The Long Betrayal of Peru's 'Uncontacted' Peoples
Simeon Tegel
September 26, 2025
An aerial view of the Nanay River, a tributary of the Amazon, in Iquitos, Peru, Sept. 10, 2024 (AP photo by Cesar Von Bancles).
LIMA, Peru—Pressed up against the remote jungle border with Brazil’s Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, Peru’s Amazonian region of Yavari Mirim has long been known as home to some of the last tribal peoples on Earth still living traditional lifestyles completely secluded from the outside world. Its 1.17 million hectares (2.89 million acres) of rainforest wilderness, roughly the size of Connecticut, is home to an estimated 650 hunter-gatherers from multiple tiny, highly vulnerable ethnic groups, including Matses, Matis, Korubo, Kulina-Pano and Tavakina.
Most are thought to be seasonally nomadic, although some may also practice ancient, sustainable forms of swidden—or “slash and burn”—agriculture. Over the years, dozens of pieces of evidence of their existence have come to light, from aerial photographs of their thatched huts to ceramic pots, trails and even bows and arrows. Peru, two-thirds of whose national territory is in the Amazon, and Brazil are home to more such isolated First Peoples than any other countries in the world, making both states legally responsible for the wellbeing and physical integrity of these uniquely exposed citizens.
Under international treaties ratified by Peru, including the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and International Labor Organization Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, such Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation—anthropologists prefer this phrasing to “uncontacted” given that most are intentionally avoiding intruders because of previous traumatic experiences—have special legal rights. These are designed to protect them from the risks of contact, which historically have included diseases to which they have no immunity, enslavement, the theft of their lands and massacres. Whether these dwindling tribal groups are themselves aware of it, these international legal protections include above all the rights to their ancestral lands and to be left alone by outsiders, unless they themselves initiate contact by coming out of their historical territories.
Despite that, on Sept. 4, a commission of experts convened by Peru’s Ministry of Culture, which oversees Indigenous issues in Peru, rejected an application first submitted in 2003 by local organizations to declare Yavari Mirim an official reserve for Indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact. The decision was immediately condemned by human rights groups, including AIDESEP, the principal organization representing Peru’s native Amazonians. It warned that the decision increased the “risk to life” of the tribal peoples in the area at the hands of “organized crime,” including groups involved in both illegal logging and mining, but also the drug-traffickers who often crisscross this far-flung jungle territory. The decision is just the latest in Peru’s long and troubled history of mistreating native Amazonians. It began during the 19th century rubber boom, the first time that outsiders penetrated at scale the rainforest homelands of many Indigenous tribes in the Western Amazon. It was a period of brutal abuses against “uncontacted” peoples of the region, prompting many of them to retreat into even remoter corners of the jungle.
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