A July 29 press release issued by Shinai Serjali, an indigenous rights organization, announced that indigenous people living in voluntary isolation in the Upper Pakiria River region of southeastern Perú had been forced to move deep into the Amazon to evade workers from PlusPetrol Oil Company. According to the statement, the oil workers threatened the Kugapakori community “with being arrested and decimated by diseases” if they refuse to move from their homes. PlusPetrol has been drilling in the area with the blessing of the Peruvian government since 2000.
Activists, anthropologists and the Federación Nativa de Madre de Dios y sus Afluentes (FENAMAD) have also denounced the violent and often bloody confrontations that have taken place between the isolated indigenous tribes of the Las Piedras Chanchamayo and Chiclayo Rivers (Mascho-Piro or Inapari and Nahua (or Yura), and illegal mahogany loggers.
Estimates vary of the number of distinct indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation in Perú. According to the Atlas and Database published by Antonio Brack Egg and others in 1997, there are seven ethnic groups and subgroups living in isolation: the Kugapakori/Machiguenga; the Mashco-Piro/Inapari; the Chitonahua; the Maxonahua/Curajeno; the Morunahua; the Pisabo and the Nahua/Yura. It is thought that these peoples together number approximately 3500.
On February 14, 1990, Perú established a Territorial Reserve for the Nahua and Kugapakori ethnic groups in the districts of Echarate and Sepahua. On April 19, 2002, the government established a second Reserve for indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in the Department of Madre de Dios. These measures, however, did not incorporate the mechanisms of legal protection necessary to protect the rights of the inhabitants. Both reserves are quite rich in natural resources, particularly oil, gas, and mahogany, and the statutes that created them do not prohibit mining, drilling or logging within their boundaries. This arrangement exists in apparent breach of the rights of these peoples set forth by the International Labor Organization Convention 169, which has been ratified by the Peruvian government.
In May 1996 the Shell Oil Company renewed its operations in the Camisea sector, which includes the territory of the Nahua and Kugapakori Reserve. Ten years earlier Shell’s first incursion in the Peruvian Amazon had disastrous consequences for many inhabitants of the reserves, as contact with Shell workers introduced diseases that killed more than half of their population. In 1998 Shell abandoned the Camisea project, and it was taken up by the Argentinean energy companies PlusPetrol and Techint, and by Texas-based Hunt Oil, among a number of other groups.
There is evidence that, despite these terrible precedents, PlusPetrol workers have pursued contact with some of the isolated groups in the area, in some cases threatening them with forced eviction from their homes. The press release alleges that “in May 2002, two Matsiguenga men employed by Pluspetrol directly approached the community of Shiateni and told them that they must leave.” It added that, “Shiateni was then home to 13 individuals who had almost no contact with the national society beyond those with their relations living in the settlements of the lower Paquiria River.”
FENAMAD the regional indigenous organization of Madre de Dios have been tracking the growing number of illegal loggers in the Territorial Reserve for Isolated Peoples in Madre de Dios. These people work on commission for transnational timber companies, drawn by the territory’s abundant mahogany and other woods. Tensions between the isolated groups and the loggers seem to be approaching critical mass. Recently, 400 indigenous people massed on the banks of the Piedras River along a route used by loggers, and other confrontations have resulted in the wounding of four loggers.
Concerned observers are calling for immediate action from the Peruvian government, as well as from the transnational companies involved in the region, to curb activities that are threatening the physical and cultural survival of these isolated groups. Many have suggested that the establishment of conservation zones, off-limits to extractive industries, in the Amazonian reserves already set up for the protection of the indigenous inhabitants, would go a long way towards reducing these threats.
