Current Events –
Peru Making Contact With Amazon Tribe
For more than 600 years, the indigenous Mashco-Piro tribe has lived deep within the Amazon jungle, avoiding all physical contact with the outside world.  Now, the government of Peru has chosen to make first contact.
Current Events
Peru made the difficult decision to initiate contact after the tribe began reaching out in troubling ways. Beginning in 2011, the Mashco-Piro people have made their own way into local villages, stealing supplies and even killing residents.  With about 100 sightings reported last year, their advances seemed to be escalating, after 2 indigenous villages were forced to evacuate and a boy in a 3rd village was killed by a bow and arrow. The Peruvian government believes illegal loggers and miners have forced the tribe into desperate measures, so the decision was made to reach out to them with food, clothing and medicine.
Peru’s “controlled contact” plan, which included offers of long-term aid to protect the tribe, was applauded by University of Missouri anthropologist Rob Walker, who wishes Peru had reached out sooner. “A good template is that the government steps in before the rest of the outside world shows up,” he said.
Even Survival International, a known anti-contact activist group, supported Peru’s decision to communicate with the tribe due to current circumstances. However, with Peru’s history of exploiting uncontacted lands, the organization fears the nation could resettle the tribe and take advantage of the situation.
Still, Walker believes the tribes should have the protection to initiate contact on their terms, coercion-free. However, with the sheer number of uncontacted people reaching out to modern civilization in recent years, we may be too late to provide security. Missionaries and “human safari” tourists have already been leaving gifts for the Mashco-Piro, either out of pity for their perceived poverty or in a bid to tempt them into the modern world. Unfortunately, these gifts could carry diseases to which the isolated tribe has not been exposed, which means even a common cold could be deadly to them.
The Mashco-Piro people are only 1 of Peru’s 15 uncontacted tribes who are aware of the wider world but has still chosen to remain apart from it. By breaking its policy of non-engagement, Peru may have opened Pandora’s Box and set a precedent for others to reach out to the world’s isolated peoples.
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