Indigenous groups survive in isolation in Peru, including the Mascho Piro, who in recent months have begun reaching out. But some worry about the consequences: ‘If they live with us, they risk losing everything they ever knew’

Why has this Amazonian tribe suddenly started to make contact with outsiders?

Emerging from the mist-shrouded forest at dawn, 11 naked figures wander across a stony beach alongside the fast-flowing Upper Madre de Dios river.

From a clapboard government checkpoint perched on the opposite side of the river, Romel Ponciano – a protection agent from Peru’s ministry of culture – shouts out: “The brothers are here – the Nomole are on the beach.”

Together with two colleagues, he makes his way down to the riverside and clambers into a launch which splutters into motion, chugging against the current to reach the far bank.

The boat has scarcely pulled ashore when the women in the group climb in: one is several months pregnant, another carries a baby. Children haul themselves onto Ponciano’s back, taking turns at piggyback; one of the men playfully tugs at the agent’s T-shirt.

But for the motorised boat, the encounter on the beach might have taken place at any moment in the past 500 years. It represents one of the last scenes in a clash of cultures which began in 1492 with Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas – and has eventually led, through war and disease, to the decimation of indigenous communities throughout the continent.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Mashco Piro, along their side of the Madre de Dios river. Photograph: Ronald Reategui/The Guardian

Around 14 indigenous groups – as many as 5,000 people – survive in isolation in the Amazon region of Peru, which after Brazil has the largest number of isolated groups in the Americas.



Some groups have clashed with illegal loggers and drug traffickers, but the greatest immediate peril for these isolated peoples remains infection by common illnesses – such as influenza or the common cold – to which they have little or no immunity.

In recent years however one group of these hunter-gatherers has, for reasons not fully understood, started to emerge from the dense forest and seek contact with the outside world.

With increasing frequency, members of the Mashco Piro group have hailed river boats on the eastern margin of the 1.5m hectare Manu national park and asked for machetes, food or clothing.

The attempts to make contact have not been one-sided: missionaries have already attempted to evangelise them, and tour operators have even brought visitors on “human safaris” to see the tribe.

Such encounters have obliged the country to rethink its long-established policy of banning contact with isolated peoples, said Lorena Prieto, director of Peru’s office of peoples in isolation and initial contact.

“These people are no longer in total isolation. We have to control their contact,” she told the Guardian.

After more than two dozen encounters with the Mascho Piro, Ponciano has probably had the most contact with the group.

“They call me Yotlotle, it means giant otter; they hug me, the children ask me to carry them, and they offer me things to eat,” he said. As a member of the indigenous Yine people, he understands around 80% of the Mashco Piro’s speech, he said, although they use words now only used by the older generations.

Employed by Peru’s office of peoples in isolation and initial contact, his job is to safeguard the Mashco Piro’s wellbeing, to protect them from potentially dangerous contact with settled communities and outsiders – and vice versa.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protection agent Romel Ponciano has a close relationship with the Mashco Piro. He knows them all by name and they call him Yotlotle, which means giant otter, a species endemic to the Amazon. Photograph: Ronald Reategui/The Guardian

Any encounter is fraught with danger. Ponciano would never utter the name Mashco Piro in their presence, as it means “wild” or “savage” in the Yine language – and causing offence could potentially be lethal. (He prefers Nomole, which loosely means “brothers and sisters” or “kin”.)

“In our history they can kill you for a needle, or a machete ... You don’t want to put that to the test,” he said.



His home village, Monte Salvado, was evacuated in December after it was raided by up to 200 men from a different Mashco Piro group who were armed with bows and arrows.

“We cannot put our specialists at risk by allowing them to enter the bush. We can communicate only if they initiate contact,” Prieto said.

Why does the state protect the Mashco and not us, why? Don’t we matter? Gregorio Pérez

Upriver from the control post lies the settlement of Shipetiari, whose population of 178 Machiguenga people have no ties of language or kinship with the Mascho Piro – and whose recent history illustrates the potentially fatal risks of such first contacts.

Mashco Piro raiders started targeting the village last year, stealing manioc and banana from plantations, or filching machetes and cooking pots from homesteads.

In March, Blanca Rivera was collecting firewood when an arrow whistled past her skirt. A second arrow flew past her back as she ran, and a third thudded into the door of her house just as she got inside and recalled her daughter, Romelia. The attackers – a man and teenage boy – fled when a hunting shotgun was fired in the air, she added.

But the attacks continued. On 1 May, the Mashco Piro raided the village when most of the men were working on a road across the river.

Two men followed their trail, but soon found themselves under attack: Leonardo Pérez, 22, was struck and killed by a two-metre arrow tipped with a sharpened bamboo blade, said his father, Gregorio.

Grief-stricken and angry, Pérez says the village feels abandoned: “Why does the state protect the Mashco and not us, why? Don’t we matter?” he asks.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gregorio Pérez, 52, whose son was killed by the Mashco Piro in May, in Shipetiari. Photograph: Ronald Reategui/The Guardian

Two local protection agents take turns patrolling the village paths, which are criss-crossed by Mashco Piro trails. Fearful villagers remain in constant communication using 10 donated walkie-talkies. The insecurity has meant ecotourism, the village’s principal source of income, has dropped to zero.

Farther downriver in Diamante, a larger Yine community, the Mashco Piro are seen as long-lost cousins by some, or souls in need of saving by others.



Protection agent Nelly Pérez is not exaggerating when she describes the Nomole as her family: her father Alberto was a Mashco Piro who was captured by villagers as a boy and brought up in Diamante.

“They are my real family,” said Pérez. “They are my uncles and aunts, my grandparents, my cousins.”

Luís Felipe Torres, an anthropologist with the Madre de Dios region’s isolated tribes team, warns that contact with the group is still dangerous.



“They are at a turning point,” he said. “But it would be a mistake to think that just because they want machetes and bananas that everything has changed.”



The Mashco Piro are believed to have fled into the jungle during the Amazon rubber boom (1880-1914), and had rejected all contact with outsiders until now.

Peru’s official policy of “no contact” with the isolated tribes has not dissuaded missionaries from seeking them out.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nelly Perez, 38, weeps when she think of her relatives living in the forest. “They are my real family. They are my uncles and aunts, my grandparents, my cousins.” Photograph: Ronald Reategui/The Guardian

Evangelical preacher Mario Alvarez said God spoke to him in a dream telling him to come to Diamante to spread his word to the “naked ones” in the forest. He said he felt compelled to try to feed and clothe them as a “Christian who loves his fellow man”.

The potentially brutal collision with the modern world could be accelerated by the illegal construction of a road which cuts through the buffer zones of Manu national park and the adjacent Amarakaeri communal reserve, connecting the remote area to cities and opening it up to illegal mining and logging.

In a statement, Peru’s environment ministry said a congressional bill backing the road could “endanger the life of the isolated peoples”.

Despite differences of opinion about what is best for the Mashco Piro, both anthropologists and local people agree that contact will increase.

Even with the best of intentions, Torres says, results could be fatal.

“They could die from contact – get diseases which they can’t cure. The other threat is that they could end up exploited by our society: become the poorest of the poor,” he says. “If they live with us, they risk losing everything they ever knew.”