PeruForests

Amazon Tribes: Isolated by Choice?

John Roach
for National Geographic News
March 10, 2003

No one knows precisely how many people live in isolation from the industrial-technological world. Many of these people, perhaps thousands, are believed to thrive in the remote stretches of the Amazon River Basin of South America. Anthropologists and indigenous rights groups say evidence for the existence of these remote tribes is heard in stories of contact with other indigenous groups, deduced from abandoned dwellings, and seen by developers planning to extract resources from the forests.

The rights groups advocate setting aside lands where the isolated peoples are believed to live, to protect them from the intrusion of developers in the Amazon.

"Estimating their numbers is problematical because the only means to find out for sure is to go out and find them and that poses all sorts of problems," said Janet Lloyd, an anthropologist in Northumberland, England.

Lloyd works with Amazon Watch, a California-based organization formed to protect indigenous peoples' rights in the face of development pressure from oil and gas companies, loggers, and miners.

Brazil is believed to have the largest populations of indigenous people living in isolation from the outside world. The government-established National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) estimates there are more than 50 such groups and has established several reserves to protect their isolation.

Evidence for other populations is known from Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador, said David Rothschild, co-director of Amazon Alliance in Washington, D.C., another group that works to protect the rights of indigenous peoples in isolation.

Some of these groups are truly uncontacted, having no direct knowledge of the outside world. Other groups are actively choosing to live in isolation. "They know the outside world exists and they want nothing to do with it," said Rothschild.

In an interview for National Geographic Today, Gil Inoach, president of the Interethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP) said that these people have everything they need to survive without help from the outside world.

"They have the ability to fish, hunt, and detect danger. They have the knowledge to develop their own healthcare systems through the discovery of medicinal plants in order to adapt to any illnesses in their surroundings. They have their own birthing techniques," he said.

Anthropologist Janet Lloyd said that most of these people are not lost in otherwise uninhabited lands, but rather are surrounded by other indigenous groups and under constant pressure from loggers and other developers. "They remain in isolation because they actively choose to do so," she said.

Outside Pressures Threaten Isolated Amazon Cultures

By John Roach
for National Geographic News
March 11, 2003

In April 2002, the government of Peru set aside more than 2 million acres (809,400 hectares) of remote jungle in the Amazon River Basin for the protection of indigenous people who live isolated from the outside world.

In theory, the reserve allows the Yora, Yine, and Amahuaca peoples to live as they have for thousands of years. They are believed to be migratory groups who survive by collecting seasonal resources, such as turtle eggs from exposed riverbanks in the dry season and Brazil nuts from trees in the forest in the rainy season.

"They are moving all of the time," said Enrique Ortiz, a program officer with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Ortiz and colleague Doug McConnell, communications 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 living in isolation from the outside world.

While the government of Peru believes it has a responsibility to protect and promote the well being of these ancestral communities in the Peruvian Amazon, setting aside such a large swath of land for them has met resistance from other Peruvian people who make a livelihood from the country's natural resources

Eduardo Salhuana, the congressional representative for Madre de Dios region where the territorial reserve was established, said the problem is that the good intention to protect these peoples living in isolation is not in tune with the social and economic reality of the region.

"As much as we can try to enact laws, create a reserve, we run the risk of it not being respected because the local populations find a way to extract the resources from the forest," said Salhuana in an interview with Ortiz and McConnell.

Resource Pressures

Indigenous rights groups say that the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, an agreement enacted by the United Nations (the number does not refer to a year, but rather a treatise number), gives indigenous peoples the right to control their own development and have their cultural and social values protected. Convention 169, as it is called, was entered into force by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1991 and ratified by Peru in 1994.

"In the case of isolated peoples, clearly they choose to remain in isolation and follow their own path of development," said Janet Lloyd, an anthropologist in Northumberland, England, who works with Amazon Watch, a California-based organization formed to protect indigenous peoples' rights.

Lloyd argues that the energy and timber industries seek to establish contact in order to integrate the indigenous peoples with modern society, thus freeing up the resources currently in the reserve for extraction and sale in the international market.

Currently, the greatest pressure on the people in the territorial reserve in Madre de Dios comes from loggers extracting tropical hardwoods such as mahogany. Demand for this resource is causing loggers to penetrate deep into the territorial reserve, which has resulted in violent confrontations.

