Concern for Uncontacted Tribes as Armed Gang Invades Forest
August 8th, 2011posted to National Geographic.com
Five Brazilian Indian rights officials are holding out in a remote jungle outpost in a desperate attempt to protect uncontacted indigenous groups from heavily-armed drug traffickers who have moved into the area from Peru in the past two weeks, according to dispatches from the scene. Officials fear the traffickers may have unleashed a manhunt to track down and exterminate the highly vulnerable tribal populations in order to clear the forests for their coca-growing operations.
Isolated Indians in the headwaters of the Envira River on the Brazil-Peru border take aim at
a low-flying aircraft with bows and arrows in 2008. Credit: Gleison Miranda/FUNAI
The drama began last month, when Asháninka Indians three hours upstream from the base warned by two-way radio that a heavily armed band of intruders had crossed the border from Peru into Brazil. Nearly two weeks later, 40 armed men appeared in the dense forests around the control post, which sits on the banks of the Xinane River, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) inside Brazil’s border in the western Amazonian state of Acre. (more…)
