Trouble in Paradise: Indigenous Populations, Anthropological Policies, and Biodiversity Conservation in Manu National Park, Peru

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Trouble in Paradise: Indigenous Populations, Anthropological Policies, andBiodiversity Conservation in Manu National Park, PeruGlenn H. Shepard Jr.a; Klaus Rummenhoellerb; Julia Ohl-Schachererc; Douglas W. Yud

a Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Belém do Pará, Brazil b Asociación Peruana para la Conservación dela Naturaleza (APECO), Lima, Peru c Center for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (CEEC), Schoolof Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK d Ecology, Conservation, andEnvironment Center (ECEC), Kunming Institute of Zoology, Kunming, Yunnan, China

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To cite this Article Shepard Jr., Glenn H. , Rummenhoeller, Klaus , Ohl-Schacherer, Julia and Yu, Douglas W.(2010)'Trouble in Paradise: Indigenous Populations, Anthropological Policies, and Biodiversity Conservation in Manu NationalPark, Peru', Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 29: 2, 252 — 301To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/10549810903548153URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10549810903548153

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Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 29:252–301, 2010Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1054-9811 print/1540-756X onlineDOI: 10.1080/10549810903548153

WJSF1054-98111540-756XJournal of Sustainable Forestry, Vol. 29, No. 2, Jan 2010: pp. 0–0Journal of Sustainable Forestry

Trouble in Paradise: Indigenous Populations, Anthropological Policies, and Biodiversity Conservation in Manu National Park, Peru

Trouble in ParadiseG. H. Shepard, Jr. et al.

GLENN H. SHEPARD, Jr.1, KLAUS RUMMENHOELLER2, JULIA OHL-SCHACHERER3, and DOUGLAS W. YU4

1Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Belém do Pará, Brazil2Asociación Peruana para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (APECO), Lima, Peru

3Center for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (CEEC), School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

4Ecology, Conservation, and Environment Center (ECEC), Kunming Institute of Zoology, Kunming, Yunnan, China

Manu National Park was founded in 1973 on a profound contradic-tion: The “untouchable” core area is, in fact, the homeland of a largeindigenous population, including the Matsigenka (Machiguenga).Some view the Westernization of native communities living in pro-tected areas as a threat to biodiversity conservation and suggest thatsuch populations should be enticed to resettle outside parks. Here, wepresent an overview of the indigenous populations of Manu, outlinethe history of the park and its anthropological policies, and discussevolving park-Matsigenka conflicts as well as areas of commoninterest. Analysis reveals that resettlement has no political, legal, orpractical viability. Thus, given the options available, we propose thatlong-term biodiversity conservation can best be achieved through a

A preliminary draft of this article was presented by Shepard and Rummenhoeller (2000) atthe meeting of Associação Braslieira de Antropologia in Brasilia in a session organized by HenyoBarreto Filho. A much revised draft was presented by Shepard and Yu at the International Societyfor Tropical Foresters conference at Yale, 2004. We give special thanks to the conference organiz-ers, Iona Hawken and Ilmi Granoff, and acknowledge major funding support by the LeverhulmeTrust. We also thank Instituto Nacional de Recursos Naturales (INRENA), Asociación Peruanapara la Conservación de la Naturaleza (APECO), John Terborgh and Cocha Cashu BiologicalStation, and the people of the native communities of Tayakome and Yomybato.

Address correspondence to Glenn H. Shepard, Jr., PhD, Curator of EthnologicalCollections in the “Curt Nimuendajú” Reserve Department of Anthropology Museu ParaenseEmilio Goeldi Av. Perimetral, 1901-Terra Firme Belém do Para, PA, 66077–830 Brazil.E-mail: [email protected]

Downloaded By: [Shepard, Glenn H.] At: 14:38 21 June 2010

Trouble in Paradise 253

“tenure for defense” trade: indigenous communities receive explicitbenefits (e.g., infrastructure and service investments, employmentopportunities, or economic alternatives such as ecotourism) inexchange for helping to defend the park against incursion andmanaging vulnerable resources such as game animals.

KEYWORDS biodiversity conservation, ecotourism, human-inhabited protected areas, indigenous rights, Manu National Park,park management, Peru, subsistence hunting

INTRODUCTION

The presence of native human populations in nature reserves, particularly inthe Amazon region, has spawned debate between those who view indige-nous people as conservationists, and those who see them as a threat tobiodiversity conservation (Alcorn, 1993; Peres, 1993; Redford & Stearman,1993; Schwartzman, Moreira, & Nepstad, 2000; Terborgh, 2000; Zimmerman,Peres, Malcolm, & Turner, 2001; Terborgh & Peres, 2002). In part, thispolemic involves different notions of what constitutes nature, and what rolehuman culture plays in the natural world. Romantically minded conserva-tionists in the American tradition since the time of John Muir have viewedprimeval nature as a kind of spiritual cathedral, requiring protection so as toremain unspoiled by the hand of Man. During the creation of the world’sfirst national park system in the United States, indigenous inhabitants wereforcibly removed from important parks such as Yosemite Valley, Yellowstone,and others (Spence, 1999). Under this conception, the concepts of Natureand Culture are seen as diametrically opposed categories.

In contrast, indigenous Amazonian ecologies, economies, and cosmolo-gies are characterized by tremendous fluidity between the categories ofNature and Culture (Lévi-Strauss, 1970; Viveiros de Castro, 1992; Descola,1994; Johnson, 2002). Furthermore, research by ethnobotanists and culturalecologists has highlighted aspects of indigenous ideologies, knowledge, andpractice that appear to contribute to biodiversity conservation (Posey, 1985;Balée, 1989; Shepard, 1999b, 2002a; Carlson & Maffi, 2004). Emerging fromalliances forged in the 1980s between environmentalists, rubber-tapper unionsand indigenous federations, the new perspective of “socioenvironmentalism”(see Ricardo & Campanili, 2005) has emerged in Brazil and other SouthAmerican countries as an alternative to the North American preservationist-conservationist model. Socioenvironmentalism affirms the multiple associa-tions between cultural and biological diversity (Declaration of Belém, 1988;Harmon, 1998; Maffi, 2004), and takes a politically active stance on biodiversityconservation as inseparable from issues of social justice and cultural and terri-torial rights for indigenous and forest peoples. Nonetheless, state conservation


254 G. H. Shepard, Jr. et al.

agencies in Peru, Brazil, and elsewhere remain uncomfortable with, if notopenly hostile to the (albeit frequent) overlap between nature preserves andindigenous territories (Ricardo, 2004). In this article, we examine the people/parks polemic in the light of a specific and celebrated case: Manu NationalPark, one of the world’s largest and most biologically diverse natural pro-tected areas. Manu, the crown gem in Peru’s national park system, has almostlegendary status among tropical scientists, ecotourists, and wildlife film pro-ducers. However, Manu Park was created upon a fundamental contradiction:The core area, considered untouchable and closed to human interference, ishome to a substantial indigenous population. Until 1990, the park’s anthropo-logical policies were idealistic, paternalistic, and negligent, leading to serioushealth, social, and political crises in settled and isolated populations andcreating an atmosphere of mutual resentment and mistrust (Shepard &Rummenhoeller, 2000). The ecotourism industry flourished in the mid-1990s,initially with minimal benefits for indigenous populations. Since 1990, how-ever, new park administrations and several non-governmental organizations(NGOs) have sought to attend to the needs of indigenous communities, espe-cially in the areas of health, education, and social and political organization.Members of the two settled Matsigenka native communities in Manu Parkhave also recently benefited from an indigenous-owned ecotourism enter-prise. As the Matsigenka have improved their living standards and begun tomake ever more frequent trips outside the park to participate in elections,political meetings and acquire Western goods, they have become more visibleto park personnel and scientists working in Manu Park.

Some conservation biologists have argued that indigenous populationsin parks constitute a threat to the future integrity of tropical conservation(Redford & Stearman, 1993; Robinson, 1993). In particular, Terborgh (1999,2000) has argued that the Westernizing and growing Matsigenka communi-ties in Manu Park, with increasing access to modern health services andtechnologies, will degrade the wildlife and ecosystem integrity of the park;he proposes that the only effective solution is resettlement to titled landsoutside the park. We believe that such ideas are based on a narrow view ofconservation goals and human adaptability (Shepard & Yu, 2003).

In this work, we present a history and critical assessment of the anthro-pological and conservation policies of Manu Park. We discuss the history ofthe region prior to the park’s establishment, and describe evolving conflictsbetween the park and its indigenous inhabitants over the past threedecades. We also summarize and point out contradictions in legislation inPeru concerning indigenous populations in natural protected areas. Thediscussion makes it clear that resettlement of indigenous park inhabitants,voluntary or otherwise, has no political or practical viability. Furthermore,the demographic and political void left by a park emptied of indigenousinhabitants would likely attract commercial resource extractors (especiallyloggers), who currently are active at the park borders.



We conclude by arguing that despite a history of conflict and misun-derstanding, the park and its inhabitants have common interests, the mostimportant of which is the desire to prevent incursion by outsiders. Thisshared interest can form the basis of a “tenure-for-defense” trade, as long asthe local biodiversity costs of indigenous subsistence are outweighed, in thelong run, by the benefits of territorial defense. Given the conservationimportance of large vertebrates and their vulnerability to local extinctionfrom subsistence hunting, we argue that ensuring the persistence of gamepopulations is a key requirement in the development of a “tenure-for-defense” conservation model in Manu Park. We briefly summarize findingsfrom a participatory study of game animal harvest in the Matsigenkacommunities of the park (see also da Silva, Shepard, & Yu, 2005; Ohl et al.,2007; Ohl-Schacherer et al., 2007), and outline how the findings could beused in a long-term management plan.

Any concessions by the Matsigenka inhabitants will have to be metwith some acceptable package of direct as well as indirect compensationfrom the park or the international conservation community. In this light, thefledgling Matsigenka-owned ecotourism lodge project in Manu’s tourismzone has become an important site for the negotiation of conservation-for-development trade-offs between the park and its native inhabitants.

WHOSE PARADISE? A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANU AND ITS NATIVE POPULATIONS

In films, popular books, websites, and tourist pamphlets, Manu NationalPark is often portrayed as a remote “paradise without human interference”or a “Living Eden” where nature flourishes in all its primordial splendor(MacQuarrie, 1992). Though remarkably rich in wildlife, Manu is anythingbut free from human interference. The human history of Manu, in the Madrede Dios basin and the adjacent Urubamba-Ucayali region, spans at leastthree millennia (Huertas & Garcia, 2003). Archeological studies of ceramics,textile technology, stone axes, rock art, and other ancient remains suggest acontinuous though dynamic occupation by four predominant cultural linguisticgroups—Arawakan, Panoan, Harakmbut, and Tacana—from pre-Colombiantimes through the present. Lowland Amazonian groups of the regionengaged in long-distance trade with Andean populations since at least Incatimes (Lathrap, 1973; Myers, 1981) with copper tools, precious metals, jewelry,and other goods of Andean manufacture being exchanged for lowlandproducts such as tobacco, resins, smoked meat, animal skins, and birdfeathers (Camino, 1977). Inca roads extended into the Cosñipata region(Madre de Dios headwaters), where the Inca and later, the Spanish main-tained coca plantations, gold mines, and trading posts. Pre-Colombian traderoutes in Madre de Dios may have reached as far east as the Tambopata



River (Lyon, 1981). Nonetheless, the Inca were unsuccessful in conqueringthe Amazonian lowlands, and direct Inca rule never extended far beyondthe Andean foothills.