"Since 1980, there has been an increase of loggers due to the wood products. They are dominating like a plague, a plague that is after the mahogany and cedar and is causing social unrest," Antonio Iviche, former president of the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios Region (FENAMAD), told Oritz and McConnell. Indigenous rights activists fear that contact with the loggers could lead to the spread of devastating diseases, such as influenza. Increased settlement in the area of the reserve also puts greater pressure on the reserve's hunting and fishing resources, reducing food sources for the isolated peoples.

These same impacts are likely to be felt in the coming years as a result of exploration and production of fossil fuels, said Lloyd. A consortium of oil companies have license to extract and transport natural gas from a tract of land in the Sacred Valley (Urubamba) river basin of the remote Peruvian Amazon. The project, known as the Camisea Gas Project, is under construction.

"Fossil fuel exploration and production is the second biggest threat [in Madre de Dios]," said Lloyd. Development plans for other parts of the Amazon are currently in the initial stages and activists fear that this threat will become a reality as new concessions are created and licensed to energy companies.

Contact Missions

Indigenous rights activists also view missionaries as a threat to the uncontacted people. The missionaries feel it is their responsibility to reach these peoples in isolation and convert them to Christianity, as well as improve their living conditions.

Father Ricardo Alvarez Lobo, who runs the Dominican Mission in the town of Sepahua on the delta of the Sepahua and Urubamba rivers in Amazonian Peru, said that this Catholic mission was started in 1948 to prevent the trafficking of children.

"In this simple, human, and social way, the mission began," he told Ortiz and McConnell. "Not simply to preach Christianity, but simply as a social and humanitarian base."

The children were enslaved and sold in the cities to work on large farms and ranches. The mission, said Father Lobo, was able to successfully abolish this practice by 1957 and the rescued children were allowed to attend school at the mission.

The mission is still active today, working to contact the people he says are living in voluntary isolation, but certainly not uncontacted. Lobo believes the isolated peoples are afraid of contact and it's the role of the mission to allow them to communicate with human kind.

Another missionary group, the Pioneers from Orlando, Florida, have established a camp along the Alto Purus River not far from the new reserve in Madre de Dios. The Pioneers believe that God placed them on Earth to spread the message of the gospel to remote peoples.

Steve Richardson, director of the Pioneers, declined comment for this story but writes on the mission's Web site that "We believe that the primary task that God has called us to is ministry among Unreached Peoples—those groups remaining in the world who have the least opportunity to hear and understand the life-giving message of the Gospel."

Iviche, however, tells how contact between the missionaries and isolated indigenous peoples can be just as devastating as contact with loggers, oil, and gas companies, or others planning to extract resources from the Amazon.

His tribe was contacted when his father was a boy. The missionaries lured his people by dropping machetes from an airplane, later coming by boat and dropping clothing. At first, the indigenous people burned the clothing and accepted the machetes.

After time passed, a missionary would travel to different indigenous settlements and talk with them using people from evangelized tribes to help communicate. Eventually, the tribes were grouped into one mission.

"After they grouped them, they began to use clothes," said Iviche. "The clothing was the cause of diseases, due to the soaps and other things such as the iron, or the machete."

Iviche says his ancestors lasted in the mission for four or five years. "After that they disintegrated because the elders started dying," he said. "Like an epidemic, both kids and older people were dying." Iviche says that the population of the villages went from 30,000 to 1,500.

Loggers vs. "Invisible" Tribes: Secret War in Amazon?

John Roach
for National Geographic News
March 12, 2003

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."

Desperate Farmers Flock to Amazon for Logging Work

John Roach
for National Geographic News
March 13, 2003

Every week truckloads of farmers desperate for work leave their homes and begin the grueling journey down the eastern flanks of the Peruvian Andes to southeastern Peru, deep in the Amazon River Basin.

Their final destination, which can take up to a week to reach, is the frontier town of Puerto Maldonado in the vast region known as Madre de Dios. They arrive by the hundreds, riding on top of modified gasoline tankers. Most of the farmers who arrive in Puerto Maldonado join one of the hundreds of logging camps in the region along tributaries of the Amazon River.

The farmers are hunting for work logging mahogany and cedar trees from some of the most pristine forests left on the planet, said Enrique Ortiz, a senior program officer with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Ortiz and colleague Doug McConnell, director of communications at the foundation's San Francisco, California headquarters, produced a five-part series currently airing on National Geographic Today about the issues facing the people in the region of Madre de Dios.

