Members of an Amazon tribe shot and killed two loggers in Peru. The attack—which involved the use of arrows—comes after several warnings against the loggers. The Mashco-Piro tribe reportedly felt the tree-cutting project had intruded on their territory.
On Thursday of last week, the Indigenous tribe members opened fire near the Las Piedras River—killing two, injuring one, and leaving two others missing.
“This is a tragedy that was entirely avoidable,” said Caroline Pearce, executive director of Survival International, a London-based human rights organization that has petitioned against the logging company. “The Peruvian authorities have known for years that this area that they chose to sell off for logging was actually the Mashco-Piro’s territory.”
The logging company, Maderera Canales Tahuamanu, had just lost its sustainability certification one day prior to the attacks due to its encroachment on the tribe’s territory at the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve.
“By facilitating the logging and destruction of this rainforest, they’re not only endangering the very survival of the Mashco-Piro people, who are incredibly vulnerable to epidemics of disease brought in by outsiders, but they’ve knowingly put the lives of the logging workers in danger,” Pearce said.
The Mashco-Piro tribe has a violent history with tourists and other indigenous groups, according to some reports. They’ve reportedly fired arrows and warnings at tourist boats in an attempt to protect their territory and the tribe’s members.
Many people feel the recent attack against the loggers was both avoidable (on the firm’s end) and warranted, given the circumstances.
“Right of self-defense. Let them live in their trees,” one person wrote on X. “The loggers had it coming if they knew there was an isolated tribe. You are supposed to stay away from those for this very reason.”
“Whilst not condoning murder and with sympathies to the families of the dead men, I know how the tribe [feels] when just want to live your life without people interfering and making your life harder .. like the government,” said another.
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