Spanish explorers and Catholic missionaries engaged in trade andattempted to subjugate Amazonian peoples starting in the late 16th century(Camino, 1977). By the middle of the 17th century, indigenous populationsthroughout Amazonia had suffered demographic and political collapse dueto the rapid spread of smallpox and other European diseases (Myers, 1988;Denevan, 1992). The capture of women and child slaves was already anelement of Amazonian inter-group warfare prior to the Conquest. In thepost-Conquest reconfiguration, surviving riverine groups raided weaker groupsfrom the hinterlands, capturing children to be sold at distant market townsas agricultural laborers, domestic servants, or Christian converts. Nonetheless,the Spanish encountered great difficulties in conquering, occupying, andsubjugating remote montaña (upland rainforest) regions, with their impene-trable forests, fast-flowing rivers of difficult navigation, and resistant localpopulations. In 1742, the messianic leader Juan Santos Atahuallpa gainedthe support of Arawakan populations and led an uprising that expelled theSpanish from the Ucayali-Urubamba basin for over a century (Santos-Granero,2002). Spanish explorers had even less success in the Madre de Dios basin,where repeated expeditions starting in the late 17th century were destroyedby Indian attacks, treachery among rival Spanish leaders, and calamities inthe fierce rapids (MacQuarrie, 1992). Manu and Madre de Dios basinsremained isolated and devoid of a definitive European presence through thelate 19th century.

For its indigenous inhabitants, the enchantments of the remote, isolatedforests of the Manu region were finally and brutally dispelled by the RubberBoom or “fever of rubber” from 1895 to 1917. Charles Goodyear’s discoveryin 1839 of vulcanization and Dunlop’s subsequent invention of the pneumatictire fueled a drastic increase in demand for Amazonian rubber. Peru’slowland rain forests were suddenly teeming with entrepreneurs (“rubberbarons”) and their local guides in search of rubber trees and cheap labor.Existing patterns of slave trading and inter-ethnic violence rose to a feverishpitch. Dominant tribes of the Ucayali region such as the Piro, Shipibo, andAshaninka—already engaged in trade—served as guides in locating rubber-rich forests and enslaving local indigenous labor. In 1896, the infamous“King of Rubber,” Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald (Reyna, 1941), employed 200rubber tappers and a thousand native guides of the Ucayali River basin toportage a small steamship across the narrow land passage, now known asthe Isthmus of Fitzcarrald, separating the upper Mishagua River (a tributaryof the Urubamba) from the upper Manu River (tributary of the Madre deDios River), thus opening up a vast region that had hitherto been inac-cessible to rubber exploitation and European colonization more generally.Accompanied by a flotilla of native guides in canoes, Fitzcarrald’s force was



attacked by fiercely resistant native inhabitants known as the “Maschos.”Fitzcarrald lost 50 men, and in retaliation mounted a vicious counter-attack,killing some 300 Mashcos, burning their houses and gardens, and destroy-ing their canoes. A witness of the fierce battle described the carnage: “Youcould no longer drink the water from the river because it was so full of thecorpses of Mashcos and rubber tappers, because the fight was to the death”(Reyna, 1941, cited in MacQuarrie, 1992, p. 59).

Punitive and slave-capturing raids known as “correrías” (Camino, 1977)brought dislocation and devastation to indigenous populations who soughtto flee the rubber camps or resist intruders. In addition to the violence theyperpetrated, rubber tappers also brought new epidemics of exotic illnessessuch as malaria, measles, and influenza. Native populations who werepressed into labor in the rubber camps were subjected to poor health andworking conditions. Von Hassel (1904, p. 244) estimates that 60% of the nativeworkers in the Manu River rubber camps died of disease or malnutrition.

Despite international protests about the atrocities, and denunciationsthat were considered before British courts and the U.S. Congress (Hardenburg,1912; U.S. House of Representatives, 1913), it was not until after the collapseof international rubber prices—due to the rise of Malaysian plantation rubber—that slave trading and genocide practiced against native Amazonians finallystarted to diminish. After 1917, Manu was abandoned even by the Catholicpriests who had established a mission at San Luis del Manu. However, thesame routes and techniques used during the rubber boom continued toprovide indigenous slaves for the hacienda plantation economy, loggingenterprises, and domestic service in Peruvian cities at least until the 1950s(Zarzar & Roman, 1983; Alvarez-Lobo, 1996). Many native populations onlymanaged to survive these grim times by isolating themselves from allcontact with peoples outside their group, cutting themselves off from centuries-old networks of inter-ethnic trade. Some groups even abandoned agricultureand adopted a nomadic, hunting-and-gathering lifestyle to avoid being detectedand captured. Several indigenous groups of the Manu and adjacent regionsremain isolated and hostile to outsiders today. Far from the popular notionof isolated indigenous peoples as being “innocent savages,” unspoiled bycontact with civilization, the isolated indigenous groups of Manu and Madrede Dios regions today are anything but “uncontacted”; instead, they arethemselves refugees from the violence of a global economy.

In the 1960s, the rich resources of the Manu basin once again attractedthe attention of traders in timber and animal pelts, as well as human souls.Sawmills were established on the lower Manu to exploit the rich reserves offine hardwoods such as cedro (Cedrela odorata L.) and mahogany (Swieteniamacrophylla King). Hunters also plied the lakes and forests of the Manubasin seeking jaguars, giant river otters, caiman, and other animals with valu-able pelts or hides. Meanwhile, missionaries of the Summer Institute ofLinguistics (SIL) employed acculturated indigenous guides to contact isolated



Matsigenka populations who had retreated to the headwater regions in theaftermath of the Rubber Boom.

Celestino Malinowski, a taxidermist and naturalist of Polish descentwho had explored the Madre de Dios region since childhood, becamealarmed by the indiscriminate logging and hunting. He began sendingletters to Peruvian authorities about the situation, and through a series offortunate coincidences (see MacQuarrie, 1992, pp. 63–66), his advice wasfinally heeded, and Manu was declared a Reserve Zone in 1968, and finallya National Park in 1973. Loggers, hunters, and missionaries were expelledfrom the newly created park (see MacQuarrie, 1992; Terborgh, 1999). Firearmsand extractive economic activities were also prohibited, though indigenouspeoples were permitted to remain as long as they engaged in “traditional”subsistence activities. A group of Piro-speaking people of mixed descent,who had lived on the Manu and worked in various extractive economies(rubber, logging, pelt hunting) since the Rubber Boom, moved downstreamand established new communities outside the park near the mouth of theManu River to avoid the new restrictions.

THE INDIGENOUS INHABITANTS OF MANU, THEN AND NOW

The linguistic, cultural, and territorial integrity of indigenous peoplesthroughout the Madre de Dios region was disrupted during the RubberBoom, as some groups migrated from adjacent regions, others were displacedor exterminated, and survivors were forced to intermarry or assimilate withother groups (Lyon, 1975). Furthermore, the nomenclature applied to indig-enous groups in historical sources has always been problematic. In somecases, a single term is applied to speakers of multiple languages or evenmembers of different language families (Lyon, 1975). Thus, our understandingof the human history of Manu Park is fragmentary and somewhat speculative.

Mashco and Mashco-Piro

The historical sources mention “Mashcos” on the upper Manu River, whomFitzcarrald’s men came into conflict with and ultimately massacred. Theterm “Mashco” appears to have been originally a Conibo (Panoan) word,used as long ago as the late 17th century to refer to an indigenous nation(possibly Piro) found on an eastern tributary of the Ucayali River (Alvarez-Lobo,1996, cited in Gow, 2006). Lyon (1975) locates the Mashco in the late 19thcentury in the Manu-Camisea-Mishagua watershed (i.e., the Isthmus ofFitzcarrald), describing them as a band of Arawakan-speaking Piro, knownvariably as Mashco, Piro-Mashco, and Mashco-Piro (cited in Gow). The term“Mashco” was originally used in Madre de Dios to refer to any isolated orwarlike groups (Lyon, 1975). However, Dominican priests working in the



Madre de Dios region came to use Mashco as an ethnic denomination forthe Harakmbut-speaking Arasaeri and Amarakaeri (Califano, 1982), peoplesoriginally of the Colorado River (a Madre de Dios tributary) who are whollyunrelated to the Piro. To add to the confusion, a short word list of dubi-ous origin for the “Mashco” language collected by Farabee (1922) in theManu-Mishagua watershed in 1907 contains a few words of apparentlyHarakmbut and a few of Piro origin (Lyon, 1975), contributing to the unlikelytheory that Mashco-Piro was a hybrid language mixing Mashco (Harakmbutlanguage family) and Piro (Arawakan language family; see Gow). Becauseof such confusion, the Harakmbut (or Haté) languages (e.g., Amarakaeri,Arasaeri, Huachipaeri, Toyeri) were once erroneously assigned to theArawakan language family (Lyon, 1975).

Who were the Mashco massacred by Fitzcarrald, who essentially disap-peared from the ethnographic record for Manu? Gow (2006), drawing onthese historical sources and an interpretation of the enigmatic data concern-ing the isolated indigenous peoples of Manu and adjacent areas, comes tothe conclusion that the Mashco were, in fact, the very same Mashco-Piro orPiro-Mashco, that is to say Arawakan speakers of a Piro dialect. They weremassacred by Fitzcarrald’s men, and a few survivors fled to the forest, aban-doning agriculture and taking up a nomadic lifestyle. Their descendents arealmost certainly the enigmatic Mashco-Piro (see Kaplan & Hill, 1984), hunter-gatherer nomads who shun all contact with outsiders. One Mashco-Pirogroup been known from the Pinquen River on the south bank of the ManuRiver for decades. Three Mashco-Piro women emerged from isolation at thePark guard station of Pakitza along the Manu River in the 1970s, apparentlyfleeing from internal conflict within the group. These women, dubbed bylocal people as the “Three Marias,” later went to live in Matsigenka and Pirocommunities on the Madre de Dios River along the park borders. The Piro ofthe community of Diamante have confirmed that they speak a language ordialect that is close to Piro, but marked by numerous linguistic differences.Moreover, the Piro, in their tireless efforts to contact the remaining, isolatedMashco-Piro, have communicated with and even temporarily capturedMashco-Piro individuals (see MacQuarrie, 1992; Gow). However the maingroup of the Mashco-Piro insist on maintaining their isolation. Since the mid-1990s, a second group assumed to be Mashco-Piro has appeared on thenorth bank of the Manu, apparently fleeing from incursions by petrochemi-cal companies and loggers on Rio de las Piedras (see Box 1).

The Mashco-Piro nomads today are almost certainly descendents ofthese original occupants of the upper Manu, decimated by Fitzcarrald’s attacksand forced to abandon agriculture and enter isolation. Yet were they theonly indigenous inhabitants of the upper Manu at the time of the RubberBoom? Historical sources are ambiguous (see Gow, 2006), but an examina-tion of oral history suggests that at least one other group was present. TheMatsigenka people living today at Tayakome and Yomybato mention a time,



Box 1 Isolated Indigenous Groups Today

Anthropological studies carried out during the park’s creation indicated thepresence of numerous isolated indigenous groups within the park’s bound-aries (d’Ans, 1972). The warlike Yora were contacted in the late 1980s,decimated by disease, and left park territories seeking better humanitarianassistance. The remote Matsigenka of the upper Sotileja and Cumerjali haveincreasingly emerged from isolation since 1990, also suffering from numer-ous respiratory epidemics. In 2004, a Polish film crew led by JacekPalkiewicz entered park territories along the Piñi-Piñi River, seeking thelegendary lost Inca city of Paititi, and in the process infected isolatedMatsigenka populations of the Piñi-Piñi and Mameria with severe respira-tory epidemics; a British film crew sconting for the ‘Mark & Olly’ series waslikewise blamed for an outbreak of colds among isolated Matsigenka of theCumerjali (Shepard, 2008). Throughout the park’s history, no effectiveaction has been taken to prepare for the immediate health emergencies orlong-term consequences of such contact situations with isolated groups.

