The Mashco Piro, indigenous people under threat
A few weeks ago, some indigenous people from the Mashco Piro ethnic group approached the banks of the Río de las Piedras, in the heart of the Madre de Dios region in Peru.
They approached the native community of Monte Salvado, apparently to ask for food.
Some anthropologists explained that the Mashco Piro avoided any type of contact after the violent exploitation they suffered during the rubber boom in the early 20th century.
Officials from the program for voluntarily isolated peoples of Madre de Dios point out that this ethnic group is in danger, as they are threatened by both gold mining and reckless deforestation, both of which are illegal activities.
The area where the Mashco Piro live stretches from the Río Camisea to the Río de las Piedras. Some of them flee the Río Camisea region, where the foreign company Plus Petrol has been extracting gas for a long time and is now expanding its operations to the so-called Lot 88, an area overlapping the Nahua Nanti natural reserve, which had been declared a territory where extractive activities are prohibited.
They flee the area of the Río Camisea and its tributaries, also because they are disturbed by frequent helicopter flights, and head toward the so-called “Isthmus of Fitzcarrald,” the place where Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald passed through in 1893 during his fervent drive to conquer new lands for exploitation. From that area, they enter the basin of the Río de las Piedras and the Río Manu.
These indigenous people, who speak a language of the Arawak family, are not "uncontacted," as has been erroneously claimed, but have chosen to live isolated from Peruvian society because they prefer to remain in their natural environment, the jungle. At times, they approach farming communities, as in the case of Monte Salvado.
Their existence is in grave danger because they feel besieged: on one side, there is Plus Petrol in the Camisea area, from which they are fleeing; on the other side, there is Petrobras, which has already operated three wells in the Madre de Dios region near the border with Bolivia. While this activity is still far from their area of influence, the threat remains.
Additionally, deforestation and drug trafficking activities pose significant dangers to the Mashco Piro's environment.
In general, the extractive policies threaten the very existence of the Mashco Piro, as well as other indigenous groups in Peru.
As long as the country continues with this economic model based on forced extraction, the ecosystem and its indigenous peoples will increasingly be at risk.
YURI LEVERATTO
Copyright 2013
