Peru will try to make contact for the first time with an Amazonian tribe that largely lives isolated in the jungle, part of a bid to ease tensions with nearby villages after a bow-and-arrow attack in May, authorities said.
Government anthropologists will try to talk with a clan of Mashco Piro Indians to understand why they have been emerging from the forest, deputy culture minister Patricia Balbuena said on Tuesday.
In recent years the Mashco Piro have increasingly been spotted seeking machetes and food outside their jungle enclaves in the Manu National Park in southeastern Peru.
Villagers, Christian proselytisers and tourists have all interacted with the tribe, often giving them clothes and food.
“The only ones who haven’t been in contact with them are representatives of the state,” said Balbuena.
Peru prohibits contact with the Mashco Piro and another dozen “uncontacted” tribes, mainly because their immune systems carry little resistance to common illnesses.