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A man named Tomas Anez Dos Santos was laboring in a modest open space far in the of Peru jungle when he noticed movements approaching through the dense jungle.

It dawned on him that he stood surrounded, and stood still.

“A single individual stood, aiming with an projectile,” he remembers. “Unexpectedly he became aware of my presence and I began to flee.”

He found himself encountering members of the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—dwelling in the modest village of Nueva Oceania—served as almost a neighbor to these nomadic people, who reject contact with foreigners.

A recent document issued by a rights organisation claims remain a minimum of 196 termed “uncontacted groups” left worldwide. This tribe is believed to be the biggest. It states half of these groups might be eliminated over the coming ten years if governments fail to take additional actions to defend them.

It argues the greatest risks are from timber harvesting, mining or drilling for oil. Remote communities are extremely at risk to common sickness—therefore, the report notes a danger is caused by contact with religious missionaries and online personalities looking for engagement.

Recently, the Mashco Piro have been coming to Nueva Oceania more and more, according to locals.

The village is a angling community of a handful of clans, located atop on the banks of the local river in the center of the Peruvian jungle, 10 hours from the nearest town by canoe.

The area is not classified as a protected zone for uncontacted groups, and logging companies function here.

Tomas says that, sometimes, the racket of industrial tools can be noticed around the clock, and the Mashco Piro people are seeing their forest disturbed and ruined.

In Nueva Oceania, residents state they are conflicted. They dread the tribal weapons but they also possess strong respect for their “relatives” residing in the jungle and desire to safeguard them.

“Permit them to live in their own way, we must not modify their way of life. This is why we preserve our separation,” states Tomas.

Residents in Nueva Oceania are worried about the damage to the Mascho Piro's livelihood, the risk of violence and the likelihood that loggers might subject the community to sicknesses they have no immunity to.

At the time in the settlement, the Mashco Piro made themselves known again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a woman with a toddler girl, was in the woodland picking produce when she noticed them.

“There were calls, cries from people, numerous of them. As though there was a crowd shouting,” she shared with us.

This marked the first time she had come across the group and she ran. An hour later, her thoughts was continually racing from anxiety.

“As exist loggers and companies cutting down the jungle they're running away, possibly because of dread and they arrive close to us,” she said. “We are uncertain what their response may be with us. That is the thing that scares me.”

Recently, a pair of timber workers were confronted by the group while fishing. A single person was wounded by an projectile to the stomach. He lived, but the second individual was located deceased after several days with nine puncture marks in his physique.

Authorities in Peru follows a policy of avoiding interaction with remote tribes, making it illegal to commence encounters with them.

The strategy was first adopted in Brazil subsequent to prolonged of campaigning by indigenous rights groups, who saw that first exposure with secluded communities resulted to entire communities being decimated by illness, destitution and hunger.

Back in the eighties, when the Nahau tribe in the country made initial contact with the outside world, half of their people succumbed within a matter of years. In the 1990s, the Muruhanua people faced the same fate.

“Isolated indigenous peoples are very vulnerable—in terms of health, any exposure might spread illnesses, and even the basic infections may decimate them,” says a representative from a tribal support group. “In cultural terms, any contact or disruption may be extremely detrimental to their way of life and survival as a society.”

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