There are still considerable numbers of isolated indigenous peoples inManu Park. The Mashco-Piro nomads of the Rio Pinquen migrate through-out the south bank of the lower Manu in close proximity to tour operationsand Westernized native communities along the Upper Madre de Dios River.Supported discreetly by SIL missionaries, indigenous Protestant convertsamong the Piro of the Ucayali and Madre de Dios regions have aggressivelysought to contact the Mashco-Piro for at least 15 yr. The Dominican missionof Shintuya has also made sporadic efforts to contact this group. Since 1996,clear evidence of hitherto unknown, isolated indigenous groups began toappear on the northern bank of the Manu river. The arrival of these peopleseems to have coincided with large-scale seismic exploration initiated byMobil Oil in the Rio de las Piedras, northeast of Manu Park. Though loggersand missionaries had made exploratory trips to the Piedras basin since atleast 1990, their incursions increased greatly after Mobil relinquished theconcession in 1998. On one occasion, in the late 1990s, isolated natives shotarrows at tourist boats. In late 1999, carrying out an ethnobotanical surveyclose to Tayakome, Shepard and Yu and their Matsigenka guides weregiven warning calls by a party of isolated natives passing nearby (Shepard &Yu, 1999, cited in Huertas, 2002). More recently, with the explosion of ille-gal logging in the Madre de Dios province fueled by Brazil’s banning ofmahogany exports, isolated indigenous groups have attacked, and beenattacked by loggers working in the Piedras and adjacent areas, including theterritory of isolated indigenous groups near the border with Brazil (Huertas).

Since 2002, isolated groups have encroached with increasing frequencyand boldness on the territory of settled Matsigenka communities on theupper Manu. They have taken metal implements and food from Matsigenkahouses, burned one Matsigenka house located far up a north-bank tributarystream (perhaps as a warning not to return to that region),



and fired arrows as warning shots at groups of Matsigenka who inadvert-ently approached them. Clearly, this group or groups are fleeing from tur-moil in the Piedras area and seeking new territories within Manu Park.

The Matsigenka claim that encounters have occurred with two distinc-tive cultural groups, presenting different kinds of arrows and differentforms of bodily adornment. One group is assumed to be Mashco-Piro ofthe Piedras, surely constituting a distinctive population from the Mashco-Piro of the Pinquen (Gow, 2006). The Matsigenka doubt the second groupis Panoan (i.e., relatives of the Yora) due to the forms of body ornamenta-tion and arrow-making styles. Some suggest that this second group mayrepresent a final remnant of the Harakmbut-speaking Toyeri (“Aogyeri”),thought to have been wiped out in the 1950s (see Mashco and Mashco-Piro). One Matsigenka man says he encountered a group of four men atthe edge of his garden in the dry season of 2004, and exchanged, at a con-siderable distance, a few words of greeting in the Harakmbut tongue astaught to him by his deceased Kogapakori-speaking elderly relative.

During the dry season in June 2005, a large group (perhaps as many as100) of isolated people made a dramatic appearance at the biologicalresearch station of Cocha Cashu, leading to the evacuation of the station.The group migrated over a period of a few days towards Tayakome, wherethey repelled all attempts at approach or contact by Matsigenka communitymembers with a hail of arrows. There, the group forded the Manu River atthe mouth of Yomybato (Quebrada Fierro stream) and moved further intothe interior of the park towards the Sotileja River. The Matsigenka considerthis group to be Mashco-Piro. Never before had such a large and visiblemigration taken place, and the Matsigenka interpreted it as an indicationthat the Mashco-Piro group hoped to migrate on a more permanent basisto uninhabited territories in Manu Park, fleeing conflict with loggers in thePiedras basin. However, in August, a party of shotgun-wielding Yora whohad entered the park from the Mishagua headwaters (undetected by thepark of course, since no guard post exists there) encountered this groupnear the mouth of the Sotileja River. In the ensuing conflict, the Yora firedgunshots and wounded or perhaps killed at least one Mashco.

This worrisome scenario summons a profound sensation of déja-vu,considering the Yora tragedy of the mid-1980s, likewise provoked by pet-rochemical, logging, and missionary penetration. Despite this experience,and despite a tremendous growth in the park’s funding and personnel inthe 1990s, little has changed in terms of the park’s capacity to respond tohealth emergencies and conflict situations associated with the contact ofisolated indigenous populations. The park badly needs to establish con-trol posts along the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald, negotiate with the Matsigenkaand Yora populations to establish norms of conduct to avoid such con-flicts, and set aside “no-go” zones for isolated populations to transit, espe-cially during the dry season when migrations are most common.



probably before the beginning of the 20th century, when the Matsigenkamaintained friendly relations with a group they refer to as Kogapakori, ageneric Matsigenka term for all hostile groups, but whom the modernMatsigenka equate with the Harakmbut-speaking Toyeri. The Kogapakoriwere considered the dominant group, and so Matsigenka families sometimesallowed a son to be raised by the them to learn the language. The large num-ber of Harakmbut loan words (especially animal, plant, and craft names) in thedialect of Matisgenka spoken in Manu Park bear testimony to this history ofcultural contact. The last such Kogapakori-raised, Kogapakori-speaking Matsi-genka, essentially the patriarch of the Tayakome-dwelling Matsigenka, died asa very old man in Tayakome in the 1980s. Fragments of Kogapakori vocabu-lary passed on to younger relatives are clearly Harakmbut in origin. Accordingto stories passed on by this man, the whites massacred the Kogapakori on theManu River at the tributary Kapiroshampiato (up-river from modernTayakome), and the survivors fled to the middle and upper Cumerjali River,the next major down-river tributary, where they were joined by other mem-bers of the same group fleeing warfare and epidemic diseases elsewhere in theMadre de Dios basin (P. Lyon, personal communication, January 27, 2007, alsomentions Huachipaeri oral histories of a small Toyeri group that crossed fromthe east bank of the Madre de Dios into the Manu watershed in the mid-20thcentury). However, the Kogapakori population at Cumerjali was massacredonce again by whites several years later. According to another piece of oralhistory, the whites were aided in this second massacre by vengeful Matsigenkaguides whose family members had been attacked and killed by the Kogapa-kori on the upper Sotileja. These “Kogapakori” are certainly among the so-called “Mashcos” massacred by Fitzcarrald, yet they would appear to bear nolinguistic relation to the Arawakan-speaking Mashco-Piro. Indeed, Gow (2006)tentatively identifies two separate “Mashco” groups: those along the Manu-Mishagua watershed, likely Arawakan-speaking Mashco-Piro, and a secondgroup of uncertain linguistic affiliation (possibly Harakmbut, though Gow isskeptical) along the Cumerjali. In light of Matsigenka oral histories, these latterwere almost certainly the Harakmbut-speaking “Kogapakori” or Toyeri, a noto-riously warlike Harakmbut sub-group, formerly dominant along the upperMadre de Dios, assumed to have been driven to extinction.

The last surviving Kogapakori (Toyeri) group in the Manu watershedconsisted of one man, his wife, and three sons, and they resided on a tributaryof the Yomybato (Quebrada Fierro). To rebuild his group, this man beganraiding the Matsigenka of the upper Sotileja to capture young girls to raise andlater marry. He captured two girls, and killed many Matsigenka during theraids. He had a reputation for fearlessness, bravery, and great skill at dodgingarrows in mid-flight. Finally, probably around 1950, the Matsigenka organizeda raid to eliminate the Kogapakori threat and recapture the Matsigenka girls.The Kogapakori man and his three sons were killed in an early dawn raid,and his wife escaped into the forest where she subsisted, entirely alone, for



many years before perishing: She could hunt with bow-and-arrow, and theMatsigenka found occasional traces (for example, finely made ceramic pots)of her solitary existence until as late as perhaps the 1970s. The Matsigenkagirls who were rescued had learned the Kogapakori language, and the olderone bore a male child nicknamed “Mashco,” the fierce Kogapakori chief’s lastheir. These women remarried Matsigenka men, and the younger one, whodied in 1987 in Yomybato, taught a few words of the Kogapakori language toher children. Words such as apane for jaguar are clearly of Harakmbut origin.Her Matsigenka husband, still alive, says the proper name for this group was“Aogyeri,” perhaps a deformation of “Eorieri,” which would appear to be theHarakmbut word for “people of the Madre de Dios (‘Eori’) river” (P. Lyon,personal communication by telephone, 2004). He considers these “Aogyeri” tobe identical with the near-extinct Toyeri.

Together, this evidence strongly suggests the presence of two culturallyand linguistically distinctive indigenous groups in the upper Manu at theoutset of the 20th century, both probably referred to as Maschos by contem-porary observers, and both of which were reduced almost to extinction byFitzcarrald’s attacks. The Arawakan Mashco-Piro have certainly survivedthrough the present, abandoning agriculture and isolating themselves fromall outside contact. The Harakmbut-speaking “Aogyeri” (Toyeri) surviveduntil the 1950s, though recent events suggest the possible survival of an iso-lated Harakmbut-speaking group through the present (see Box 1).

Piro

The Arawakan-speaking Piro were known as excellent navigators and shrewdmiddlemen, and through the 19th century carried out raids of local popula-tions (especially the Matsigenka) along the Urubamba to obtain slaves andlowland goods, which they traded with highland Quechua peoples and Span-ish missionaries for metal tools, fishhooks, glass beads, ceramics, and manu-factured cloth (Camino, 1977). In the closing years of the 19th century, thePiro were Fitzcarrald’s principal guides in “discovering” the Isthmus across theupper Camisea and Mishagua into the Manu headwaters. Names of mostmajor tributary rivers and some place names of the middle and upper Manu(e.g., Sotileja, Cumerjali, Cashpajali, Serjali, Tayakome, etc.) have a Piro deri-vation. These may be names applied by the original Mashco (i.e., Mashco-Piro) inhabitants, but more likely represent names given by the Piro explorersand guides who accompanied Fitzcarrald. Descendents of Fitzcarrald’s nativeguides, representing a mix of indigenous groups (Ashaninka, Matsigenka,Piro) but speaking the language of the culturally dominant Piro, occupied thelower Manu River after the collapse of the Rubber Boom until the early 1960s.At that time, the Piro left and established new communities near the mouth ofthe Manu River, seeking to take advantage of new economic opportunitiesespecially employment by oil companies involved in exploration along Madre



de Dios. Most of their descendents now live in the native community of Dia-mante on the upper Madre de Dios upriver from the mouth of the ManuRiver, with a population in 2004 of about 360. Some have married with mes-tizo families in the jungle town of Boca Manu, at the mouth of the ManuRiver, while others have moved to the Urubamba River to mingle with ances-tral Piro populations there. A Piro man from the Urubamba, affiliated with SILmissionaries, has often used Diamante as his base for contacting the isolatedMashco-Piro bands in Manu and Rio de las Piedras regions (see Gow, 2006).

Yora (Nahua)

The Panoan-speaking Yora or Nahua (see Hill & Kaplan, 1990; Feather, 2001;Shepard, 2003) migrated to the Manu-Mishagua watershed soon after the col-lapse of the Rubber Boom. They apparently fled from similar disruptions intheir home region in the Purus basin to the northeast. They came to occupythe demographic and territorial void left by the retreating rubber tappers, andthe “Mashcos” they had massacred and displaced. In the early years of theiroccupation, the Yora obtained metal tools and other trade goods by searchingand excavating around the abandoned rubber camps, and ate from the rubbertappers’ abandoned banana plantations (MacQuarrie, 1991).

