the past from these ‘others’.

Q. Projects involving logging, mineral extraction and other commercial activities pose a threat to the uncontacted tribes of the Amazon and Southeast Asia, like the Hongana Manyawa on Halmahera island in Indonesia. We also had the case of US missionary John Allen Chau trying to contact the Sentinelese in 2018. Are the rights of uncontacted tribes protected in international law? If not, should the world make an effort to do so?

A. There are policies regarding uncontacted tribes, specifically in many countries of the Amazon. As I also said earlier, there has been an evolution in policy from ‘Controlled contact’ to ‘No contact’ as such tribes themselves desire this and also since previous instances have shown the tragic consequences.

These rights are also recognised in national as well as international legislations and law: in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the International Labour Organization Convention 169. The latter recognises and protects tribal peoples’ land ownership rights, and sets a series of minimum UN standards regarding consultation and consent.

Some countries are more specific on this issue while others are coming around to agreeing to a policy of ‘No contact’. Whatever be the case, it is very important that this stand is incorporated in national laws because there is no other way these people are going to be protected.