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East of the Andes Mountains, deep in the Amazon River Basin in the southeastern region of Peru known as Madre de Dios, loggers congregate in the village of Monte Salvado. The loggers come from throughout the region to Madre de Dios to extract mahogany from the forests.
Close to the village of Monte Salvado, across the Las Piedras River, lies a newly-created reserve for indigenous people. Anthropologists believe these indigenous people are living in voluntary isolation from the rest of the world. Though they may know the outside world exists, they want nothing to do with it.
After a six-year campaign by indigenous rights activists, the government of Peru established the reserve in April 2002 for the protection of these peoples. The reserve encompasses more than two million acres (810,000 hectares) and by law is closed to resource extraction.
"But a lot of people are invading this area, they are going against the law and cutting as much as they can, as fast as they can, and they are getting into the area of uncontacted Indians," said Enrique Ortiz, an expert in rainforest management and senior program officer with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Ortiz and colleague Doug McConnell, communication director at the foundation's San Francisco, California headquarters, produced a five-part series currently airing on National Geographic Today about the plight of these people who live isolated from the outside world.
The greatest pressure the isolated peoples face is from the loggers who have come to Madre de Dios to extract mahogany from the forests. Recent encounters between loggers and the isolated peoples have resulted in violence.
Environmentalists and indigenous rights activists say that if the government does not step in and actively enforce protection of the reserve, the isolated peoples will meet certain death. They are at risk to disease that their immune systems cannot fight as well as mortal injury from the loggers.
Unspoken Conflict
Some loggers argue that there is no need for enforcement of the reserve because they doubt the isolated peoples exist. Alan Schipper, a forestry engineer for a logging company in Puerto Maldonado, expressed this doubt in an interview with Ortiz and McConnell.
"To see is to believe. I do not have any evidence. No one has come to me and said, 'Hey, I saw them.' But since I am in forestry, I have ample knowledge of the forest and the world and they may exist," he said. "Inside me there is doubt, but they may exist."
Wilson Miranda is president of the Association of Small Loggers of Tambopata (APEFOT), the group negotiating a truce between the isolated peoples and the loggers. He told Ortiz and McConnell that it is in the best interest of loggers to deny the existence of the isolated peoples despite evidence of several recent encounters.
"The relationship between the isolated brothers and the loggers doesn't come to the surface because there's a predisposition on behalf of the loggers that these encounters and possible battles should not be made public, so as to not alarm the government, because it would, regardless, have consequences and call for intervention by the authorities," Miranda said.
Indigenous rights groups and conservationists say recent encounters between loggers and the isolated peoples have resulted in bloody exchanges of shots between the groups. The isolated peoples have wounded loggers with arrows. Loggers claim to have killed dozens of isolated peoples with bullets.
Diego Shoobridge, director of the Peruvian division of ParksWatch, a conservation organization formed to preserve biodiversity within national parks and other protected areas, says there have been several cases where isolated peoples appeared on the river shores and encountered loggers who shot at them.
"One case was in the [Alto Purus Reserved Zone] in February 2001. I was around and interviewed the shooter who informally assured me he killed three natives," said Shoobridge. "The others took the bodies back. There were no corpses when the police went to the place for inspection. So [the] shooter, a Sharanahua indian, was not detained."
Schipper says that such stories are simply lies created by people who are trying to make a living off the uncontacted peoples.
"In the latest declarations by the [Native Federation of Madre de Dios River and Tributaries] in Lima, both on TV and print, they said that there were confrontations and deaths. The Ministry of the Interior went, verified, investigated, and found nothing," he said.
Government Reaction
In an effort to resolve these conflicts, the Peruvian government in August 2002 sent armed guards to Monte Salvado to evict illegal loggers from the territorial reserve and to keep the peace. The National Guard, vastly outnumbered, met resistance from the loggers.
"These men, they're practically putting up extensive resistance to leave, protesting that the exit route down the river is very slow," Lieutenant Enrique Gustave Zamora Bonilla, head of the National Guard in Monte Salvado told Ortiz and McConnell in August.
Shoobridge says the tension in Monte Salvado has increased in the months since Ortiz and McConnell were there. He believes that if the government does not change course and take control of the situation, the conflict will result in genocide of the peoples living in isolation.
"The reserve is formally established, nothing more. There is no formal control," he said. "The loggers are operating inside the reserve. Some time ago there were wounded loggers by arrows. As I tell you, the loggers want to get rid of the uncontacted. I am sure that in the short run there will be bloody encounters."
Note: National Geographic Today airs the third in a five-part series today on the plight of peoples living in isolation in the Peruvian Amazon. The series was produced by Doug McConnell and Enrique Ortiz of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California. |
