News
In the Shadows of the State
New report reveals Illicit economies & armed control in the triple border region of Colombia, Ecuador & Peru.
28 August 2025
Main image: An illegal bridge built by Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT), pictured on 18 August 2025, in Mashco Piro territory to carry bulldozers farther into the forest. © Survival
An Indigenous Yine community in the Peruvian Amazon is reporting that uncontacted Mashco Piro people, who live nearby but rarely emerge from the forest, have recently come into their village. The reports come as logging operations resume in the area.
‘It is very worrying; they are in danger. We can hear the engines. The isolated people are also hearing them. Heavy machinery is once again clearing paths, and crossing our river and cutting down our trees. Something bad could happen again’, said Enrique Añez, president of the Yine community, which is distantly related to the Mashco Piro.
Invasions of uncontacted people’s territory typically result in fatal epidemics of diseases to which they have no immunity.
The logging is destroying the Mashco Piro’s territory, and has led to violent clashes as it moves further into their home.
In 2024, four loggers were killed by the Mashco Piro in several fatal encounters. There is no information about how many Mashco Piro were killed or injured.
Following these tragedies, and pressure from Indigenous organisations and Survival International, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) suspended the sustainability certification of the most problematic company operating on Mashco Piro land, Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT).
This suspension is in force until November – but logging has now resumed, and MCT recently built a bridge across the Tahuamanu river to allow access for bulldozers and logging trucks.
Some part of the Mashco Piro’s territory has been protected since 2002, when the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve was created to protect the forest of uncontacted Mashco Piro, Yora and Amahuaca peoples.
But the Peruvian government left out large sections of the Mashco Piro Territory, which were sold by the government as logging concessions, including to MCT. After much pressure from local Indigenous organisations, they agreed to expand the reserve in 2016. This still has not been done.
The FSC-commissioned evaluation of the situation concluded that the suspension could be lifted, with MCT establishing and policing its own ‘conservation areas’ inside the concession.
‘This is the Mashco Piro’s ancestral forest, and it is their home. The suggestion that logging companies could continue to operate with full FSC approval as long as they promise to establish limited ‘conservation areas’ in their concessions is both an assault on the rights of Indigenous peoples and dangerously naive.
‘There can be no effective ‘honour system’ from a company that has shown itself all too willing to risk the lives both of uncontacted Indigenous people and of its own workers.
‘The Peruvian government must demarcate and protect the whole territory of the Mashco Piro and end all logging concessions. Indigenous land must be in Indigenous hands, not subject to corporate greed.’
CAROLINE PEARCE
Executive director of Survival International
Añez, the Yine leader, agreed. ‘The wood they harvest says, ‘certified forest’, but it should say ‘sacrificed people’’, he said.
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