Peruvian anthropologist Beatriz Huertas studies her country’s most elusive human inhabitants—semi-nomadic Indigenous people. She focuses in particular on those who live along the heavily forested border with Brazil, hunting, fishing, gathering turtle eggs and following the rise and fall of Amazonian rivers as their ancestors did. Many are likely descended from groups that fled invasion by colonists, including brutal rubber barons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, says Huertas, Indigenous people in voluntary isolation or initial contact—often called “Piaci” after a corresponding Spanish acronym—face threats from drug traffickers, illegal miners, loggers and transportation officials determined to build roads across borders. The resulting intrusions raise the risk of violent confrontation or exposure to common diseases to which isolated groups have no resistance. Another threat, Huertas says, comes from politicians and others who either deny the groups’ existence or believe they should be assimilated into the dominant society. Huertas spoke with EcoAméricas correspondent Barbara Fraser. [Log in to read more]

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