Photographs taken along a riverbed in the remote Peruvian Amazon show more than fifty members of the Mashco Piro tribe. The community is located close to a region where the Peruvian government has awarded concessions to logging corporations.
Just a few days ago, a big Mashco Piro gang showed up close to the Yine community of Monte Salvado in the southeast. Near a nearby settlement, a smaller group of seventeen people emerged. The Yine, who share a language with the Mashco Piro, have informed Survival International—an Indigenous rights organization—that the uncontacted tribe has been upset about loggers occupying their territory.
There has been an uptick in sightings of the isolated tribe emerging from the jungle in search of food and attempts to evade loggers, according to FENAMAD. Claims that logging has enraged Mashco Piro have surfaced before. A little over ten years ago, there were many attempts by the tribe to establish communication with the outside world. In 2013, a portion of its members were involved in a heated confrontation with a rural riverside town. Officials hinted that they could have been displeased with the illegal logging taking place on their land.
They are one of the largest uncontacted tribes in the world, with over 750 members, and they managed to escape slavery and atrocities that occurred during the 19th-century rubber boom. The Maderera Canales Tahuamanu SAC logging concession is one of the largest in the region; the firm has constructed over 120 miles of roads for the use of its logging trucks in the extraction of timber. The Mashco Piro people are in danger of extinction because of the Maderera Canales Tahuamanu loggers’ presence, which might lead to bloodshed between the two tribes and the introduction of dangerous illnesses.
The Mashco Piro are a people who live in a region in southeast Peru called Madre de Dios. This region is surrounded by natural reserves and has no way of communicating with the outside world. More than seven hundred fifty members of the Indigenous tribe sought sanctuary in more secluded parts of the forest during the early nineteenth century’s “rubber boom” to avoid being exploited.