Eduardo Salhuna, the congressional representative for Madre de Dios told Ortiz and McConnell that the farmers are desperate when they arrive. "They move to the jungle in search of work and well being for their families," he said. "Their only alternative is to exploit the jungle's natural resources."

Bottom Loggers

"Almost 90 percent of us extract our wood, which is today mostly cedar and mahogany, on our backs and we then utilize the deltas of the rivers to take our wood back down," said Wilson Miranda, president of the Association of Small Loggers of Tambopata (APEFOT) in Madre de Dios, in an interview with Ortiz and McConnell.

The wood the loggers send down the river goes into the hands of a broker who in turn sells it to industrial timber companies who are able to sell the logs on the international market.

Conservationists estimate that for a single log extracted from the Amazon, a logger may get paid U.S. $30. That same log, turned into doors, chairs, and coffee tables can reap U.S. $128,000 on the open market.

"So, they make almost no money for the hardest work," Walter Wust, a Peruvian journalist familiar with the plight of the loggers, told Ortiz and McConnell.

To survive, the loggers in the camps have taken to hunting and eating spider monkeys, one of the largest monkeys of the region and important for spreading seeds around the rainforest, said Ortiz.

"If you can imagine there are about a thousand people out there with no meat, no fresh meats," said Ortiz. "You can imagine these animals are becoming very rare, if not extinct in the area. That's one of the problems of logging."

Reserve Impact

Making a living became even more difficult for the loggers when the Peruvian government created a reserve in Madre de Dios in April 2002. The land reserve encompasses more than two million acres (810,000 hectares) to protect indigenous peoples living in isolation there.

Logging inside the reserve is now illegal and many of the loggers interviewed by Ortiz and McConnell say they have nowhere to go. They claim that a public concession opened up to loggers is not sufficient to meet their needs or the international demand for timber.

"There are more than 3,000 loggers, and in the concession system there are only 300, 400 people," an unidentified logger told Ortiz and McConnell. "Most of us are out of work. We have been loggers for 15 to 20 years, yet we are here with our arms crossed and do not know what to do."

Alan Schipper, a forestry engineer whose family has owned an industrial logging company in Puerto Maldonado for 50 years, believes that the government has locked up too much of the Amazon region in national parks and reserves, much more than the isolated peoples need to survive.

Situated near the newly established reserve lies the Alto Purus Reserved Zone, a 6.7 million acre (2.7 million hectare) reserve established in 2000. Schipper believes it has ample room for the isolated peoples and the advantage of not being impacted by loggers.

"Puros reserve is an area where the natives can roam freely, so protecting an area that has been destroyed by loggers does not make sense," he told Ortiz and McConnell.

In a fit of rage and frustration Rafael Rios Lopez, a disgruntled logger, led a protest in the summer of 2002 to burn government and conservation group offices in Puerto Maldonado to demonstrate against the unfair treatment of the loggers. Fearing prosecution by the authorities, he went into hiding.

He reappeared in November 2002 and was elected governor of Madre de Dios. He is currently pressuring the government to open up the territorial reserve to logging, said Ari Hershowitz, director of the Biogems Project for Latin America at the National Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, Miranda's association of small loggers is trying to work out a peaceful resolution to the conflict. They have accepted the terms of the reserve and are working with indigenous and environmental groups to develop methods of sustainable logging that also protect the isolated peoples from unwanted contact.

"We will change the system of extraction of lumber. We will change so that our children, other generations, can also work, and this department still has resources then," Miranda said.

Rights Groups Urge Peru to Protect Isolated Peoples

John Roach
for National Geographic News
March 14, 2003

Tensions are high deep in the Peruvian Amazon where thousands of desperate farmers from high in the Andes mountains have descended to scratch out a living by logging Earth's last remaining stands of pristine mahogany.

The area is believed to be home for several hundred indigenous people who have chosen to live exactly as their ancestors did thousands of years ago. Now the presence of the loggers may force them into unwanted contact and potentially lead to their demise.

The isolated peoples have little resistance to common illnesses like the flu, which have killed thousands of indigenous peoples since contact began with the Europeans in the 1500s. For their own survival, those still alive have retreated deeper and deeper into the Amazon.

