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Tomas Anez Dos Santos was laboring in a small glade deep in the of Peru rainforest when he detected movements drawing near through the thick jungle.

He realized that he stood encircled, and stood still.

“A single individual positioned, pointing with an bow and arrow,” he remembers. “Unexpectedly he noticed that I was present and I began to run.”

He had come confronting the Mashco Piro tribe. For a long time, Tomas—who lives in the small community of Nueva Oceania—was almost a neighbor to these itinerant individuals, who avoid engagement with outsiders.

An updated study from a human rights group states there are a minimum of 196 described as “uncontacted groups” remaining globally. The Mashco Piro is believed to be the largest. It says half of these tribes might be wiped out over the coming ten years if governments fail to take more measures to safeguard them.

The report asserts the biggest risks are from logging, mining or exploration for crude. Remote communities are highly susceptible to basic sickness—as such, it notes a threat is presented by contact with religious missionaries and social media influencers seeking clicks.

Recently, the Mashco Piro have been appearing to Nueva Oceania more and more, according to inhabitants.

This settlement is a angling village of a handful of clans, located high on the banks of the local river in the center of the Peruvian jungle, 10 hours from the closest settlement by canoe.

The area is not designated as a protected area for remote communities, and deforestation operations work here.

Tomas says that, on occasion, the noise of heavy equipment can be detected continuously, and the Mashco Piro people are seeing their forest damaged and destroyed.

Among the locals, people say they are divided. They fear the projectiles but they also have profound admiration for their “relatives” dwelling in the woodland and wish to defend them.

“Permit them to live in their own way, we can't change their culture. That's why we maintain our space,” explains Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the harm to the community's way of life, the danger of aggression and the chance that deforestation crews might expose the community to sicknesses they have no immunity to.

While we were in the settlement, the Mashco Piro appeared again. A young mother, a resident with a two-year-old daughter, was in the woodland picking fruit when she heard them.

“There were cries, shouts from people, a large number of them. As if there was a large gathering yelling,” she informed us.

It was the initial occasion she had met the tribe and she fled. Subsequently, her thoughts was continually pounding from fear.

“Because operate deforestation crews and firms clearing the woodland they are fleeing, perhaps out of fear and they arrive close to us,” she said. “We don't know how they will behave to us. That is the thing that frightens me.”

In 2022, two loggers were attacked by the tribe while fishing. One was struck by an arrow to the abdomen. He lived, but the other person was found deceased days later with several arrow wounds in his physique.

The Peruvian government maintains a approach of avoiding interaction with remote tribes, establishing it as prohibited to start interactions with them.

This approach was first adopted in the neighboring country after decades of advocacy by tribal advocacy organizations, who saw that first interaction with secluded communities lead to entire communities being decimated by disease, poverty and starvation.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau tribe in Peru came into contact with the outside world, 50% of their people died within a few years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua people faced the same fate.

“Remote tribes are very at risk—epidemiologically, any interaction could spread diseases, and even the most common illnesses might eliminate them,” explains an advocate from a local advocacy organization. “From a societal perspective, any contact or disruption may be extremely detrimental to their existence and well-being as a society.”

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