Voluntary Isolation in the Age of Coronavirus

As governments around the world decide on public health measures to contain the spread of coronavirus, indigenous peoples across the Amazon, from the Madre de Dios region in Peru to the Xingu Indigenous Park in Brazil, have taken the lead by declaring self-imposed states of quarantine to avoid the introduction of this virulent new disease to their communities. While such drastic measures of social distancing are novel and challenging in our hyper-connected contemporary world, indigenous peoples have long used the strategy of “voluntary isolation” to protect themselves from the immunological and existential threats of European colonization. 

The Chitonahua people spent decades fleeing from intruders until they were forcefully contacted by Peruvian loggers in the late 1990s, losing about half their population to new diseases. Photo: G.H. Shepard Jr. (1997).

Indigenous peoples of lowland South America have contributed to global health with important biomedical compounds derived from plant medicines such as quinine, curare, ipecac and pilocarpine, as well as shamanic preparations like ayahuasca, sananga, and kambô that have attracted the attention of psychonauts and pharmaceutical researchers alike. And yet, tragically, the indigenous people of South America were also highly susceptible to introduced Old World diseases like smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and influenza that, in conjunction with violence and territorial invasion, killed some 90-95% of the original population. 

The Mashco-Piro people were probably village-dwelling farmers until they were massacred by rubber tappers at the turn of the 20th century. They became fully nomadic hunter-gatherers and have only entered into tentative contact with indigenous neighbors and Peruvian Health Ministry agents in the past few years. Photo: G.H. Shepard Jr. (2015).

Especially during the so-called “Rubber Boom” at the turn of the twentieth century, rubber tappers seeking to profit from the high price of natural latex on international markets penetrated the deepest reaches of the Amazon, co-opting or enslaving indigenous people and spreading deadly diseases. To survive, some indigenous populations fled to remote regions and cut off all contact with outsiders, even their indigenous neighbors. In some cases, indigenous communities have been forced to abandon settled village life and agriculture altogether, adopting a fully nomadic lifestyle in the forest. Previous, at times misleading, descriptions of such groups as “uncontacted,” “Stone Age” or “hunter-gatherer” peoples implied that they were passive victims of some accident of geography or history — human societies left behind in the backwaters of human evolution. Today, scholars and indigenous protection agents have come to understand their isolation not as a natural condition, but rather, a conscious choice of survival and self-determination. 

Isolated indigenous peoples of the Amazon are increasingly threatened by the expansion of road networks, mining and oil concessions, illegal loggers and drug traffickers. Map graphic by J. You / Science Magazine using data from Antenor Vaz and RAISG.

The spike in burning, destruction, and invasion of the Amazon rainforest over the past few years, especially in Brazil, threatens all indigenous people, and isolated peoples in particular. The global outbreak of this highly contagious, virulent new disease poses a special danger to such immunologically vulnerable peoples. So, as people around the world hunker down in self-quarantine and follow the latest worrisome news, we are all getting a small taste of the kind of mortal panic that has motivated different indigenous peoples to isolate themselves from outsiders, in some cases, through the present. We all hope, as they have, that such radical measures will save us from this deadly epidemic. Perhaps we will come through this experience with a heightened appreciation of our shared fragility. 

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First published March 24, 2020, by Chacruna.net

The Decade of Contact: Isolated indigneous people in the 21st century [excerpt]

José Carlos Meirelles, a retired field agent from Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, refers to the current moment for isolated indigenous people of the Amazon as “The Decade of Contact." After numerous tragic experiences in initiating contact with isolated indigenous peoples in the second half of the twentieth century, almost always resulting in their decimation, the official policy of FUNAI’s Department of Isolated Indians since 1989 has been to identify, protect and patrol the territories of isolated indigenous peoples without unnecessarily initiating the process of "contact." In extraordinary cases, as was the case of Korubo people on the Javari in 1996 and the Txapanawa of the Río Envira in 2014, FUNAI has initiated contact with isolated groups, taking special medical, logistical and cultural precautions in order to avoid imminent threats. Indigenous organizations and government agencies in neighboring countries have been inspired by FUNAI's example, incorporating the principle of "no-contact" into their policies for isolated peoples.

