One killed, two wounded in guns-versus-arrows clash between remote Amazonian tribes

An indigenous man was killed and two were wounded last week in the latest clash between sedentary communities and the isolated Mashco Piro tribe as they emerge more frequently from their jungle enclaves, the government said.

The nomadic Mashco Piro turned their bows and arrows on members of the Nahua tribe who had followed their footprints into the wilderness near their town Santa Rosa de Serjali in the region of Ucayali, said Deputy Culture Minister Alfredo Luna.

Some of the Nahua were carrying weapons and a Nahua man was accidentally shot dead in the encounter, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Two members of the Nahua community were wounded by arrows.

The Mashco Piro have largely shunned contact with outsiders for at least 100 years as they survive by hunting and foraging in a vast expanse of rainforest in Peru and Brazil.

Believed to be descendants of farmers who fled abuse by white plantation owners during the Amazonian rubber boom in the late 1800s, the Mashco Piro have increasingly ventured outside of their safe havens in recent years.

Illegal logging, drug trafficking and wildcat gold mining may be forcing the Mashco Piro from some lands, while climate change may be disrupting where they traditionally find food and water, Luna said.

Peru broke with its longstanding policy of avoiding contact with isolated tribes last year to communicate with a group of Mashco Piro that had repeatedly appeared at the edge of settled indigenous towns in recent years, killing at least two locals in bow and arrow attacks.