"With all the development needs of society and government plans including roads, including oil development [and] hunger for wood, mainly mahogany, you have people entering and looking to the most isolated parts of the continent," said Enrique Ortiz, a senior program officer with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Washington, D.C.

After a six-year campaign by indigenous rights activists, the government of Peru established a territorial reserve for the protection of the isolated peoples in April 2002. The reserve encompasses more than two million acres (810,000 hectares) and by law is closed to resource extraction.

But the law, say the activists, is not being enforced and the isolated peoples' way of life is threatened with extinction by contact with loggers going after the last remaining stands of pristine mahogany for sale as luxury furniture in the United States, Asia, and Europe.

Growing Conflict

In August 2002, when Ortiz and McConnell went to the region of Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon to film their series, tensions between the loggers, Peruvian government, and activists speaking on behalf of the isolated peoples were beginning to boil.

The government had dispatched the National Guard to the region to evict illegal loggers from the territorial reserve, but the loggers refused to leave. In a fit of rage, the loggers burned government buildings to the ground. Today, the gentleman who led the protest, Rafael Rios Lopez, is governor of Madre de Dios and tensions remain high.

"The area is in a crisis," said Ari Hershowitz, director of Save the Biogems Project for Latin America at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. "Representatives of logging companies have forced their way into politics and have won positions in local government and are promoting the logging companies' interests over the interests of the uncontacted people in the forests," he said.

This sets a dangerous precedent, said David Rothschild, co-director of Amazon Alliance, an indigenous rights group in Washington, D.C. When large-scale logging companies are given a concession in the forest, it opens the area for access and encourages permanent settlements.

At a minimum, settlements introduce diseases that isolated peoples have no resistance to. Settlers are likely to force indigenous peoples into contact situations as they begin to compete for resources and land, said Rothschild.

"Even if a logging company has what they call minimal impact, the long-term impact can be huge," he said. "It is very often the pattern in the Amazon region that the new areas settled are settled because some extractive industry has built roads to get something out. In the case of Madre de Dios, it is the logging."

Hershowitz says the only reason the isolated peoples have so far avoided contact is that they are living in the most remote areas of the Amazon. "Large industrial operations and farmers have not been able to reach those areas," he said.

Call for Protection

Indigenous rights activists and conservationists are calling on the Peruvian government and international community to act now to save the isolated peoples from unwanted contact and their potential extinction.

One step the government of Peru can take immediately, said Hershowitz, is to allow old logging concessions in Madre de Dios to lapse at the end of March and adopt a system established under a new forestry law that favors small logging associations with stringent management plans and proper regulation.

The loggers support the old concessions, which allow them to access areas near the reserve and use them as cover to log illegally inside the reserve, according to Hershowitz. Loggers are currently pushing the government to extend the old concessions past their March 31 expiration date.

"Key to any progress in protecting these areas is to let the old concessions lapse," said Hershowitz.

Activists and conservationists are also calling on the U.S. government to actively enforce mahogany trade regulations passed at the November 2002 meeting on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in Santiago, Chile.

The member nations to the convention, which include the U.S., raised big-leaf mahogany protections to the convention's Appendix II, a statute ensuring mahogany is logged sustainably.

An official with the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., said that the new protections under CITES give the U.S. government the ability to ensure that the mahogany coming into the U.S. is logged in a legal and sustainable manner.

The U.S. government is also training the Peruvian government in the use of tools to enforce laws that prohibit illegal logging, including the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) remote sensing technologies that show where illegal logging takes place.

The problem, according to a U.S. State Department official who spent 10 years working on the issue of illegal logging and spoke on a condition of anonymity, is that "forest managers were like alcoholics. They couldn't admit they had a problem with illegal logging."

New initiatives are starting to have some impact. But if forestry managers do not recognize that there is a problem, they cannot ask for help with it. Now that new statistics and data are pointing to the problem, the first steps to stop it are being taken, the State Department official said.

In an interview with Ortiz and McConnell, Victor Pesha, president of the Native Federation of Madre de Dios River and Territories, a Peru-based indigenous rights group that works for the protection of the peoples living in isolation, issued a plea for international support.

"What we ask for is that the world give a recommendation to our government, the Peruvian government, so that it shows more interest, more willingness, in defending the rights of the native Amazon communities who are in voluntary isolation because it's life's right."