But the paving of the Inter-Oceanic Highway (formerly known as the ”Trans-Amazon Highway”) between Peru and Brazil, the continued expansion of the agricultural frontier, the growing demand for oil and gas exploration, and the activities of loggers, gold miners, drug traffickers and other outside agents are increasingly penetrating remote regions of the Amazon that once served as refuges for isolated peoples. Because of these external pressures, but perhaps also owing to their own internal dynamics, isolated indigenous peoples from the border region between Peru and Brazil — almost never seen in previous decades — have become increasingly visible and even aggressive in their interactions with neighboring populations.

One group of Mashco-Piro on the upper Madre de Dios maintains regular contact with a team from the Department of Isolated and Recently Contacted Peoples of Peru's Culture Ministry. In this photo, several Mashco-Piro have climbed aboard the Culture Ministry's boat (November, 2015).

In 2011, a Mashco-Piro archer in the Madre de Dios region of Peru killed Nicolas "Shaco" Flores, a Matsigenka indigenous man from a neighboring community who had engaged in tenuous exchanges and dialogue with the group for many years. In 2014, the isolated Txapanawa or “Xinane” people from the Envira river in Brazil took it upon themselves to approach FUNAI agents and neighboring indigenous communities and initiate contact, apparently out of desperation after being attacked by loggers and drug traffickers. In 2015, the settled Matis people of the Javari region in Brazil began a process of violent and uncontrolled contact with isolated Korubo people, leading to deaths on both sides, contagion of diseases to the Korubo, and a crisis in the Department of Isolated Indians in FUNAI. [More recently, another isolated people of the Javari was attacked by illegal gold miners].

And so began the Decade of Contact…

Roads, oil and gas concessions, logging and mining interests are edging in on the territory of isolated indigenous peoples (Image: Science Magazine).

… A growing wave of international media outlets have published sensational texts and photos about isolated indigenous peoples "emerging from the forest." In this context American anthropologists Robert Walker and Kim Hill suggested that contact was inevitable, and that the remaining isolated peoples should be subject to "controlled contact" for their own protection. The article generated tremendous controversy in the media and in academic circles, polarizing debates around policies for protecting isolated indigenous peoples and reducing the complexity of the subject to a false dichotomy between "forced contact" and the principle of no-contact: the so-called “Leave them alone" policy…

… National governments play a key role in guaranteeing the territories, rights, health and cultural integrity of isolated indigenous peoples. But the current scenario of road-building, major infrastructure projects and expansion of the agricultural, logging and mining frontier takes outside agents ever closer to isolated peoples while contributing to an increased curiosity among isolated peoples themselves. This situation demands new policies, concepts and protocols to deal with situations of imminent contact. The Decade of Contact has arrived. A naive "no contact" policy — "Leave them alone!" — has become not only a contradiction, but an act of neglect.

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 Excerpted and translated from “A década do contato," in: B. Ricardo & F. Ricardo (Eds.) Povos Indígenas no Brasil 2011/2016. São Paulo: Instituto Socioambiental, 556-559 (2017).

Read the full article (in Portuguese) at Academia.edu

A revised version of this work was presented at the seminar on "Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation: Anthropological perspectives" in Rio de Janeiro, Sept. 24-25, 2018

 

Ceci N’est Pas un Contact: the Fetishization of Isolated Indigenous People [Excerpt]

Words matter. Peruvian legislation recognizes two categories of indigenous peoples with little or no interaction with outsiders and the state: “peoples in voluntary isolation” and “peoples in initial contact.” And yet there is no term, process or protocol to describe that moment of transition from one category to another: the process we refer to, for lack of a better term as “contact,” which evokes cinematic images of encounters with alien civilizations.1

Throughout 2014, groups of "uncontacted"(?!) Mashco-Piro regularly approached tourism and transport boats along the banks of the upper Madre de Dios river asking for food, clothing and metal implements.

I visited Peru in March of 2015 in the company of retired FUNAI agent José Carlos Meirelles and Brazilian physician Douglas Rodrigues, both with decades of experience among such peoples. My visit was an attempt to help the Peruvian Culture Ministry better address the precarious situation of isolated indigenous peoples along the Peru-Brazil border. It took years for the Peruvian government to even recognize the fact that isolated indigenous groups still exist in some parts of the Peruvian Amazon. Once such peoples were officially recognized in Peru about a decade ago, the official state policy, promoted by indigenous federations such as the Federacion Nativa de Madre de Dios (FENAMAD), has been “no contact.” Whereas in past years, religious and other organizations have sought to initiate contact with such isolated indigenous peoples, typically resulting in their decimation and cultural assimilation, this more enlightened, recent policy has recognized isolation as a form of cultural self-determination that should be respected and enforced.

