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A man named Tomas Anez Dos Santos worked in a modest clearing deep in the of Peru Amazon when he heard sounds approaching through the dense jungle.

He realized he was surrounded, and halted.

“One person was standing, pointing using an projectile,” he remembers. “And somehow he became aware of my presence and I started to flee.”

He ended up face to face members of the Mashco Piro. Over many years, Tomas—dwelling in the tiny community of Nueva Oceania—had been practically a neighbor to these itinerant individuals, who reject contact with foreigners.

An updated report from a human rights organization states there are at least 196 of what it calls “remote communities” left in the world. The Mashco Piro is thought to be the biggest. It claims half of these groups might be wiped out in the next decade if governments neglect to implement more to protect them.

It claims the greatest threats stem from logging, extraction or drilling for crude. Isolated tribes are extremely at risk to basic sickness—consequently, it states a threat is caused by interaction with evangelical missionaries and online personalities in pursuit of clicks.

In recent times, members of the tribe have been venturing to Nueva Oceania with greater frequency, based on accounts from inhabitants.

The village is a fishermen's hamlet of a handful of households, sitting high on the edges of the local river in the center of the Peruvian Amazon, a ten-hour journey from the nearest settlement by watercraft.

The area is not recognised as a preserved reserve for uncontacted groups, and deforestation operations work here.

Tomas reports that, sometimes, the noise of logging machinery can be heard day and night, and the Mashco Piro people are seeing their jungle disturbed and ruined.

Within the village, residents state they are conflicted. They are afraid of the Mashco Piro's arrows but they also have profound admiration for their “kin” who live in the jungle and desire to defend them.

“Permit them to live as they live, we can't change their traditions. That's why we keep our space,” states Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are concerned about the harm to the Mascho Piro's livelihood, the threat of violence and the possibility that loggers might subject the tribe to sicknesses they have no immunity to.

While we were in the community, the Mashco Piro made their presence felt again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a resident with a two-year-old girl, was in the jungle picking fruit when she detected them.

“We heard shouting, cries from people, a large number of them. As if there were a whole group calling out,” she informed us.

It was the first time she had met the tribe and she escaped. After sixty minutes, her mind was still throbbing from fear.

“Because operate deforestation crews and operations destroying the woodland they're running away, perhaps out of fear and they arrive close to us,” she said. “We don't know how they will behave with us. This is what frightens me.”

Recently, two loggers were confronted by the tribe while fishing. A single person was hit by an bow to the abdomen. He lived, but the other person was discovered dead days later with several puncture marks in his body.

The administration has a strategy of avoiding interaction with isolated people, rendering it forbidden to commence interactions with them.

This approach began in the neighboring country following many years of campaigning by indigenous rights groups, who observed that early contact with secluded communities could lead to whole populations being wiped out by illness, destitution and hunger.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau tribe in Peru first encountered with the broader society, 50% of their people perished within a few years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua tribe experienced the similar destiny.

“Remote tribes are extremely susceptible—epidemiologically, any exposure could transmit illnesses, and even the basic infections might wipe them out,” states a representative from a Peruvian indigenous rights group. “In cultural terms, any interaction or intrusion can be extremely detrimental to their life and well-being as a society.”

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