Later, the Yora came to satisfy their desire for trade goods by attacking andraiding the Matsigenka of the Manu headwaters (MacQuarrie, 1991; Shepard,1999a). Yora attacks also impeded the progress of loggers and later Shell seis-mic teams in their penetration of the upper Mishagua river (Zarzar, 1987). TheYora made national headlines in 1982 when they attacked and repelled anexpedition of the Peruvian marines to the Manu River headwaters, intending toinaugurate construction of the Peruvian leg of the Trans-Amazon highway.Peruvian President Belaunde himself was flown in by helicopter. The groupwas attacked with bow-and-arrow by the Yora, and returned fire, killing orwounding an unknown number (Moore, 1984). President Belaunde appearedon the cover of the national newspaper cradling a Marine with a Yora arrowthrough the neck (MacQuarrie, 1992, p. 284), and the trans-Manu highway planwas shelved and remains inactive, though it is still visible on some maps.

A group of four Yora men were captured by loggers in 1984, and taken tothe Catholic mission town of Sepahua on the Urubamba River, where they weregreeted warmly and showered in gifts. A larger group came to Sepahua weekslater, and was given a similar treatment (Zarzar, 1987; MacQuarrie, 1991;Shepard, 2003). Notoriously, however, the Yora made one final attack on theMatisgenka of Yomybato at Herinkapanko in 1985 (Shepard, 1999a), 1 yr afterthey had initiated peaceful contact on the Urubamba River. By 1986, the contactprocess resulted in a devastating epidemic of respiratory diseases, reducing theYora population by one half or more (Shepard, 1999a; Shepard, 2003; see Box1). Seeking medical help, food, and material assistance, the Yora periodicallytraveled down the Manu River in large numbers from 1986 to 1988, causing



serious disruptions in indigenous communities of the Manu and Madre de Diosregions as well as at Cocha Cashu research station and the guard posts. Sensing alack of assistance, the Yora left the Manu watershed to receive medical and otherassistance from Protestant and Catholic missionaries operating out of Sepahua.

The Yora currently occupy the village of Serjali on the upper Mishaguawith a population of about 250. Small groups of Yora return occasionally tothe Manu River to hunt, fish, and gather turtle eggs on their way down theManu River to visit or seek work on the upper Madre de Dios or merely to“pasear” (visit, wander). The Yora are currently struggling to take control oftheir territory and remove illegal loggers who have overrun the region sincethe Yora were first contacted (Feather, 2001). The creation of the “Kugapakori-Nahua Indigenous Reserve” in 1991 (Figure 2) has done nothing to stem thetide of illegal logging. Once feared warriors who inadvertently defendedManu Park from loggers, oil companies, and road-building crews for decades,the Yora now need support from non-governmental organizations (NGOs)and the Peruvian government to defend their territory.

Matsigenka

The Matsigenka, currently the main indigenous population of Manu Park,did not occupy the main course of the Manu River until the 1960s. Oral histo-ries suggest that the Matsigenka of Manu immigrated from the south—fromthe headwaters of the Madre de Dios and Urubamba. The Matsigenka ofManu speak a different dialect than that spoken in the Urubamba water-shed, and their dialect is characterized by a number of Harakmbut loanwords, apparently resulting from extensive Matsigenka-Harakmbut inter-ethnicrelations in Madre de Dios dating from before the Rubber Boom. TheMatsigenka came to occupy the upper Sotileja, Cumerjali, and other south-bank headwater tributaries of the Manu River by the middle of the 20th century,occupying the demographic void left by the Rubber Boom (Shepard 1999a).In the late 1950s, Protestant SIL missionaries employed native guides fromthe Urubamba to contact remote Matsigenka settlements in the Manu andupper Madre de Dios headwater regions. In the early 1960s, the SIL establisheda settled village at Tayakome on the Manu River and built a schoolhouse, amedical post, and a small air strip (d’Ans, 1981; Shepard & Izquierdo, 2003).At its height, Tayakome had more than 200 Matsigenka from dispersedsettlements throughout the Manu and Madre de Dios (d’Ans, 1975).Although SIL’s main goal was evangelical, their work also included healthcare, community organization, bilingual education, and linguistic and ethno-graphic study (Snell, 1964, 1973, 1978, 1998; Snell & Davis, 1976). SIL mis-sionaries also brought shotguns and ammunition, and the Matsigenkasupplied the missionaries with animal pelts to help finance the operations(Jungius, 1976). Partly because of this, soon after Manu Park was established,the park administration expelled the missionaries.



Starting in 1973, many Matsigenka evangelical converts exited fromTayakome. Enticed by missionary promises of trade goods and eternal salva-tion, approximately half the population of Tayakome abandoned Manu,crossed the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald to the Camisea River, and established a newcommunity at Segakiato. Other families, also from the original Tayakome mis-sion, established themselves along the upper Madre de Dios outside ManuPark, joining or creating new communities at Palotoa, Shipetiaari, andDiamante. Due to internal tensions, lack of missionary support, and fear of Yoraattacks in the late 1970s, several families from the remnant Tayakome commu-nity created new settlements on the upper Quebrada Fierro or Yomuivaatostream, later establishing the native community of Yomybato. Yomybato grewin the 1980s as survivors of Yora attacks in the upper Cumerjali and Sotileja fledthere. The Matsigenka communities of Tayakome and Yomybato have sincebecome the foci of the park’s indigenous policies, especially since the 1990s,when they became better organized and began making concrete demands forhealth care, educational facilities, and economic opportunities.

There are also a number of poorly known, isolated Matsigenka and related“Kogapakori” or Nanti settlements in the Manu, Camisea, and Timpia headwa-ters (see Box 1). Since the mid-1990s, people from some of these isolatedsettlements, especially from the upper Cumerjali and Sotileja, have initiatedweeks- to months-long visits to Tayakome and Yomybato in order to socialize,trade for steel tools and other goods, and find spouses. A few families havemoved permanently to the Yomybato community. Likewise, a few men fromthe Nanti settlement of Montetoni (upper Camisea) have come to Tayakomeseeking spouses. Finally, starting in the 1990s, a few Matsigenka from the SILvillage of Segakiato on the Camisea river—mostly children of those who leftManu Park in the 1970s—have returned to Manu Park seeking spouses, betterhunting grounds, and respite from the turmoil caused by the Camisea GasProject. The long-term residents of Tayakome and Yomybato view these returnmigrations, and the potential for more in the future, with ambivalence. Thoughthey have close familial ties with the migrants, the migrants are viewed as out-siders. Some bring with them an attitude of superiority over the more tradi-tional, less well-schooled people of Manu Park. The people of Tayakome andYomybato also fear illnesses and especially techniques of witchcraft, sorcery,and love magic that the migrants could have learned in the Urubamba basin.

Quechua

Many highland Quechua peasant settlements are found along the park’ssouthern boundary. Also, numerous Quechua-speaking migrants came tothe Madre de Dios lowlands through government-sponsored colonizationprojects since the 1960s. However, the only Quechua-speaking populationto be found within the boundaries of the park is Callanga, a settlement ofabout 200 at the southern tip of Manu Park (see Box 2).



Box 2 Callanga: The Forgotten Indians

The highland township of Callanga near the southern tip of Manu haslong been an annoyance to Manu Park’s administration, its inhabitantsviewed by some former park directors as illegal squatters and possiblydrug traffickers (Terborgh, 1999, p. 40). These “squatters” are in factindigenous Quechua who have inhabited the valley at the confluenceof the Pitama and Sihuas rivers for centuries. With an altitude of 1,200 m,Callanga has about 40 families with a total population of some 200.Complex kin relations with high Andean communities outside the parkmake it difficult to establish exactly who are permanent Callanga resi-dents. Most of the population is monolingual in Quechua. They culti-vate cassava, tropical fruits, coffee, and coca in a subsistence economyinvolving exchange and trade with high Andean communities that pro-duce cold-weather crops such as potatoes and onions and are locatedsome 2 d by mule from Callanga at higher elevations outside the parkboundaries. Callanga families travel there to sell or trade the productsfor Sunday markets. The consumption and trade of coca leaves hasdeep cultural and historical roots and greatly precedes the contempo-rary drug trafficking trade. Callanga has some of the worst healthconditions yet documented anywhere in Peru and perhaps all of LatinAmerica, with an infant mortality rate of 124.2 per 1000; chronic infantmalnutrition of more than 70%; only 21% coverage for tetanus,measles, diphtheria, polio, and whooping cough vaccinations; highrates of tuberculosis; and a maternal mortality rate of 38% (Cueva,1990; Rummenhoeller, 1997).

Vegetation-covered stone ruins, walls, and roads in the vicinityattest to the fact that Callanga was an ancient Incan trade enclave inthe Amazon region, and has probably been inhabited continuouslysince before the Spanish conquest. Francisco Toledo in his VisitaGeneral del Peru (1570–1575), mentions Callanga as an Indian landdivision in Paucartambo Province. In the 18th century, Callangaappears as a large hacienda on land documents from Paucartambo(Corregimento de Causas Ordinárias de la Província de Paucartambo,Archivo Departamental de Cusco, Legajo 76, 1780–1784). By the end ofthe 19th century, the hacienda of Callanga was an important center ofrum and coca production, spanning an altitudinal zones from 1200 to3200 m. Through the early 1960s, when many isolated Matsigenkapopulations of Manu were contacted by Protestant missionaries, someMatsigenka families made an arduous 15-d or more journey on pathsthrough rugged Andean foothills to trade at Callanga, the only regionalsource of metal tools, beads, and other trade goods (Shepard &Izquierdo, 2003). When the last hacienda owner died in 1965,the Quechua peasants and sharecroppers took over the hacienda and



MANU NATIONAL PARK: CURRENT STATUS

Manu National Park or Parque Nacional del Manu (PNM) is a UNESCOWorld Heritage site, considered one of the most important regions for biodi-versity conservation in the tropics. It includes the entire watershed of theManu River, from its headwaters in the Andes mountains over 4,000 mabove sea level, to the lowland tropical forests of the Manu floodplain.Manu was first set aside as a National Forest Reserve in 1968, and thendeclared a National Park on May 29, 1973, with a total area of 1,536,806 ha.Since its creation, PNM has officially been considered in its totality an“untouchable area,” where the ecological integrity of the environment ispreserved, and only non-intrusive activities such as basic research arepermitted. Nonetheless, as we relate above, both settled indigenous com-munities and numerous isolated populations are found within this core. InMarch 1977, PNM was incorporated as the core region of a larger conserva-tion unit, Manu Biosphere Reserve or Reserva de Biosfera del Manu (RBM),

divided the land up among themselves. One group remained in the lowlands currently within the boundaries of Manu Park, and the other grouptook the high Andean lands currently outside the Park. As such, Callangaremained unaffected by Peru’s massive Agrarian Reform of 1969 thatbroke up former haciendas and titled the lands to peasants.