Mashco-Piro women on the banks of the Madre Dios river. Photo: Charlie Hamilton James, National Geographic, June 2016.

I first coined the term “voluntary isolation” in an open letter to Mobil Prospecting Peru protesting this company’s seismic exploration in the Rio Piedras known to be inhabited by Mashco-Piro and perhaps other poorly known indigenous groups, referred to at that time with inaccurate and pejorative terms such as “uncontacted,” “Stone Age,” “primitive,” “uncivilized,” or “naked.” The point of the term “voluntary isolation” is to recognize this situation, not as an accident of nature or history — a human group lost in the backwaters of human evolution — but rather as a conscious choice of these indigenous peoples to isolate themselves from outsiders, often due to disastrous prior experiences, as a mode of survival and self-determination.2 The term seemed to catch on, initially through the activism of FENAMAD and the International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs in Peru, and ultimately spread to neighboring Amazonian countries like Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay.

What do we do when a group of isolated people, such as the Mashco-Piro along the upper Madre de Dios River, who had previously rejected all attempts at “contact” by missionaries, scientists, government agents and nearby indigenous brethren, have suddenly emerged along river banks, calling to tourist boats and loggers asking for food, clothes, and metal implements? Mashco-Piro bowmen have raided legally recognized native communities to take food and trade goods, sometimes wounding and even killing apparently inoffensive indigenous “brethren” with their arrows.

Faced with such difficult challenges, one Peruvian Culture Ministry representative asked the Brazilian specialists, “Don’t we need a new category to refer to these people? ‘People in sporadic contact’ perhaps?” This person, and others we met during this visit of exchange between Peru and Brazil, seemed to be contorting the language to find ways of respecting the inviolable principle of “no contact.” Meirelles responded in his characteristically sardonic manner: “Can a person be considered ‘sporadically pregnant’? No. Either they are, or they aren’t.” 

An evangelical missionary communicates with a group of Mashco-Piro through a local Piro interpreter, 2014.

Viewing numerous photographs of Mashco-Piro individuals approaching boats, receiving clothes, metal implements, food, even a Coca Cola bottle, Meirelles commented: “Contact has already happened. You people are in denial.”

…

The official Peruvian policy of “no-contact” is reinforced by vehement, idealistic media campaigns by indigenous rights organizations and concerned individuals who post on social media networks — “leave them alone!” While their intentions are of course noble, such a simplistic view of the complex and quickly changing situation tends to romanticize and fetishize the condition of “isolation” as a pristine, natural, unadulterated state of the last autonomous, free peoples of the planet beyond the clutches of capitalism, organized religion and the state. People forget that the very state of “isolation” is most often a historical product, a conscious choice by certain groups of people, in certain moments, to defend themselves from moments of violence and territorial invasion, notably during the Rubber Boom at the turn of the 20th century. For this very reason I have resisted the idea that such peoples should be referred to as “uncontacted.” 

Mashco-Piro children remove clothing and food from a tourism boat. Photo: Jaime Corisepa/FENAMAD

…

As Felipe Milanez has written, “Contact is a myth: it is a colonial myth.” It is a myth that fetishizes as a primordial condition — “uncontacted,” autonomous, free, beyond the state — what is in fact a historically contingent response.  The response of isolated peoples is evolving, in some cases rapidly, in a rapidly changing world impacted not only by roads, mining, logging, gas pipelines, and colonization, but also by global warming, environmental change, and changing social relationships with neighboring peoples.3 It is only by looking beyond these myths and the idealistic, sometimes naïve notions they evoke, that scholars and supporters of indigenous rights and the relevant government institutions can develop policies that defend the long-term rights of survival, territory and self-determination of indigenous peoples, rather than blindly defending their own fantasies about them.

.....

Excerpt: Full text at Tipiti 14(1): 135-137 (article 8)

Read more from the special forum on isolated peoples at Tipiti 14(1), with articles by Felipe Milanez & yrs truly, Lucas Bessire, John Hemming, Minna Opas, and Warren Thompson & Obed Garcia

Read more on isolated indigenous peoples from this blog:

Mashco-Piros on the verge 
Too-close encounters 
Quiet war in the Amazon
Forget colonial myths
 

References:

1. Shepard, G.H. 2002. “Prólogo.” In: Huertas, B., Los Pueblos Indígenas en Aislamiento: Su lucha por la sobrevivencia y la libertad. Lima: IWGIA, 11-14.

