It was 35 years ago that the first reserve for indigenous people living in “isolation” was established in Peru and almost 20 years since a law explicitly recognising their rights was introduced, and now there are eight such reserves extending for more than 4.6 million hectares across the remote Peruvian Amazon. But much of this hard-fought progress protecting their rights and territories could be undone, warn indigenous federations, by two bills seeking to modify that law and permit oil and gas operations in national parks and other off-limit “protected natural areas” (PNAs).
Over the last couple of decades, all kinds of inaccurate, bizarre and sometimes ridiculous things have been said about Peru’s indigenous people in isolation. Given recent goings-on - with indigenous federations like AIDESEP warning of “extinction” and a growing national “campaign” against recognition of their existence and rights, the two bills, the blocking in September of a ninth reserve, the attempt this month to block a tenth, and the hydrocarbon potential of famous parks like Manu and Bahuaja-Sonene being touted in Congress - this seems an appropriate moment to draw attention to some of them. Here are 10 of the silliest - for want of a more scornful superlative - I’ve come across:
1 “It is like the Loch Ness monster. Everyone seems to have seen or heard about uncontacted peoples, but there is no evidence.”
Possibly my favourite of all. This was Cecilia Quiroz from Perupetro, the state oil and gas promotions agency, quoted in 2007 in The Washington Post. Quiroz was using the term “uncontacted peoples” as a short-hand for indigenous people in isolation, or “voluntary isolation”, as Peruvian law, indigenous federations, United Nations agencies, the Inter-American human rights system and most NGOs refer to them.
2 “In opposition to oil, [environmentalists] have invented the figure of an “unconnected” Amazon native; that’s to say, unknown but presumed to exist.”
This was Peru’s President Alan García, in 2007 again, writing an op-ed in the El Comercio newspaper. His grasp of the issue was so poor he used the Spanish “no conectado” instead of “no contactado” - an error that was quickly corrected in the online version of the article after the NGO Survival International, where I worked at the time, flagged it. What made this claim especially risible was just a month previously photos of Peru’s largest group of indigenous people in isolation, the so-called “Mashco-Piro”, had been splashed all over Peruvian media - including the very same newspaper García was writing for.
3 “It’s absurd to say there are uncontacted peoples when no one has seen them. So, who are these uncontacted tribes people are talking about?”
This was Perupetro’s chairman, Daniel Saba, in 2007 again. The hapless Saba ended up making a series of ridiculous remarks during his Perupetro tenure, including that no reserves for indigenous people in isolation had been established when actually there were five, that there was “just one place” where they “might be” Iiving, and that the well-publicised Mashco-Piro photos “prove nothing.”
4 “This is similar to the Loch Ness monster. Much talk but never any evidence. We have done very detailed studies to ascertain if there are uncontacted tribes because that would be a very serious matter. The evidence is nonexistent.”
Nessie again! This was a regional manager from the UK/French oil company Perenco quoted in The Guardian in 2009, the year after taking over a concession inside a proposed reserve for indigenous people in isolation. Actually, there was plenty of evidence for them in that region, as numerous Peruvian authorities, other oil firms and many other institutions, organisations and individuals had all acknowledged, while a consultancy commissioned by Perenco to investigate the issue had buried evidence of them, as I demonstrated in various articles. In 2022 Peru’s government, via a Supreme Decree signed by President Pedro Castillo, confirmed their existence in that area.
5 “There aren’t any [indigenous people in isolation in Loreto]. All the indigenous people in the Amazon have been contacted. In the 21st century we can’t have any uncontacted people. They’ve all been contacted.”
This was recently claimed by Rosio Torres Salinas, a Congresswoman for Loreto, Peru’s largest region and home to the strongest, most well-coordinated anti-“PIACI” campaign - PIACI being the Spanish acronym for Pueblos Indígenas en Aislamiento y Contacto Inicial.
6 “There is an arrangement between the Culture Ministry and the Environment Ministry to create these “PIACIs”, or “uncontacted people”, or “people in initial contact.” Those people don’t exist. There are no such people in Loreto’s forests.”
That was another incumbent Loreto politician, Juan Carlos Mori Celis, addressing Congress. Mori Celis is the Congressman behind the bill that indigenous federations fear threatens the existence of all Peru’s reserves for indigenous people in isolation. The fact that he thinks the Environment Ministry is involved in this supposed deception suggests just how little he knows, given the Ministry’s systematic failure to stand up for their rights over the years.
7 “There is no problem with uncontacted peoples either in the upper Purús or in Camisea because they fully understand the benefits of gas production.”
That was an employee from the US firm Hunt Oil in the early 2000s, when oil and gas companies were more likely to acknowledge that indigenous people in isolation exist, rather than deny it. Needless to say, the claim that such people could or would understand the “benefits of gas production” is preposterous.
8 “Uncontacted people” should benefit from Peru’s new “Prior Consultation” legislation
This was the gist of what Ollanta Humala, Peru’s President 2011-2016, somewhat clumsily told a press conference in Switzerland in 2012. Could he have been any more misinformed? The new legislation was pretty much for all indigenous people except those in isolation, given that attempting to contact and consult them would not only violate their right to self-determination but put them at severe risk because of their lack of immunological defences.
9 “We haven’t come here to look for women, we have our own women in our own village.”
Over the years, in response to concern or criticism about potential impacts, many oil and gas companies operating in the territories of indigenous people in isolation have prepared “contingency plans” in case of a sighting or contact. These plans usually or always include things for company workers to say to them. Perenco, Repsol, Pluspetrol, a subsidiary later absorbed into ExxonMobil. . . They’ve all done it. This one is from a 2007 plan by the little-known US company Barrett Resources, whose operations were taken over by Perenco in 2008.
10 Members of one group of indigenous people in isolation, when “they finish studying at university”, intend to “kill the people who call them isolated because this misleading term is impeding their ability to develop.”
To finish, possibly the zaniest of them all. This was in a 2009 report, leaked to Peru’s press, by a government commission investigating the violence earlier that year between police and indigenous protesters which led to 34 people being killed and more than 200 injured - the infamous “Baguazo.” The report was so bizarre that, in addition to claiming some indigenous people in isolation hoped to obtain a degree before turning to murder, it included various recommendations to Peru’s indigenous population that, as I wrote at the time, “are so ignorant, so paternalistic and, ultimately, so offensive that they almost defy belief.” The same could be said about most of what I’ve listed here.