Why has this Amazonian tribe suddenly started to make contact with outsiders?
Indigenous groups survive in isolation in Peru, including the Mascho Piro, who in recent months have begun reaching out. But some worry about the consequences: ‘If they live with us, they risk losing everything they ever knew’
Emerging from the mist-shrouded forest at dawn, 11 naked figures wander across a stony beach alongside the fast-flowing Upper Madre de Dios river.
From a clapboard government checkpoint perched on the opposite side of the river, Romel Ponciano – a protection agent from Peru’s ministry of culture – shouts out: “The brothers are here – the Nomole are on the beach.”
Together with two colleagues, he makes his way down to the riverside and clambers into a launch which splutters into motion, chugging against the current to reach the far bank.
The boat has scarcely pulled ashore when the women in the group climb in: one is several months pregnant, another carries a baby. Children haul themselves onto Ponciano’s back, taking turns at piggyback; one of the men playfully tugs at the agent’s T-shirt.