2. Shepard, G.H. et al. 2010. “Trouble in Paradise: Indigenous populations, anthropological policies, and     biodiversity conservation in Manu National Park, Peru.” Journal of Sustainable Forestry     29(2): 252-301.

3. Walker, R. S., and Hill, K. 2015. “Protecting isolated tribes,” Science 5 June 2015: 1061.
 

Water in Yomibato: Guest post by National Geographic writer Emma Marris

I traveled last November to Manu Park in the Peruvian Amazon with writer Emma Marris to guide her among the Matsigenka people for a story she published this week in National Geographic. In this post from the science blog The Last Word on Nothing (reproduced with permission), Emma describes her visit to the water purification system recently inaugurated in this remote village by the charity organization Rainforest Flow.

Text: Emma Marris

Photography: Glenn Shepard

Durable, hygienic drinking taps, sinks and bathrooms were installed near the Yomibato village school by Rainforest Flow.

Last November, I went to the Peruvian Amazon on assignment for National Geographic.  I focused on a group of indigenous people, the Matsigenka, living inside Manu National Park.

One of these people is Alejo Machipango[1], a hunter, farmer, and member of the water committee for the village of Yomibato. Alejo is about 32, but I would have guessed his age at 22. He is married and has several kids. He is a jokester. He likes chewing coca, drinking manioc beer. He takes his arrows with him most places, just in case. I saw him shoot at some birds, but never hit one. And he always laughs when he misses.
 

Alejo with his arrows, just in case.

One day, Alejo takes me to see the spring where Yomibato gets its water. The water system in the village was installed by a charity called Rainforest Flow between 2012 and 2015.

A few generations ago, the Matsigenka used to be more dispersed on the landscape. Each family lived apart, and households moved often. The whole community would gather together once a month, on the full moon, and have a big party with manioc beer. But many families decided to move to Yomibato to be near the school and clinic. As the community grew to several hundred, the local river and streams became contaminated with bacteria and waterborne illness became a chronic problem.

The slow sand filtration treatment tanks, with water committee members.

The newly-installed water system itself is a very simple slow sand filtration setup. Water is piped from a spring away from the main village to a series of three portable geomembrane tanks[2] filled with sand and rocks. Microbes living on the sand gobble up bacteria, viruses, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, and parasites. The water is stored in a 30,000 liter bladder tank that is essentially a big tough geomembrane pillow, then is distributed throughout the village through pipes. The whole system is gravity fed, so there are no pumps, no electricity required, no moving parts. It is also light and easy to transport by canoe. It was designed by hydrological engineer Humphrey Blackburn. The water committee clean the filters every couple of months and repair pipe breaks, and that’s about it.

We cross the river by canoe, stop to look at the filters and reservoir, and then start climbing the foothills of the Andes towards the spring. When we get there, the spring itself looks like nothing. A wet spot in the ground. A pipe with holes in it is buried below the surface, I am told.

We sit down to rest in the hollows made by the huge buttressed roots of massive fig trees. Alejo says he knows a tree nearby that is fruiting, and he and his friend Alex disappear, then reappear with their T-shirts filled with brown seed pods, about five inches long. They are called azucar huayo in Spanish; koveni in Matsigenka[3]. The water committee hack them open with machetes and begin eating the sweet brown fluffy stuff inside. It is almost too sweet.

Alex with azucar huayo.

I ask Alejo about laying the 16 kilometers of pipe the project required. “Everybody came to work,” he says. “The women came. We all suffered a lot.”
 
I ask him if it was worth it. Sometimes, I think, development projects are more about what rich people think a community ought to want, rather than what they actually do want. “If we had to do it again, we would.” Alejo says. “One of my children died of diarrhea, and I had it many times.”

He says this so matter of factly that I don’t say the kinds of things I would say if someone back home told me their child had died. I suppose that in a place where people have a dozen kids and where childhood mortality is relatively common, it is possible that the etiquette is a bit different. But in truth, I am stunned that this happy-go-lucky guy who looks like a teenager has lost a child. And as a mother, I feel that vaguely sick feeling you get whenever you hear about any child dying.