Thus, Manu Park was superimposed partially onto this ancientAndean community with a complex though officially unresolved historyof land tenure. Peasant families of Callanga maintain traditions of ances-tral land rights that go back for centuries, and are passed on throughthe generations according to strict, clearly defined traditional norms.The people of Callanga are not easily willing to recognize the rights ofManu Park, a newcomer to their ancient territory, over land that theyhave used and inhabited for centuries. Nonetheless, the people ofCallanga were stigmatized, subjected to strict controls and treated asinvaders for many years by the park administration and park guards.Only since 1995 has the park directorship taken up a dialogue with theresidents of Callanga, enabling, for example, the peaceful transfer ofcattle from lowlands areas within the park to pastures in the highAndean segment of Callanga outside the official park boundaries. In therecent re-zoning of PNM, the impasse was resolved and Callanga wasset aside under the category of “special use zone” (see Figure 1), excis-ing (or at least forming a cyst around) the troublesome township andrecognizing the de facto historical land tenure of this highland peasantcommunity within the borders of a “strictly protected” nature reserve.



established through United Nations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization’s (UNESCO) “Man and the Biosphere” program. EncompassingPNM plus buffer zones, RBM has a total area of 1,881,200 ha; see Figure 1).In 1980, part of the buffer zone along the lower Manu River was designatedManu Reserve Zone or Zona Reservada del Manu (ZRM), a category withprovisional protection status within Peru’s system of natural protected areas.Initially, sustainable-use practices in addition to tourism were contemplatedfor the ZRM, including selective logging, experimental forestry, and evenagriculture. In the long run, however, tourism has won out as the majoreconomic strategy for this zone; and in 2002, much of the ZRM was incor-porated into PNM, giving the park a total area of 1,716,500 ha.

FIGURE 1 Manu National Park, Madre de Dios, Peru. Locations of uncontacted indigenousgroups are approximate. The Matsigenka settlements of Sarigemini (1b) and Maizal (2b) arerecent and smaller satellite communities derived from Yomybato and Tayakome, respec-tively. The former Reserve Zone has been incorporated into the park proper. The Special UseZone, which borders the Yomybato river and the Manu river between 2a and 2b, indicatesthe area set aside for subsistence activities by the settled Matsigenka communities.



Manu Biosphere Reserve also includes the Cultural Zone, sometimesreferred to as the “cooperation zone” or the “Andean/Amazonian multipleuse zone.” The Cultural Zone, located at the park’s eastern boundary alongthe fairly populous upper Madre de Dios River, contains a diversity of humanpopulations including legally titled native communities, Andean peasantcommunities and colonist settlements, semi-urban settlements, logging con-cessions, and private land holdings, including private nature reserves associ-ated with tourism ventures. The Cultural Zone has no legal protection status,but serves as a buffer zone of mostly stable, titled lands where sustainabledevelopment can be promoted among local populations, thereby avoidingmore destructive development or colonization projects. Especially since thelate 1990s, government agencies and NGOs have carried out projects in envi-ronmental education, forest management, agricultural outreach, health care,community-based ecotourism, and other activities in this zone.

More recently, the Manu Biosphere Reserve has been bolstered by thecreation of neighboring reserves of varying protection status, creating anextended buffer zone in surrounding areas (see Figure 2).

KUGAPAKORI-NAHUA INDIGENOUS RESERVE

The Kugapakori-Nahua Indigenous Reserve, with an area of 443,887 ha,was set aside in 1991 to protect a region inhabited by indigenous popula-tions with little contact with national society: the recently contacted Yora(Nahua) of the upper Mishagua River, and isolated Matsigenka-related pop-ulations (Nanti or Kogapakori, where “Kugapakori” is the official name ofthe reserve but is a misspelling) of the upper Camisea and Timpia. In theory,this reserve protects the “back door” to Manu via the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald.In fact, the Kugapakori-Nahua reserve is not included in Peru’s system ofprotected areas and has no state support. The upper Mishagua is thoroughlyinvaded by loggers from the Ucayali, while the Camisea is the site of a massivenatural gas extraction and pipeline project originally studied and developedby Shell, and currently operated by Plus Petrol. It is only through the effortsof individual indigenous communities and NGOs that any control or protec-tion is afforded. Nonetheless, this reserve would appear to be critical forPNM’s long-term integrity, and deserves serious study and support by Peruvianand international conservation organizations.

AMARAKAERI COMMUNAL RESERVE

The Amarakaeri Communal Reserve was designated in 2002 as a communal-usearea for the main surviving Harakmbut-speaking group of Madre de Dios,encompassing their traditional territory throughout the headwaters of the RioColorado (or Karene) and other south-bank tributaries of the Madre de Dios(Blanco, Chilihue, Inambari). Its area of 402,336 ha is separated from the Alto



Madre de Dios and the Madre de Dios courses by a swath of lands titled orgranted as use concessions to various colonist and native communities. Goldmining throughout the Rio Colorado basin since the 1950s has caused extensiveenvironmental degradation and cultural change. Again, the reserve is notgoverned by strict conservation rules. However, by guaranteeing land rightsand promoting sustainable use by native communities, it is hoped that coloniza-tion and exploitation by outside resource extractors may be controlled.

ALTO PURUS NATIONAL PARK

The Alto Purus National Park was created in 2004 with more than 2,500,000 ha,divided between the departments of Ucayali and Madre de Dios. The Madrede Dios portion of the reserve (depicted in Figure 1) is contiguous withManu National Park’s northern boundary. The Ucayali portion (Purus River

FIGURE 2 Protected areas and indigenous reserves surrounding Manu National Park. NotIndicated are titled lands and concessions for resource extraction along the Madre de DiosRiver (here, white).



proper) contains a large number of settled, Westernized indigenous com-munities, mostly of the Panoan language family, as well as several isolatedpopulations. Within Madre de Dios, the Purus Park embraces the headwaters ofthe Piedras River, and a territory of two or more isolated indigenous groupsabout which not even the most basic information—linguistic affiliation,population, territory, prior history of contact—is known (Huertas, 2002).Prior to being incorporated into the national park, the upper Piedras wasincluded within Mobil Oil’s exploration block number 77, an enterprise crit-icized both for its disturbance of pristine forest and its likelihood of contactwith isolated Indians (Shepard, 2002b). Mobil registered numerous signs ofisolated indigenous groups, but no direct or hostile encounters werereported. Soon after Mobil began its exploration activities in 1996, hithertounknown, isolated indigenous groups suddenly appeared in Manu Parkalong the north bank of the Manu River, due south of the area impacted byMobil’s seismic operations (Shepard, 1998b, cited in Huertas). It seems likelythat these groups had fled to Manu seeking safer territories after the massiveinflux of outsiders, helicopters, and heavy equipment. Mobil relinquished itscontract in 1999 without pursuing petroleum extraction. However, the regionwas then overrun by loggers from the city of Puerto Maldonado. Illegalmahogany loggers remain in the region today, despite the establishment of thenational park. Reports of conflicts between illegal loggers and isolated indige-nous groups in the Piedras River basin have become increasingly frequent; andgroups of the latter, apparently fleeing conflict in the Piedras, now migrate on ayearly basis into Manu Park, provoking ever more frequent and aggressiveencounters with the settled Matsigenka populations (see Box 1).

LOS AMIGOS CONSERVATION CONCESSION

The Los Amigos Conservation Concession on the Rio de los Amigos is situatedbetween Manu River and Rio de las Piedras, along the park’s eastern border.Like the adjacent Piedras, the Amigos basin was completely overtaken by log-gers in the years following Mobil’s retreat from Block 77. In 2002, the non-profitAmazon Conservation Association (http://www.amazonconservation.org) wasgranted management authority over 1.6 million ha of the Amigos basin. Loggerswere removed, and the reserve is currently being used to promote research andtourism. The Amigos watershed includes territory used by isolated indigenousgroups from the Piedras and Manu basins, and areas have been set aside withinthe concession to accommodate these groups’ annual migrations.

MEGANTONI NATIONAL SANCTUARY

Megantoni National Sanctuary, with 216,003 ha, was set aside as both a wildlifesanctuary and a cultural reserve for the Matsigenka people. It stretches from



the Pongo de Maiñique canyon on the Urubamba River to the headwatersof the Timpia River along Manu Park’s “back door” northern boundary, territoryof the so-called Kogapakori: isolated, feared, apparently hostile groups closelyrelated to the Matsigenka. The reserve includes the fantastic rock formationsalong the Pongo de Maiñique known as Tonkiniku (“place of bones”) inMatsigenka, considered both sacred and fearsome as the final resting place ofdead souls. Though government conservation agencies have little involvementhere, the Matsigenka communities in the region are well organized and politi-cally active, intent on defending the sanctuary from various destructive devel-opment options including roads, colonization projects, petrochemical drilling,and a long-proposed hydroelectric dam (Rivera, 1991). A Matsigenka ecotour-ism enterprise has operated on the Timpia River with marginal success.

THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE

Today in Peru, it would be impossible to design a national park without consid-ering the rights and participation of local indigenous people (see Table 1).But when PNM was created in 1973, Peruvian law did not yet recognizeindigenous territories, which were considered to be empty. Under thedevelopment-minded government of President Fernando Belaunde’s firstterm of office in the mid 1960s, the Amazon interior was viewed as a vastand under-exploited “emptiness”: a no-man’s land about which the statereserved the right to make land-use decisions, and a demographic void tobe filled with colonists seeking untapped riches. Belaunde’s mission state-ment appears in a book entitled, appropriately, “The Conquest of Peru byPeruvians” (Belaunde, 1959). The state gave preference to colonizationprojects, hoping to harness, inhabit, and civilize the “empty” Amazon inte-rior; and to logging, mining, cattle ranching, and oil prospecting projects(Moore, 1984). Indigenous people were often expelled from their own tradi-tional territories, or subjected to exploitative economic relations at the hands ofhacienda owners and labor bosses. The Belaunde government likewisestimulated colonization and development projects in the department ofMadre de Dios, including logging concessions throughout the Cultural Zoneand petroleum exploration blocks immediately surrounding and even cross-ing Manu Park boundaries. Most egregiously, Belaunde initiated planning ofan interfluvial canal and highway that would have cut through the middle ofPNM and connected the Peruvian coast with the trans-Amazon highway inBrazil, a project which he attempted to inaugurate in 1982 during his sec-ond term of office, with disastrous results (see Yora [Nahua], above).

In 1974, the socialist military government of General Velasco Alvaradodecreed the “Law of Native Communities” (D.L. 20653), granting indigenouspeople certain collective rights over land. However, the law was formulated



in such a way as to recognize indigenous territorial rights only at the locallevel, the so-called “native community,” and not at the level of larger cul-tural-linguistic groups or geographic regions. In this way, large traditionalterritories were fragmented into small, autonomous communities, eachrecognized legally and organized according to democratic principles. Thisformulation was intended to put to rest the specter, raised during the

TABLE 1 Peruvian Laws Pertaining to the Status of Indigenous Peoples in Parks

Year Law name Law numberSummary and relevance to native populations

1974 Ley de Comunidades Nativas

Decreto Legislativo Nº 20653

Law of Native Communities: establishes basis of legal land title for indigenous communities throughout Peruvian Amazon.

1975 Ley Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre


Forestry and Wildlife Law: general policy for conservation and protected areas; native inhabitants of protected areas are not mentioned.

1978 Ley de Comunidades Nativas y de Desarrollo Agrario en las Regiones de Selva y Ceja de Selva


Revised Law of Native Communities: caveats and restrictions to 1974 legislation; notably, legal land title in parks is not allowed, though native communities can remain in parks if they do not interfere with conservation objectives.

1990 Código del Medio Ambiente y los Recursos Naturales


Code for the Environment and Natural Resources: native communities can receive legal land title in parks, as long as they do not interfere with the conservation objectives (in contradiction to above).

1994 International Labor Organization Convention 169 on Indigenous Peoples

Ratified as R.L. 26253

ILO Convention 169: requires participation by indigenous peoples in administration, use, and protection of natural resources; forced resettlement of native people is illegal.

1997 Ley de Áreas Naturales Protegidas

Ley N° 26834 Law of Natural Protected Areas: “special use” zones permitted in national parks where inhabitants who predate the park can practice land use; but legal land title not permitted.

