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A man named Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a small glade deep in the Peruvian jungle when he noticed sounds approaching through the dense jungle.

He realized that he stood encircled, and froze.

“One was standing, directing with an arrow,” he remembers. “Unexpectedly he detected of my presence and I began to flee.”

He found himself face to face the Mashco Piro tribe. For a long time, Tomas—dwelling in the small settlement of Nueva Oceania—was virtually a neighbor to these itinerant people, who shun engagement with foreigners.

An updated study issued by a human rights organisation indicates there are at least 196 described as “remote communities” left in the world. This tribe is considered to be the most numerous. It states a significant portion of these groups might be decimated in the next decade unless authorities fail to take further actions to defend them.

It claims the biggest risks come from logging, digging or drilling for crude. Remote communities are highly vulnerable to basic sickness—as such, it states a danger is presented by contact with proselytizers and digital content creators looking for attention.

Lately, members of the tribe have been appearing to Nueva Oceania increasingly, according to inhabitants.

The village is a angling community of seven or eight families, sitting high on the shores of the Tauhamanu waterway deep within the Peruvian jungle, a ten-hour journey from the closest town by canoe.

This region is not designated as a protected area for uncontacted groups, and timber firms operate here.

Tomas reports that, on occasion, the noise of heavy equipment can be heard continuously, and the community are seeing their woodland damaged and devastated.

Within the village, residents report they are divided. They are afraid of the projectiles but they also have profound respect for their “relatives” residing in the jungle and desire to protect them.

“Permit them to live according to their traditions, we must not modify their culture. For this reason we maintain our distance,” states Tomas.

Inhabitants in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the destruction to the community's way of life, the risk of conflict and the chance that deforestation crews might expose the community to sicknesses they have no resistance to.

At the time in the settlement, the group made themselves known again. Letitia Rodriguez Lopez, a woman with a young daughter, was in the forest collecting fruit when she detected them.

“We detected calls, shouts from others, numerous of them. Like it was a crowd yelling,” she told us.

That was the first instance she had met the Mashco Piro and she escaped. After sixty minutes, her mind was continually racing from fear.

“Since exist deforestation crews and firms clearing the forest they're running away, possibly out of fear and they arrive in proximity to us,” she said. “We don't know how they will behave to us. That is the thing that scares me.”

Two years ago, two loggers were confronted by the Mashco Piro while angling. A single person was hit by an arrow to the stomach. He recovered, but the other man was discovered dead after several days with several arrow wounds in his physique.

Authorities in Peru maintains a approach of no engagement with secluded communities, rendering it illegal to initiate encounters with them.

This approach originated in the neighboring country subsequent to prolonged of advocacy by indigenous rights groups, who noted that early exposure with remote tribes lead to entire communities being eliminated by disease, poverty and starvation.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau community in the country came into contact with the world outside, 50% of their people died within a matter of years. A decade later, the Muruhanua tribe faced the identical outcome.

“Secluded communities are extremely susceptible—epidemiologically, any exposure might introduce sicknesses, and including the simplest ones may eliminate them,” says a representative from a tribal support group. “Culturally too, any contact or disruption could be highly damaging to their way of life and well-being as a society.”

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