More than 50 Mashco Piro members appeared near the remote jungle village of Monte Salvado in southeastern Peru, and 17 showed up near the neighboring village of Puerto Nuevo, according to Indigenous rights advocacy group Survival International, which released the images.
“This is irrefutable evidence that many Mashco Piro live in this area, which the government has not only failed to protect, but actually sold off to logging companies,” Alfredo Vargas Pio, president of the local Indigenous organization Fenamad, said in a news release.
He expressed concern that the logging workers could bring new diseases into the area, devastating the Mashco Piro, and that violent clashes could break out between loggers and the Indigenous community.
Fenamad told Reuters that in recent weeks, the tribe has been seen emerging more frequently in search of food, apparently moving away from the loggers.
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Indigenous advocates, including Survival International, are calling on authorities to withdraw the certification of one such logging company — Canales Tahuamanu, or Catahua — which has built more than 120 miles of roads in the area and is operating inside Mashco Piro territory, according to the NGO.
Catahua has a timber concession in the area dating back to 2002 that now spans about 193 square miles and has a record of clashing with Indigenous groups, The Washington Post reported in May.
Catahua did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has previously said its workers have never reported any sightings of the Mashco Piro and that the company has complied with all Peruvian legislation.
Last year, the U.N. special rapporteur on Indigenous rights asked Catahua to halt logging and respond to allegations of “possible forced contact” with the Mashco Piro.
The government has declined to intervene, and in December, Peru’s conservative-led Congress allowed the legalization of land that was deforested without permits — including on territory used by Indigenous people. The government did not respond to a request for comment.
As many as 20 tribes are living in voluntary isolation in Peru, and even more such tribes live in Brazil, where their right to isolation has long been enshrined in the constitution, although they have been beset in recent years by illegal mining, land grabs and deforestation.
The Peruvian government has previously estimated the number of Mashco Piro to be about 750, spread across the central Peruvian Amazon and into Brazil.
“These incredible images show that very large numbers of uncontacted Mashco Piro people are living just a few miles from where loggers are,” Survival International Director Caroline Pearce said. “This is a humanitarian disaster in the making.”