1999 Estrategia Nacional para las Áreas Naturales Protegidas – Plan Director (INRENA 1999)

Decreto Supremo N° 010-99-AG

Strategy for the implementation of the 1997 Protected Areas Law (above)

2001 Reglamento de la Ley de Áreas Naturales Protegidas

Decreto Supremo N° 038-2001-AG

Implementation of the 1997 Protected Areas Law (above)



nascent indigenous movement of the early 1970s, of independent indige-nous “nations” within the Peruvian state. Nonetheless, the Native Commu-nity Law provided a crucial legal framework of land tenure for indigenouspeoples, and has ultimately led to the titling of tens of millions of hectaresof land to native communities throughout the Peruvian Amazon.

The revised 1978 Law of Native Communities (D.L. 22175) further weak-ened indigenous rights to land tenure by stipulating that only agricultural landscould be held in communal title. Forested lands (the vast majority of land in anative community) are treated as government property ceded for communaluse, with the government maintaining the right to withdraw or condition thatuse. These stipulations were clearly intended to ensure that indigenous territo-ries would not present an obstacle to colonization, road construction, petro-chemical and mineral exploration, and other development projects.Furthermore, the 1978 law also states that native communities in national parksare not allowed to receive land title, though they are permitted to remain aslong as their activities do not interfere with the park’s conservation objectives.Nonetheless, three Andean peasant communities and one lowland native com-munity were titled in the 1980s with territories partially overlapping PNM.

In direct contradiction to the 1978 Law of Native Communities, the morecomprehensive 1990 Environmental and Natural Resource Code (D.L. 613)recognizes land tenure and the resource-use rights of indigenous communi-ties within natural protected areas. As such, this legislation conforms with thelanguage of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ratifiedin Peru in 1994 by R.L. 26253), guaranteeing the rights of indigenous andtribal peoples to participate in the use, economic benefits, administration, andconservation of natural resources. During a 1993 meeting betweenMatsigenka inhabitants, indigenous NGOs, and park officials (see Shepard,2002a), the park officials were shown the paragraphs in the 1990 NaturalResource Code that specifically permitted the titling of native communitieswithin national parks; they had not been aware of this aspect of the legislation,and were surprised by the revelation. More recently, the 1997 Law of ProtectedNatural Areas (L. 26834) attempted to resolve the contradictory legal situationby permitting the creation of “Special Use Zones” (see Figure 1) for ancestralcommunities in national parks. Such special zones provide official recognitionfor native communities without granting them actual land title. However, it isstill possible that politically ambitious native communities in parks could takeadvantage of the contradictory legislation and push for land titles.

In addition to the contradictory laws governing land title in parks, thelegislation that ostensibly limits indigenous activities in parks is open to differ-ent interpretations. For instance, several important laws (see Table 1) grantancestral indigenous populations the right to remain in parks as long astheir traditional activities do not interfere with a park’s conservation goals.However, a more restrictive interpretation could argue that even traditionalsubsistence activities have sufficient environmental impact to be deleterious to



a national park’s objectives, given a large enough population size. Thus, it isnot clear whether legal weight rests more on the total environmental impactof indigenous activities, or on the fact that those activities are “traditional.” Thesituation becomes even more murky when one tries to define “traditional”subsistence activities. One reading might include only the activities of isolatedor so-called “uncontacted” populations. However, the historical record indi-cates that the isolated, nomadic populations of Manu are not “traditional” atall, but rather refugees from Rubber Boom violence. On the other hand, thecurrent settled populations of Tayakome and Yomybato (and increasingly, themore isolated Matsigenka populations with whom they trade) are utterlydependent on steel tools, Western medicines, other imported technologies,and, increasingly, formal school education. These are distinctly non-traditionalinnovations, and yet were introduced by missionaries prior to the founding ofthe park. In any event, restricting access to trade goods, medicines, and for-mal education would drastically lower their quality of life and probably con-travene their broad legal rights as Peruvian citizens, as well as thoseguaranteed by the Environmental and Natural Resource Code.

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL POLICIES OF PNM

It is clear that the core, “untouchable” area of Manu National Park (PNM)was created on the ancestral territory of indigenous Amazonian and Andeanpeoples and that those populations have legal rights to the use of that landfor the foreseeable future. Even today, the total indigenous population ofPNM is not known, due to significant numbers of isolated groups in variousparts of the park. The focus of the rest of this article is therefore on theMatsigenka population of about 420, settled in two legally recognizedMatsigenka communities, Tayakome and Yomybato.

For now, the status of human populations and the control of humanimpacts remain a subject of debate and polemic among state institutions,NGOs, biologists, anthropologists, and indigenous organizations. Despite theobvious need and many attempts over the years, PNM has never developedeffective, long-term policies concerning local indigenous and non-indigenouspopulations. During most of the park’s history, no anthropologist or other pro-fessional with social science training has been on the staff. The longest tenurewas between 1985 and 1988. Since that time, a number of “park anthropolo-gists” have been hired on a temporary basis using momentary funding oppor-tunities, but have been let go once full funding responsibility falls back onINRENA, and the impact on native community relations has been negligible,becoming a standing joke among the Matsigenka: “That one came one time,and never came back. Then there was that other one we didn’t even meet!I wonder how long this latest one will last?” It would appear that INRENA andPNM do not place a high priority on maintaining a full-time anthropological



professional. Thus, since PNM’s inauguration, its anthropological policies havetended to be vague, even unwritten, sometimes contradictory, and frequentlychanged, paralleling the legal history related above. To the inhabitants, therationale and regulations of PNM remained mysterious through the first twodecades of the park’s existence, until the early 1990s, when these inhabitantsbegan demanding information, attention, and assistance.

TABLE 2 Timeline of PNM’s Anthropological Policies

Year Author/institution Name/descriptionImplications for

communities Status

1968 La Molina Forestry School

Habitat zoning Recommends various resource-use zones for native communities

Never implemented

1970s PNM Informal rules concerning native peoples

Native inhabitants allowed to move freely in park and maintain“traditional” subsistence activities

Largely followed through the present

1985 Rios et al. 1st Master Plan for PNM

Very little anthropological information or planning; native communities maintain traditional lifestyle or else leave the park

Overall plan implemented, though aspects referring to native communities never communicated to them

1989 Helberg 1st Anthropological Plan for PNM

Guidelines for anthropological policy and dialogue with communities

Never implemented

1997 Rummenhoeller 2nd Anthropological Plan for PNM

Preliminary document to coordinate actions, improve quality of life, and promote participation in park management

Never officially implemented, but some of its recommendations eventually adopted

2002 INRENA and Pro-Manu

2nd Master Plan Harmonize the cultural development of indigenous peoples with objectives of National Park

Implemented

2002 INRENA and Pro Manu

Revision of the 2nd Anthropological Plan

Assurance of traditional indigenous rights in park territories, better education and health access, participation in park management

Not yet implemented, though implementation required per the 2nd Master Plan



The history of PNM’s anthropological policies can be divided into threemain phases: (a) an early phase, from the inception of the park through themid-1980s, guided by unrealistic and idealistic notions and with little directcontact or communication with native communities; (b) a phase of crisis,from the mid-1980s through the late 1990s, when the native communitiesbegan to react to the park’s negligence during the prior decade; and (c) thecurrent phase of rapprochement and negotiation, marked especially by theinauguration in 1997–1998 of the Matsigenka ecotourism lodge with directINRENA support.

The First Decade of Official Policy: 1973–1985

The Belgian anthropologist André-Marcel d’Ans (1972, 1975), who partici-pated in early anthropological surveys, saw the creation of PNM as a chanceto protect native peoples from outside influences that would change theirway of life or subject them to undignified or inhumane conditions; for exam-ple, forced labor or debt peonage. But the main impetus for creating PNMcame from biological conservationists, which meant that the park’s location,rationale, and boundaries were determined according to ecological anddefensibility criteria: high wildlife abundances and the opportunity to con-serve an entire watershed and an unbroken altitudinal gradient. There was noconsideration of the existing territories, resource- use patterns, or ancestralrights of lowland or Andean indigenous populations, nor were local popula-tions consulted about the creation of the park. In 1968, soon after the declara-tion of a national forest reserve in Manu, a team from the Forestry ResearchInstitute at La Molina University proposed a habitat zoning system for theMatsigenka communities, including areas for hunting, forest product collec-tion, and agriculture (Ríos, Vasquez, Ponce, Tovar, & Dourojeanni, 1985).Curiously, the work was carried out without any study of actual Matsigenkaland or resource-use practices, and not surprisingly, this first attempt atanthropological policy making had no practical consequences. As the firstintervention aimed at native populations, this anecdote appropriately sets thestage for a long history of top-down policy making that has shown littlerespect for or interest in indigenous cultures, and often verged on the absurd.

The early administrators of PNM established a set of guidelines govern-ing the activities of native peoples in the park. For the most part, these ruleswere not written down or communicated explicitly to the native inhabitants.However, because of the isolation and cultural conservatism of the Matsigenkacommunities, the rules have proven to be somewhat self-enforcing.

1. Indigenous residents of PNM are free to carry out traditional subsistenceactivities such as hunting, fishing, gathering, and agriculture throughoutthe park. Firearms are prohibited, yet other non-traditional technologiessuch as fishhooks, line, and nets are permitted.



2. Commercial logging and the traffic and sale of animal skins and hides, aswell as wild animals are prohibited. Raising cattle or swine, even for sub-sistence reasons, is not allowed.

3. Indigenous residents of PNM are allowed to circulate freely in the park.Although they need no authorization to enter or leave the park, they aresubject to search and confiscation of non-authorized items, especiallyfirearms and munitions. However, since there are no explicit rules,depending upon the historical moment and the disposition of the parkguard, traditional food, craft, and extractive items (e.g., smoked fish ormeat, turtle eggs, palm thatch, arrows, medicinal saps, or bark) assumedto be destined for commercialization outside the park have been confis-cated, usually to the great consternation of the person carrying them.

4. Persons or groups entering PNM whose activities could affect the indige-nous way of life are subject to search and are usually required to obtainprior authorization from the Peruvian government.

The main idea behind these norms is to prevent indigenous communi-ties having access to technologies (such as firearms) or extractive economicopportunities that could harm the ecology of the park.

In 1985, a document known as the Master Plan (“Plan Director”) wasapproved for PNM (Ríos et al., 1985). The plan lacks any detailed anthropo-logical, ethnohistorical, or human-ecological analysis. It considers only twoacceptable options for native populations: conserve their traditional life-styles and remain in the park, or opt for Westernization and leave the park;however, no provisions were made to enforce the second option. Effec-tively, the Master Plan provided the justification behind the unwritten rulesput in place by previous PNM administrations, as described above. The tacithope of preservationist-minded conservationists was that the park wouldgradually become depopulated as native inhabitants were drawn towardtrade centers and economic opportunities outside the park (Helberg, 1989).Those who subscribed to such ideas underestimated the strong ties of nativepeople to their lands, resources, and traditions. In fact, as surrounding areassuccumb to colonization and resource pressure, PNM may become increas-ingly attractive to both Westernized and isolated indigenous peoples as asafe haven, a crucial point to which we return below (see Common Interests,below).

The Growing Crisis: Matsigenka-Park Conflicts, 1973–1985

The expulsion of Protestant missionaries from the Summer Institute ofLinguistics (SIL) in 1973 marked the first important conflict between PNMand the Matsigenka, and arose out of the protectionist-idealist vision of thepark: by removing outside influences, the indigenous population wouldreturn to an idealized, but historically inaccurate, “natural” state. The flaw in



that plan was that economic, education, and especially health-care necessitieshad already been generated by the missionaries’ 10-yr presence in theregion. In the early years of the park’s existence, a guard post was estab-lished at Tayakome. Due to insufficient material support, lack of appropriatetraining, and nonexistent park rules, the park guards stationed there pro-voked a series of conflicts with the inhabitants of Tayakome that areremembered bitterly to the present day: sexual relations with native women,a heavy dependence on the community for food, abuse of authority, alcohol-ism, and other transgressions. After many complaints, and also for logisticalreasons, the guard post at Tayakome was finally relocated downstream.

