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RIGHTS-PERU:
'Transitory'
Reserves for Mashco-Piro Indians
Abraham
Lama*
LIMA, (Tierramérica) - In
Alto Purus province, in the far
west of the Peruvian Amazon
jungle, plans are in the works
to create the first reserve for
an indigenous group that has
almost no outside contact: the
Mashco.
The Mashco (which means
''naked'') were given their name
by other indigenous communities,
but are also known as the
Mashco-Piro, and are one of the
11 indigenous peoples who live
in voluntary isolation in the
Peruvian Amazon since the late
19th and early 20th centuries,
when rubber barons tried to
enslave them.
Design of the plan for the
reserve is just getting started.
It has been entrusted to a
special commission recently
created by President Alejandro
Toledo. But anthropologist Linda
Lema Tucker, one of the experts
on the commission, told
Tierramérica that the aim is to
designate ''transitory
territorial reserves'' for the
Mashco, a sort of movable
territory.
''For the 'contacted' indigenous
communities we can designate a
specific area, but not for the
'non-contacted', who need
extensive routes in the forests
so they can move about freely,''
said Lema Tucker, currently a
consultant with the government's
National Commission of
Aboriginal Peoples.
The Mashco-Piro will be assigned
''transitory territorial
reserves, under laws that
protect their physical and
cultural survival, until they
decide, through their own
community organisations, to
obtain recognition and ownership
titles over land,'' she said.
The protection plan for the
Mashco is included in the
creation of a natural protected
area in Alto Purus, which, with
2.7 million hectares (slightly
larger than Belgium), extends
into Brazil like an arrow.
''Alto Purus is the piece that
was missing in the great
corridor of protected areas over
1,700 square kilometres, which
crosses through Brazil, Bolivia
and Peru. The voice of the
Mashco-Piro and of other
communities has been heard,''
Kathryn Fuller, president of the
Peruvian office of the World
Wildlife Fund, said on Mar. 31
when the Toledo government
announced the creation of the
protected area.
WWF has worked in the zone over
the past five years with
officials, indigenous groups and
local non-governmental
organisations to fight illegal
logging, provide technical
assistance in forest management,
and launch community development
projects.
The Amazon jungles might look
like a green paradise from the
window of an airplane or in
postcards. But they are
threatened areas, under tension
-- the scene of depredation and
social violence amongst its few
dwellers, who are mostly poor
and exploited.
Such is the case of Alto Purus,
where no more than 5,000 people
live. There are six tiny
villages in the province, and
just one city, Puerto Esperanza,
with fewer than 2,000
inhabitants.
In the jungle live around 2,800
members of eight indigenous
groups -- apart from the
Mashco-Piro -- who maintain
their millennia-old lifestyles
and are precariously integrated:
Cashinahuas, Amahuacas,
Sharanahuas, Chaninahuas,
Mastinahuas, Yines, Ashaninkas
and Culinas.
Loggers often hire the Indians
to cut down the mahogany and
cedar trees for their valuable
wood, without permits or
monitoring by the government.
This leads to irregular
displacement of communities,
which in their search for more
valuable timber invade the land
of others, triggering violent
clashes.
Peru, one of the six South
American countries that share
the Amazon, loses 265,000
hectares of tropical rainforest
annually to logging.
Of all the Indians in Alto Purus,
the Mashco-Piro are the least
known. There are no reliable
data on their population,
although they are believed to
number around 800, and are
distributed amongst groups of 50
to 200 people, formed from
several families units.
They are extremely vulnerable
because of the lack of laws to
protect them and also because
they lack immune-defences
against such common illnesses as
the flu, which can kill them in
massive numbers.
''My father told me that they
always wander in the forest,
without staying in one place.
They eat everything: plants,
animals, turtle eggs and fish.
They come and go. Sometimes they
cross into Brazil and back,''
said Leoncio Tomasa, chief of
the Cashinahua, according to a
recent official report.
''The Mashco-Piro are nomads who
move freely through the forests,
subsisting on what they are able
to gather, hunt or fish. They
have survived like fugitives in
order to protect themselves from
the outside world, which they
continue to see as a threat,''
said anthropologist Lema Tucker.
She noted that the new
commission will define which
territories will be set aside
for these nomads, as well as
other practical aspects of the
initiative, which will then be
turned into a legislative bill.
(* Abraham Lama is a
Tierramérica contributor.
Originally published Apr. 16 by
Latin American newspapers that
are part of the Tierramérica
network. Tierramérica is a
specialised news service
produced by IPS with the backing
of the United Nations
Development Programme and the
United Nations Environment
Programme.)
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