I wonder if he is on the water committee because his child died, or if he just thought he’d make a little money without having to leave the village—which is the way most people make money in Yomibato, if they need some for soap or cooking pots or gasoline. But I don’t know how to ask him any more about this dead child.

Nancy Santullo, founder and director of Rainforest Flow.

The American woman who runs Rainforest Flow, Nancy Santullo, sees clean water as a basic step on the road towards empowering indigenous communities that have historically been victimized by outsiders: paid less than non-natives for their work, denied benefits owed to them as citizens, abused by those sent to help them. 

She is on a spiritual quest to make the Matisgenka strong and confident. Alejo already seems strong and confident, but I don’t know. His smiles may cover a shell thicker than the koveni. 

We walk back along the pipe, and it is a hot day, like every day. When we get to the first house of the village, I stop and take a long cool drink from the tap.

Access to clean, safe water has transformed health and sanitary conditions in the project communities, benefiting children especially.

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Find out about Rainforest Flow's water projects in indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon at rainforestflow.org

Read more about the Matsigenka people and Manu Park in the June 2016 issue of National Geographic:

The Power of Parks: Nature in its full glory — with hunters

by Emma Marris

photography by Charlie Hamilton James

Loss in Eden

by Susan Goldberg

photography by Glenn Shepard

 

Notes: 
1.  As a young boy, Alejo appeared in the Discovery channel documentaries Spirits of the Rainforest (winner of two Emmys) and The Spirit Hunters, both filmed in Yomibato in 1992. Alejo's grandfather, Mariano Vicente, a storyteller, shaman, and "star" of the films, passed away in 2012. The Spirit Hunters , narrated by James Earl Jones, streams free online at Culture Unplugged.
2.  Slow sand filtration is a centuries-old technology used by many small towns as well as by the U.S. military on extended combat missions and the U.N. in disaster relief efforts. Read more at slowsandfilter.com/.
3.  Azucar huayo (or jatobá in Brazil) is a legume seed pod from the tree Hymenaea courbaril L.

 

Mashco-Piros on the Verge: Missionaries, human safaris, head-ball and a tale of two contacts

This is the full text, with additional photos, of a three-part series published concurrently by Indian Country Today

Versión en castellano 

 1. Missionaries and ‘human safaris’ initiate contact in Peru

It feels like a déjà vu: naked youths from an isolated indigenous group step warily through shallow water and approach the strangers. Emboldened by curiosity, or hunger perhaps, they accept colorful clothing and gifts of food, not knowing that they may be carrying an epidemiological bomb back to their people in the forest. And yet the apparent good intentions of these friendly outsiders may be motivated by a hidden agenda: religious prosylization or territorial control. Moreover, initiating contact with isolated indigenous peoples is a violation of Peruvian regulations.

On September 6, tourists and an indigenous woman affiliated with a missionary group were photographed giving clothing and food to Mashco Piro children on a beach in Madre de Dios (Photo: Jaime Corisepa/FENAMAD)

The scene is strikingly similar to dramatic recent events in a nearby region along Brazil’s border with Peru. On June 27, a group of young Txapanawa warriors, hitherto isolated, established contact with an Ashaninka community on the upper Envira River.

However there are important differences in these two superficially similar episodes: the Txapanawa[1] initiated contact of their own accord, walking for miles to seek aid from the neighboring indigenous population after apparently being attacked by loggers or perhaps (according to preliminary investigations in Brazil) drug traffickers based in Peru. Moreover, the Ashaninka called immediately on an experienced team from Brazil’s Federal Indian Agency, FUNAI, to help mediate the contact, provide medical care for the inevitable flu epidemic that struck the intrepid youths, and develop a long-term strategy to protect the group. The contact with the Mashco-Piro has been carried out informally, irresponsibly, and against official norms, by tourists and local people without the authority or training to handle the potentially genocidal consequences of such a situation.  

The indigenous organization FENAMAD, in conjunction with Survival International, recently published photographs on its FaceBook page taken on September 6 showing a group of Mashco-Piro children receiving clothes and gifts from a local indigenous woman from the village of Diamante who is affiliated with an evangelical missionary organization that has been intent on contacting the Mashco-Piro for some time. The people of Diamante on the Madre de Dios River are Piro, and their language is close enough to Mashco-Piro to allow for mutual communication. Some inhabitants of Diamante have been trying to contact the Mashco-Piro for almost 25 years, but only in the past year have the Mashco-Piro responded to such efforts with anything other than hostility: several local people have been wounded by Mashco-Piro arrows, and one man was killed in 2011.