The removal of the SIL left a tremendous political, economic, educa-tional, and medical vacuum in Tayakome that the park did little, or nothing,to fill. One Matsigenka schoolteacher who had been trained by the mission-aries continued teaching for a few years in Tayakome after the SIL’s officialdeparture, but he eventually gave up due to a lack of support both withinthe community and from the outside. A group of families moved downstreamfrom Tayakome and began sporadic trade relations with the scientists at theCocha Cashu Biological Station, bartering fish and agricultural products forWestern goods. Another group of families, hoping to escape cold epidemics,attacks by the hostile Yora tribe, and social conflicts within the community,left Tayakome beginning in 1978 to establish new settlements on the upperQuebrada Fierro tributary, constituting the community known today asYomybato.

The most critical conflicts between PNM and the communities wereprecipitated by the precarious health situation during the decade followingthe park’s inauguration in 1973. After having lived in a settled communitywith missionary health care for a decade, suddenly the Matsigenka were leftwith no Western medical assistance. Their health status during the decadeof isolation that followed was abysmal. Epidemics of respiratory infectionswere frequent and fatal, and outbreaks of unusual new illnesses resulted inaccusations of sorcery, death threats, and the exile of some communitymembers. Analysis of demographic data from the village of Tayakome,where the SIL school and health post had been, shows a 50% decline in therate of population growth during the decade of 1975–1984, after the mis-sionary exodus, when compared with the prior decade of missionary presence.Between 1974 and 1980, 15 of the 25 children born in Tayakome diedduring that period, a grim 60% rate of infant and child mortality (Shepardet al., 2009).

During 1986, anthropologists Magdalena Hurtado and Kim Hill spentmuch of their fieldwork time and all of their personal medical resources(plus several thousand penicillin tablets donated by the parents of G. Shepard)treating a particularly virulent outbreak of respiratory infections amongMatsigenka and Yora populations (Hurtado, Hill, & Kaplan, 1987; Hill &Kaplan, 1990). The researchers made arrangements with SIL’s air fleet, “Alas



de Esperanza” (Wings of Hope), for an airdrop of additional medicines andpossible removal of an acutely ill patient. Though unable themselves toaddress the dire health-care needs of the indigenous communities, PNMofficials denied SIL access to Manu’s airspace, apparently in fear that medicalassistance might represent a “foot in the door” for the return of SIL presenceto Manu. These direct conflicts between the anthropologists and park officials,as well as ideological conflict between their research agenda and the park’sidealistic-protectionist anthropological vision, jeopardized future researchauthorizations for the team. Colleagues of Hill and Hurtado, Hilliard Kaplanand Kate Kopischke carried out research in Manu in 1988 and again foundthemselves treating major health problems while encountering only obsta-cles among park officials: “Critics sought to revoke our research permits,and at regular intervals we learned of rumor campaigns designed, undoubt-edly, to instill distrust among the Matsigenka themselves” (Kopischke, 1996,p. 185).

These conflicts between the park and the anthropological researchers,and the continued lack of economic opportunities, further embittered theMatsigenka. In this and other instances, persons and organizations whoworked with or sought to assist the Matsigenka were expelled, banned, orotherwise hindered in carrying out their work with the communities. Ineach instance, PNM administrators judged the immediate or long-termimpacts of the work of these people or organizations as inconsistent withthe park’s conservation interests and preservationist policies.

Certainly a park has the right, indeed the obligation, to restrict access toits territories and take decisions about which research and other projectswill be allowed to take place. However, due to the unclear or nonexistentanthropological policies, the absence of concrete alternative projects, and acomplete lack of communication with the communities to justify or clarifysuch decisions, they came to be perceived by the Matsigenka as arbitrary,unfair, and detrimental to their livelihood.

After the withdrawal of the SIL, the Dominican mission at Shintuya onthe upper Madre de Dios decided to re-conquer the souls of Manu for theCatholic Church, taking advantage of and sometimes fueling a growing anti-park sentiment among the Matsigenka. Initially, the priests at Shintuya senthumanitarian aid such as tools, clothes, and medical supplies. In 1983–1984,the diocese established schools, first in Tayakome and then in Yomybato.Various episodes of conflict and confrontation occurred between the parkand the Dominican priests over the confiscation of banned articles; forexample, when priests tried to smuggle guns or ammunition to the commu-nities, or when they left the communities and the park laden with driedbush meat or turtle eggs given to them by the Matsigenka.

The return of schools and teachers caused fundamental changes in thesocial organization of the communities. As in the SIL times, the school becamea fixed and central point of reference for the community, serving as a hub of



access to Western goods and medicines and contributing to a growing sed-entarization of formerly scattered, mobile settlements (d’Ans, 1975; Shepard &Chicchón, 2001). The pedagogical method and philosophy of the schools,however, changed completely from SIL times. Motivated by a curious mixtureof linguistic, anthropological, and evangelical zeal, SIL teaches reading andwriting in the native language. SIL missionaries are trained in field lin-guistic techniques in order to develop a custom orthography for translatingthe Bible and other Christian texts into the native tongue. In contrast, theDominican teaching method emphasizes reading and writing skills in thenational language of Spanish, employs Spanish orthography to render thenative tongue (which is the source of the spelling “Machiguenga,” instead ofthe SIL-devised and orthographically proper spelling “Matsigenka”), and isdriven by a philosophy of acculturation and assimilation into Peruviannational society.

The teachers sent by the priests to run the small, community-builtschoolhouses are bilingual, Westernized Matsigenka from the UrubambaRiver who studied under the Dominican education system. Because of theirSpanish language ability, they often serve, whether in official capacity or not,as intermediaries in interactions with outsiders. Consequently, the school-teachers have come to acquire significant political and economic power in thecommunities, and have been prime motivators for a wide range of social andcultural changes over the past two decades. In both communities, close rela-tives of the schoolteachers have come for extended visits from their homeregions, sometimes marrying and remaining in the communities but in otherinstances provoking social conflict, especially when male relatives havefathered illegitimate children. The schoolteachers facilitated contacts withPeruvian indigenous organizations and contributed greatly to the currentpolitical engagement of the communities. In particular, the indigenous rightsorganization CEDIA (Centro para el Desarrollo del Indígena Amazónico) wasconnected by close kinship ties to one of the schoolteachers.

However, the schoolteachers have also introduced a complex andsomewhat paradoxical cultural dynamic. Though they are often motivatedby altruistic goals of educating and defending the human and cultural rightsof their people, the teachers have, through contact with the national society,subliminally assimilated a series of negative stereotypes and prejudicestoward their own culture, which they have inadvertently visited upon thecommunity. Worse, because the communities remained culturally isolated,the Spanish-language-based teaching met with very limited educational suc-cess for many years. The community members made tremendous sacrificesand gave up their much-desired autonomy to maintain the schools and sup-port the teachers, but received disappointing results for their children. (Onlyin recent years has the educational situation improved, though this is largelydue to the impetus provided by the recent ecotourism project at CochaSalvador in 1998.)



The resulting low literacy standards, combined with PNM-imposed limitson commercial activities and the general geographic isolation, served to furtherlimit economic opportunities. Though some Matsigenka worked as boatdrivers or wage laborers in the tourist trade or for scientific researchers,overall such benefits were short-term and minimal, not truly building localcapacities or social capital. During the particularly bleak years betweenPNM’s establishment and the mid-1980s, some young men left the park formonths at a time to work under appalling conditions as wage laborers incommercial logging or gold mining operations. Having almost no commandof Spanish or notions of money, they often came back with little more thanserious illnesses and a few pieces of used clothing. Throughout the firstdecade or more of the park’s existence, virtually the only access to Westerngoods available to the Matsigenka was charity or barter trade from Catholicmissionaries, the poorly paid indigenous schoolteachers, visiting anthropol-ogists, and scientists at Cocha Cashu station. Other than an occasional orderfor palm-leaf roof thatch, the Matsigenka in the park received virtually noth-ing from the ecotourism agencies operating since the 1980s.

By the mid-1980s, most Matsigenka inhabitants were of the opinionthat the park was, at best, a nuisance, and at worst, an oppressor and amenace, providing no visible assistance, imposing arbitrary restrictions andprohibitions, hindering or expelling anyone who tried to help them, anddenying them access to goods, services, and the market economy withoutproviding any obvious benefits in return. There was little or no direct dia-logue between the park administration and the Matsigenka for the firstdecade or more of the park’s existence. The very rules and restrictions ofthe park had only arrived to the Matsigenka indirectly and sometimes incontradictory fashion, usually second- or third-hand, transmitted by parkguards or the biologists at Cocha Cashu.

Reacting to Crisis: 1985–1997

The park’s rigid, protectionist vision eventually became obsolete in dealingwith the settled Matsigenka communities, as their communication withPeruvian society and increased access to health, education, and other ser-vices in the 1980s generated new necessities and expectations. In response,from 1985–1988 the park administration hired, for the first and only signifi-cant time, a professional anthropologist, who formulated new guidelines foran anthropological policy with a focus on dialogue with native populations(Helberg, 1989; Rummehoeller and Helberg, 1992). Nonetheless, the planwas never put into action.

In the late 1980s, Peru’s park system underwent an overhaul, andcontrol over parks and natural resources was centralized at the NationalInstitute of Natural Resources (INRENA), a large, semi-autonomous insti-tute affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture (previously, parks had been



managed by a small department of Forestry and Fauna within the Ministryof Agriculture). In addition to the legal contradictions and loopholes dis-cussed above, there emerged at times an inconsistency in policy, if notdirect personal rivalry, between the Lima-based INRENA and the Cusco-based PNM administration. For instance, researchers, film crews, and othersgranted entrance authorizations in Lima have been denied authorization inCusco. When such institutional conflicts have delayed or otherwise interferedwith the plans of visitors to native communities, the communities have taken itas further evidence of interference by both INRENA and PNM in their welfare.

The discontent in the Matsigenka population reached critical levels inthe early 1990s, when INRENA refused to approve a tourist lodge project tobenefit the Matsigenka communities that had been proposed by the indige-nous rights organization CEDIA. In part incited by the organization, theMatsigenka defied INRENA and in 1992 began construction of the lodge atan important tourist destination in Manu without awaiting approval. WhenINRENA moved to interdict the construction, some Matsigenka threatened toopen cattle pastures along the Manu river if the lodge project were notapproved. To overcome this impasse, INRENA decided to implant its owntourism lodge project with the Matsigenka as part of FANPE (Fortalecimientodel Sistema Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado), a largerproject funded by the German government’s aid agency GTZ (DeutscheGesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit) to support Peru’s nationalpark system. With this political move, INRENA co-opted the tourism lodgeconcept, giving in to the Matsigenkas’ demands without turning over controlof the project to an organization perceived as hostile to the park’s interests.CEDIA retaliated with a media campaign, threatened legal proceedingsagainst INRENA for intellectual property theft, and mobilized a high-levelinvestigation of the situation in Manu park by Peru’s ombudsmanshipagency, the Defensoria del Pueblo.

The conflict between the CEDIA and INRENA also had repercussionsfor relations between the two Matsigenka communities. One of the commu-nities cut off its ties to the organization during this tense period, upset bythe organization’s proprietary stance toward the lodge project. The secondcommunity maintained its relationship with CEDIA due to strong kinshipties between the organization and the schoolteacher. This led to tensionsbetween the two communities in the early phase of the lodge project. Factionswithin the second community, loyal to CEDIA, remained skeptical and criticalof the INRENA/FANPE lodge project. In this case, we see how native commu-nities can become a kind of battleground between different organizations orpolitical philosophies. Even though INRENA’s and PNM’s policies towardthe native populations changed in response to the conflict, the underlyingprinciple of power and control was maintained intact.

