Amazon tribe makes first contact with outside world
FRAGILE Indigenous people crossed from Peru into Brazil looking for help to combat illegal loggers, drug traffickers; caught a serious respiratory disease soon after
Indigenous tribesmen living deep in the Peruvian rainforest have emerged into the outside world to seek help, after suffering a murderous attack by probable drug traffickers.
The contact took place across the border in Brazil and was recorded in a video released on Friday. The tribesmen caught a serious respiratory disease after contact, a major killer of isolated indigenous people, but have since recovered.
Other tribes living in voluntary isolation on the Peru-Brazil border have been spotted in recent years.
In August 2013 amateur footage emerged showing members of the Mashco-Piro clan appearing across the Las Piedras river from the remote community of Monte Salvado in the Tambopata region of Madre de Dios state, in Peru’s south-eastern Amazon. Local officials said up to 100 members were spotted in late June. In the Brazil sighting, seven naked tribesmen armed with bows and arrows first turned up at Simpatia village, on the banks of the Envira river in the Brazilian state of Acre, at the end of June.
They asked for weapons and allies, according to Zé Correia, a member of the native Brazilian Ashaninka tribe who met them. The tribesmen told him they had been attacked in their forest homeland by non-Indians, most probably drug traffickers.
“The majority of old people were massacred by non-Indians in Peru, who shot at them with firearms and set fire to their houses,” Correia told the Amazonia website. “They say that many old people died and that they buried three people in one grave. They say that so many people died that they couldn’t bury them all and their corpses were eaten by vultures.”
The tribesmen come from one of over 75 uncontacted tribes believed to inhabit the vast Amazon rainforest, and their group is estimated to now number 40-50 people. They returned to the village some time after their first visit, suffering from a flu-like disease.
THE MAJORITY OF OLD PEOPLE WERE MASSACRED BY NON-INDIANS IN PERU, WHO SHOT AT THEM WITH FIREARMS AND SET FIRE TO THEIR HOUSES. ZÉ CORREIA, native of Brazilian Ashaninka tribe
A specialist medical team from the Brazilian government’s indigenous people’s authority (Funai) treated the men, who have since returned to the forest.
The doctor who treated the tribesmen warned of the possibility of more contacts in the region and emphasised the crucial need to train more specialised health teams to deal with first-contact and post-contact situations. José Carlos Meirelles, who has monitored uncontacted Indians in this region for Funai for decades, told campaign group Survival International: “If they don’t make things secure for whoever turns up there, unfortunately we’ll repeat history and we will be jointly responsible for the extermination of these people.” Both governments have warned of the need to keep away from the tribespeople, to avoid spreading infections, but local NGOs say the advice is largely ignored. “Most people try to talk to them and give them tools and things to help them, and clothes,” said Francisco Estremadoyro of Propurus, a Peruvian organisation that sets up protection areas for such groups, and the Peruvian tribemen are re por t ed t o have taken clothes from the Ashaninka village.
The existence of isolated populations have been a controversial topic in Peru. Government officials such as the former of head of the state oil company, Peru-Petro, Daniel Saba, even denied the existence of isolated tribes as recently as 2007.