The FENAMAD team was using a boat supplied by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) to patrol the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, which shares a border with Manu National Park. According to their report, in addition to the Piro woman, they also surprised two tourism boats and a group of tourists on the same beach. The tourists and tour boats left immediately leaving only the Piro woman, named Nelly, on the beach with five Mashco-Piro youths wearing their new clothes.

Mashco Piro children taking items from tourism boat (Photo: Jaime Corisepa/FENAMAD)

When questioned about her activities, Nelly replied that she has been taking bananas to the Mashco-Piro because they ask her to. The Mashco-Piro children were waiting on the beach while their parents hunted in the forest nearby. The clothes, she said, were left by the tourists traveling in a boat operated by Expediciones Vilca. The Mashco-Piro have become a kind of tourist attraction in the region, and some tour operators have even offered clandestine “human safaris” for tourists to view and photograph the Mashco-Piro, much as they would a jaguar or other rare animal. Some tourists have allegedly left soda pop and even beer on the beach as presents to the Mashco-Piro. In one recent photograph, a young Mashco-Piro woman appears with a large wound on her leg, apparently caused by the tropical disease leishmaniasis.
 
In a previous episode highlighting the dangerous consequences of human safaris, a film crew associated with the Discovery Channel trekked to an isolated indigenous community in Manu Park in October of 2007, specifically violating the terms of its authorizations, and was alleged to have contaminated the group with a flu virus that killed four children and left dozens ill.

FENAMAD representative Cesar Augusto Jojajé decried the negligence of the Peruvian authorities in the face of this precarious situation: “The government is absent in this region. We want the authorities to assume their responsibilities and implement the promised operational plan [of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve] which establishes among its clauses the integrity of the Mashco-Piro people’s territory.”

2. From head-ball to hunter-gatherers: the true story of the Mashco-Piro

A withered rubber sphere used by the Mashco-Piro to play “head ball,” originally collected by Shaco Flores (Photo: Fabio Jacob/Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi)

 
However the situation becomes more complex once we understand that Nelly, the indigenous woman who initiated contact with the group, is in fact half Mashco-Piro herself: her father was kidnapped in the forest as a young child and taken away from the group by Diamante villagers in the 1970s as part of their attempt to “civilize” the Mashco-Piro, whom the Piro view as wayward brethren. Re-baptized with a Spanish name, Nelly’s father was raised among the Piro and never went back to his people; indeed he has no more memory of his life among them. Nelly has allied herself with a local evangelical missionary group, including a pastor and his wife who now reside in Diamante, in the hopes of helping “her people” overcome the hunger, isolation and fear they supposedly now live in.

Los mashco-piro al borde: Misioneros, safaris humanos, el juego de pelota y una historia de dos contactos

English version

1. Misioneros y safaris humanos inician contacto en el Perú

Se siente como un déjà vu: jóvenes desnudos de un grupo indígena aislado se abren paso con cautela a través de aguas poco profundas y se acercan a extraños. Envalentonados por la curiosidad, o el hambre tal vez, aceptan ropa colorida y comida de regalo, sin saber que pueden estar llevando una bomba epidemiológica a su pueblo en el bosque. Y sin embargo, las aparentes buenas intenciones de estos extranjeros amistosos pueden estar motivados por una agenda oculta: proselitismo religioso o el control territorial. Por otra parte, iniciar el contacto con los pueblos indígenas aislados es una violación de las regulaciones peruanas. 

El 6 de setiembre, turistas y una mujer indígena afiliada a un grupo misionero fueron fotografiados entregando ropa y alimento a niños Mashco-Piro en una playa en Madre de Dios (Foto: Jaime Corisepa/FENAMAD).

La escena es muy similar a los recientes dramáticos acontecimientos en una región cercana a lo largo de la frontera de Brasil con Perú. El 27 de junio, un grupo de jóvenes guerreros Xatanawa, hasta entonces aislados, establecieron contacto con una comunidad Ashaninka en la parte alta del río Envira.

