 |
|
|
'Transitory' Reserves for Mashco-Piro Indians |
|
By Abraham Lama*
Peru
is trying to protect an indigenous group that has lived in voluntary
isolation in the Amazon jungles since the 19th century. Little is
known about this community, which is believed to have around 800
members.
LIMA - In Alto Purus province, in the far west
of the Peruvian Amazon jungle, plans are being drawn up to create
the first special reserve for an indigenous group that has almost
no outside contact: the Mashco.
The Mashco (whose name means ''naked'') were given their name by
other indigenous communities, but they 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,
to escape the rubber barons who tried to enslave them.
Design of the plan for the reserve is just getting started. It has
been entrusted to a special commission created by President Alejandro
Toledo on Mar. 31. 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 organizations, to obtain
recognition and ownership titles over land,'' she said.
The protection plan for the Mashco is included in the creation of
a protected area of 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 kilometers, 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 organizations (NGOs)
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 into the rest of the
country: 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.
They are extremely vulnerable because of the lack of laws to protect
them and also because they lack immune-defenses 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.
|
