An Isolated Tribe Is Emerging From Peru’s Amazonian Wilderness
After years of sporadic, sometimes deadly interactions with people along the Alto Madre de Dios River, a Mashco-Piro clan has suddenly stepped up contact.
SHIPETIARI, PeruThe Mashco-Piro appeared suddenly on the paths snaking through this beautiful, leafy village, armed with nearly seven-foot-long bamboo arrows sharpened to a knife edge.
“Why do you want to kill me?” Shipetiari’s sub-chief, a small but intimidating woman named Rufina Rivera, hollered when she first encountered the Mashco in January.
They continued to visit stealthily. Cooking pots and machetes disappeared from the secluded clusters of raised wooden homes, tucked into the Amazon jungle about a half hour’s walk from the Alto Madre de Dios River. (Read “Some Isolated Tribes in the Amazon Are Initiating Contact.“)
But things would get worse. In March, one took aim at an older woman. Her skirt fluttered as the arrow just missed.
Then, in the beginning of May,