Sin embargo, hay diferencias importantes en estos dos episodios superficialmente similares: el contacto Xatanawa fue iniciado por su propia voluntad, caminando varios kilómetros para pedir ayuda a la población indígena vecina después de aparentemente haber sido atacados por madereros o tal vez (según las primeras investigaciones en Brasil) narcotraficantes con sede en Perú. Por otra parte, los Ashaninka llamaron inmediatamente a un experimentado equipo de la Fundación Nacional del Índio, la FUNAI, para ayudar a mediar en el contacto, proporcionar atención médica para la inevitable gripe que afectó  a los intrépidos jóvenes, y desarrollar una estrategia a largo plazo para proteger al grupo. El contacto con los Mashco-Piro había ocurrido de manera informal, irresponsablemente, y en contra de las normas oficiales, por grupos de turistas y población local sin la autoridad o capacidad para manejar las consecuencias potencialmente genocidas de tal situación.

La organización indígena FENAMAD, junto con Survival International, han publicado recientemente fotografías en su página de FaceBook tomadas el 6 de septiembre donde se muestra un grupo de niños Mashco-Piro recibiendo  ropa y regalos de una mujer indígena local de la Comunidad Nativa de Diamante quien está afiliada a una organización misionera evangélica que ha intentado ponerse en contacto con los Mashco-Piro desde hace algún tiempo. La gente de Diamante en el río Madre de Dios son Piro, y su lengua es muy parecida a la de los Mashco-Piro para permitir una comunicación mutua. Algunos habitantes de Diamante han estado tratando de ponerse en contacto con los Mashco-Piro desde hace casi 25 años, pero sólo en el último año los Mashco-Piro respondió a tales esfuerzos con nada menos que hostilidad: varios pobladores locales han sido heridos por flechas Mashco-Piro, y un hombre fue asesinado en 2011.

Forget Colonial Myths: Xatanawa contact puts an end to a century of resistance

They are young and healthy, with strong bodies and carefully trimmed hair, some bearing delicate designs painted on their faces. They carry fine (and sharp) arrows with impeccably trimmed feather fletching. They wear penis-straps made of tree bark which double as belts to carry machetes, recently acquired. They sing beautiful melodies characteristic of the shared Panoan musical repertoire that is found throughout this region along the Brazil-Peru border, and that has been studied by anthropologists and even recorded on CDs. 

Behind this striking appearance of youthful Xatanawa warriors on the Envira river in Acre, emerging from isolation to seek assistance from indigenous neighbors, lies a terrible history of massacres at the hands of 21st century drug traffickers and loggers and 19th century rubber tappers. 

The "contact" of the Txapanawa[1] is an extraordinary story of resistance. 

Video still of dramatic footage released by FUNAI showing Xatanawa contact.

And yet mainstream reporting has emphasized sensational and exotic details, colonial ideas about a primitive people "emerging from the forest" and entering into "first contact" with civilization. Public comments express surprise at these "Stone Age" people carrying machetes, or even a shotgun. These ethnocentric perspectives ignore the deep and tragic history of this people, and others like them, while also overlooking the negligence of the Peruvian and Brazilian authorities in failing to guarantee their territorial and human rights.

CONTINUE READING the full article (in Portuguese) by Felipe Milanez and Glenn Shepard at Carta Capital

Also read the three-part series (in English) at Indian Country Today:

Part 1: Drug traffickers force isolated group into contact
Part 2: Banana diplomacy
Part 3: Quiet war in the Amazon

Read more from this blog on the history and origins of isolated indigenous peoples and the dilemmas of isolation and contact

[1]. Note: original reports suggested these people were known as the Xatanawa, close relatives of the Chitonahua of Peru. However more conversations with the group carried out by FUNAI through translators suggest they belong to a distinctive group speaking a language with important dialect variations, and that their name should be rendered as Txapanawa (J.C. Meirelles, personal communication).

Quiet War in the Amazon: "Uncontacted" tribes vs. drug lords and loggers

The Txapanawa[1] have never been alone nor "uncontacted" in their century-long history of resistance. Isolation and resistance go hand and hand in this remote borderland region outside the reach of the Peruvian and Brazilian states. The Mashco-Piro have been photographed and even filmed in recent years in Peru. One Mashco-Piro group is believed to be responsible for an attack on FUNAI’s Xinane base in 2004, during which veteran FUNAI agent José Carlos Meirelles was wounded with an arrow. 

Mashco-Piro arrows recovered after people from a settled indigenous community on the Manu river tried to approach: The Mashco-Piro rained arrows on them in self defense.

