They have merged with the Peruvian rainforest. Hidden in remote areas, somewhere in the jungle, they live as they did thousands of years ago, without contact with the outside world. Now the Mashco Piro people came out near a river, from the opposite side of which people could photograph them.
However, they did not voluntarily leave the rainforest, even though the frightened people were alerted by loggers who were cutting down ever larger parts of their habitat.
The rainforest is considered one of the world’s greatest ecological treasures and is increasingly threatened by deforestation.
Work terrifies the isolated Mashco Piro. They definitely do not want to give up their way of life, and their last contact with civilization ended so cruelly that they refused to come into contact with it anymore.
In the 1880s, people occupied their area. Poachers not only cleared natural resources and destroyed valuable habitat, but also took indigenous people hostage and mistreated or abused them. The few Mashco Piro who managed to escape this massacre retreated deep into the rainforest. No one should ever do violence to them again. Since then they have had quite a bit of civilization – until today.
So they didn’t notice what was happening in the world: they didn’t know about world wars, inventions like cars or cell phones, electricity, vaccines or social media.
They feed on what they hunt and gather and preserve their habits. However, they are not uneducated: they have great medicinal knowledge of plants and know exactly how to cultivate in harmony with nature.
Contact with the outside world can actually be fatal for them because their immune system is unfamiliar with the diseases of modern civilization. Simple infections can be life-threatening. And anyone who enters their area also risks their lives: in 2011 and 2015, two people died from arrows shot by indigenous people because they came too close to their habitat.
There are several indigenous peoples in the rainforest, some of whom avoid contact with the outside world. Mashco Piro are considered the largest uncontacted people in the world.