A Matsigenka man who had been attempting for many years to contact a Mashco-Piro group in Peru was slain by a Mashco-Piro arrow in late 2011. Isolated groups have made incursions on the Xinane base on several other occasions to take food, implements and trade goods, and at times have attacked FUNAI employees, set fire to the base and even killed the guard dogs there, sending a clear message that they intend to protect their territory from invasion. Their hostility must be understood in context, since they are as yet unable to distinguish between the loggers and drug traffickers who have attacked them, and the FUNAI employees who are there to protect them.

Meirelles, who recently retired, was replaced by the young indigenous agent Guilherme Dalto Siviero, who heads the new “Envira Ethno-Environmental Protection Front.” FUNAI has announced it will reopen the Xinane post with about 10 employees, including FUNAI specialists, interpreters and a health team. The plan is to add three additional bases on the D’Ouro, Muru, and Mamoadate rivers to monitor isolated populations. The project would cost about $500,000 dollars initially.

Meirelles was one of the last remaining sertanistas (‘backwoods agents’) in FUNAI, a special category of indigenous agents responsible for carrying out expeditions to attract, contact and pacify isolated indigenous groups along the regions of frontier expansion during the second half of the 20th century. With the employee reforms carried out at FUNAI between 2009 and 2012, and the new policy of “no contact unless necessary,” the category of sertanista was extinguished. In addition to the sertanistas responsible for contacting isolated peoples for the Brazilian state, missionaries of many denominations have taken it upon themselves to contact and study the languages of various Indigenous Peoples, included hitherto isolated ones, in order to carry out evangelization and Bible translation.

Indigenous populations who have refused contact with the state fall into a no-man’s land along this social, political and economic frontier. They are threatened by illegal loggers and gold miners as well as drug traffickers who are active in the lawless border region. Elsewhere in the Brazilian and Peruvian interior, isolated indigenous populations are threatened by ranchers, oil and gas industries, hydroelectric dams, highway-building and other large infrastructure projects.

CONTINUE READING the full article, the final in a three-part series by Felipe Milanez and Glenn Shepard at Indian Country Today:

Part 1: Drug traffickers force isolated group into contact
Part 2: Banana diplomacy
Part 3: Quiet war in the Amazon

Read more from this blog on the history and origins of isolated indigenous peoples and the dilemmas of isolation and contact

[1]. Note: original reports suggested these people were known as the Xatanawa, close relatives of the Chitonahua of Peru. However more conversations with the group carried out by FUNAI through translators suggest they belong to a distinctive group speaking a language with important dialect variations, and that their name should be rendered as Txapanawa (J.C. Meirelles, personal communication).

Too-Close Encounters: The Mashco-Piro and the dilemmas of isolation and contact

In late August a Peruvian indigenous federation circulated remarkable video footage showing about a hundred isolated (so-called “uncontacted”) Mashco-Piro Indians just across the river from a Piro indigenous village along the Rio de las Piedras in Peru. They  appeared to be asking for food and trade goods like rope and metal tools. The Piro and Mashco-Piro languages are close enough to allow communication. Hoping to avoid direct contact and the possibility of disease contagion, forest rangers at Monte Salvado floated a canoe laden with bananas across the river. 

Mascho-Piro in grainy footage released by FENAMAD in August
Image source: BBC

After a tense three-day standoff, the Mashco-Piro eventually disappeared back into the forest. No one is quite sure why the Mashco-Piro — who have so steadfastly avoided such contact until recently — suddenly showed up. Many suspect that illegal loggers active throughout the region have disrupted their usual migration routes.

In late 2011, a different group of Mashco-Piro living near the border of Manu National Park shot and killed Shaco Flores, an old Matsigenka friend of mine, with an arrow. Having lived among the Piro for many years and learned the Piro language, Shaco had been patiently communicating and trading with the Mashco-Piro for over twenty years, always maintaing a safe distance but slowly drawing them closer with his gifts, food and conversation. But something happened on that fateful day in late November: perhaps the Mashco-Piro were spooked by Shaco’s appearance with several relatives at the manioc garden on a small river island where he had been allowing the Mashco-Piro to harvest his crops; perhaps there was internal disagreement among the Mashco-Piro whether or not to accept Shaco’s long-standing offer to bring them into permanent contact. We may never know.