In the 1990s, with growing pressure from the communities themselves, aswell as from some biologists, anthropologists, and indigenous organizations,



the Directorship of PNM as well as INRENA began to take a greater interestin the situation of the native populations. In 1993, a workshop funded bythe Discovery Channel (Washington, DC), Superflow Productions (ColoradoSprings, CO), and Friends of the Peruvian Rainforest (Philadelphia, PA) washeld at Tayakome during which, for the first time since the creation of thepark in 1973, representatives of the Peruvian government, the park adminis-tration, and the conservation community explained to Matsigenka inhabit-ants what a national park was, and why one had been created in Manu 20 yrprior. As described by Shepard (2002a), some Matsigenka participants haddifficulty understanding why a park had been established in Manu to protectendangered species, when many of the so-called “endangered species” didnot seem to be particularly endangered by Matsigenka subsistence activities.

In 1995, the Director of PNM visited for the first time the larger villageof Yomybato. In 1996–1997, the Directorship of PNM prepared a preliminarydocument to establish norms and policies for coordinating actions amongvarious sectors of the state, NGOs, and local populations in order to improvethe quality of life and promote their participation in park projects and policies(Rummenhoeller, 1997). The anthropological issues and problems mentionedincluded:

1. the participation of indigenous and local populations in the managementof PNM;

2. respect for and revitalization of indigenous cultural heritage, includingthe protection of intellectual property rights over traditional knowledge;

3. the protection of isolated or “uncontacted” indigenous populationswithin PNM—especially considering their extreme vulnerability to conta-gious and epidemic diseases—and the development of an emergency medi-cal action plan;

4. measures to address problems in the provision of basic services such ashealth and education to local populations;

5. formalizing land tenure among Andean peasant and colonist communi-ties along the western border of PNM, and resolving conflicts involvingthe overlap of Andean and indigenous communities and pasture areaswith PNM’s boundaries;

6. the establishment of transparent, long-term policies and rules governingsubsistence activities, resource extraction, applied and scientific researchin native communities, and the practice of economic alternatives, includ-ing tourism.

Despite this promising diagnosis, an effective, long-term anthropologicalpolicy toward native communities was not put into practice, and thus, thepark’s treatment of its indigenous policies continued to be guided by theever-more-obsolete dichotomy between so-called “traditional” and Westernizedindigenous lifeways.



Rapprochement, Negotiation, and the Matsigenka Lodge: 1997–Present

The current phase of increasing negotiation and cooperation between PNMand the Matsigenka communities began with the inauguration of Matsigenkaecotourism lodge project at Cocha Salvador in 1997–1998, supported byINRENA through the German-funded FANPE project. Despite initial conflictsbetween CEDIA and INRENA over the intellectual ownership of the lodgeconcept, as well as conflicts between the two communities over their rela-tionship with CEDIA, the two Matsigenka villages quickly set aside theirdifferences and took on the lodge project wholeheartedly. The constructionphase of the project (1997–1998), overseen by a Peruvian conservationNGO, was beset by numerous problems, including delays, poor choice ofkey personnel, and confusion among the Matsigenka with regards to paymentfor their labor and material contributions to the construction (Shepard,1998a). Officially inaugurated in 1998, the lodge’s first 3 yr (1997–2000),nonetheless, saw a growing positive relationship between INRENA/PNMand the Matsigenka. More recently, however, shortcomings in the project’simplementation have caused many to question the lodge’s economic viabilityand the project’s ultimate success (Ohl, 2004). Monitoring of cultural andeconomic change, included in the original project proposal (APECO, 2000),was not given adequate financial support by FANPE. The crucial program ofcapacity building workshops were also curtailed and ultimately dropped.FANPE cut back all funding for the project in 2003, despite the fact that theMatsigenka were not yet adequately trained in basic management skills.

Initially, the economic success of the lodge seemed guaranteed, since itwas to be the only lodging facility (other than dry-season campsites) atCocha Salvador, an oxbow lake surrounded by pristine lowland forest withabundant fauna, which is Manu Park’s prime tourist attraction. This situationwould guarantee the Matsigenka a monopoly on rainy season tourism,when camping is no longer feasible or permitted on the soggy forest floor.Within the first few years of the lodge’s operation, however, the other tourgroups operating at Salvador successfully lobbied INRENA for permission tobuild small shelters for rainy season lodging, creating significant competi-tion and severely undercutting the lodge’s business year-round. Especiallysince FANPE funding to the lodge project has been cut back, the lodge isbarely managing to break even, and is not generating enough revenues tomake investments required for basic maintenance and upkeep (Ohl, 2004).Furthermore, tourism generally in Manu has declined due to increasingcompetition from cheaper, more convenient tour packages to the Tambopataregion near Puerto Maldonado on the lower Madre de Dios.

Though the lodge project has been hailed as a model project within thenational park system and for indigenous populations, the fact that it remainsunder direct INRENA control presents the risk that the park’s anthropological



policies will continue to respond to fickle internal politics and state-definedinterests, rather than to the actual needs of local populations. This danger isespecially apparent in the policies governing how the lodge services aresold to tourists. Though INRENA openly supports the lodge project, thereare signs that other, competing ecotourism operations in Manu may beexerting political pressure on INRENA and PNM to minimize the Matsigenkalodge’s access to tourists, and hence its economic success. Only in 2006 hasthe Matsigenka lodge project finally been granted its official tour operatorlicense for Manu Park, allowing the lodge to sell tourism packages directlyto clients. However, the lodge still receives most tourists from other, officialManu tour operators who are, of course, their competitors. For now, thelodge has been able to cover its operating expenses, including salaries forfour workers at a time, but has not been generating enough profits to payfor necessary capital spending, such as the periodic replacement of build-ings (Ohl-Schacherer et al., 2008).

Thus, without improved management, greatly enhanced revenues, anda strengthened anthropological vision of cultural change and communitydevelopment, the lodge could fail commercially, generate profound socialand cultural disruptions, and create yet more conflicts and disillusionmentamong the Matsigenka communities. Despite all its problems, however, anddue mostly to the profound commitment of the Matsigenka themselves, thelodge has remained a positive force in their communities, generating someincome for most families via salaries and handicraft sales, while also servingas a focal point of cultural pride. Despite the shortcomings in the capacity-building process, a few key Matsigenka managers have emerged to shoul-der the bulk of the responsibilities in running the lodge, despite minimalfinancial rewards. Cultural and community pride, as much as economicopportunity, appears to be a prime motivation for all those involved in theproject. The Matsigenka have also been extremely careful to share responsi-bilities and rewards of the lodge project in as inclusive a manner as possible.Thus far, and largely through their own vigilance and efforts (rather thanthrough any fixed anthropological plan), the Matsigenka have managed toavoid or mitigate the worst of the social and economic conflicts that suchprojects generally unleash.

As required by 1997 environmental legislation (see Table 2) and arevised national strategy for protected areas (INRENA, 1999), a new MasterPlan for Manu Park was drawn up by a collaborative European-Peruvianproject known as Pro-Manu (INRENA and Pro-Manu, 2002), a process whichtook almost 6 yr to complete. Unlike the first Master Plan of 1985 (Rioset al., 1985), the newer document takes a more serious look at the role ofnative populations in the park and proposes some solutions to the ambiguoussituation of “traditional” versus Westernized styles of resource exploitation;for example, by establishing a quota system for resource use. It also proposes asystem of economic benefits and compensation to substitute for ecologically



harmful activities, seeking a balance between conservation priorities andthe interests of local populations. And finally, it proposes a system of repre-sentation and participation of local communities through management com-mittees and contracts of service for the use of renewable resources. In manyways, this Master Plan borrows the rhetoric and methods of IntegratedConservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), a popular strategy at thetime the plan was written. So far, however, these proposed solutions remainat best only partially implemented. The Matsigenka lodge, the major com-ponent of direct compensation for native communities in Manu, is not yetfinancially sustainable and so has neither satisfied the expectations of con-servationists nor solved the concrete problems of local populations. In short,the 1999 Master Plan is succumbing to the same problems as other ICDPprojects, which have been criticized for achieving neither conservation nordevelopment (Ferraro & Kiss, 2002).

In summary, rather than working to implement comprehensive man-agement with regard to native communities, PNM has instead responded tovarious crisis situations in a politically expedient way without serious con-sideration of long-term goals or consequences, most obviously by failing toinclude any social scientists in its ranks. Thus, unequipped to deal withanthropological issues, PNM and INRENA have and continue to seek short-termsolutions to complex, long-term problems. In the meantime, disputes overaccess to PNM and to its natural resources, as well as over who benefitsfrom that access, continue to multiply.

Most generally, people/park conflicts in PNM derive from differentopinions over the relative importance of socio-economic development ofindigenous communities, on the one hand, and biodiversity preservation onthe other. This basic conflict manifests itself in different forms, for example:in legislative conflicts between laws governing protected areas and thosegoverning indigenous rights; in ideological and political conflicts betweenindigenous rights organizations and INRENA; and in social and economicconflicts over access to natural resources among different local actors, includingindigenous communities, colonists, scientists and ecotourism agencies; andin conflicts between such local actors and outside economic interests governedby separate government agencies such as logging, mining and petrochemicalexploration.

Biologists as well as park administrators have a tendency to view ManuPark as a closed system, both in ecological as well as cultural and historicalterms. It would be enough, it seems, to guard the “front door” of the parkalong the lower portion of the Manu River to avoid the arrival of externalinfluences that could upset the supposed ecological and cultural balanceand purity of this Amazon paradise. This vision ignores the long and com-plex human history in Manu of which we have related only a portion. Longbefore the arrival of Fitzcarrald, the footpaths crossing various isthmusesbetween the Manu, Camisea, and Mishagua headwaters have served as



routes of trade and communication between various ethnic groups, and theroutes remain active today.

A NEW EXPULSION FROM PARADISE?

John Terborgh, in his book, Requiem for Nature (1999), dedicates an entirechapter, entitled “The Danger Within” (pp. 40–58) to a discussion of thethreats posed by the Matsigenka to the future of Manu Park. Terborgh affirmsthat in the long run, the park and the people cannot coexist. He concedesthat his argument is politically incorrect and that any “rational” resolution ofthe people/parks dilemma in Manu and elsewhere is becoming increasinglydifficult due to the growing political power of indigenous organizations andthe popular appeal of calls for indigenous rights. Terborgh (1999, pp. 26–27)views the inevitable consequence of this process will be that Manu will“imperceptibly pass from being a national park to being a reserve for itsindigenous inhabitants.” Analyzing the situation in Manu Park and other trop-ical areas, he concludes, “When human necessities are placed in the balancewith the natural world, nature always loses.” Terborgh suggests that the onlyway to guarantee conservation in this (and other rainforest parks) is by con-vincing Westernized indigenous communities to relocate voluntarily to landsof lesser conservation value outside park boundaries, in exchange for somepackage of employment, schooling, land titles, and other services. However,an enticement strategy would, he concedes, require years of consistent andenlightened management to be successful, an unlikely prospect.

As even-handed as it is, this argument represents a simplification of thepolitical and social realities both inside and outside Manu Park’s bound-aries. To begin with, a poorly managed emigration that resorted to coercivetactics would quickly become entangled in the national laws, outlinedabove, that grant indigenous land rights and would likely trigger a politicalbattle involving national and international indigenous organizations that nogovernment would win.

Political obstacles aside, there is in fact little uncontested land surround-ing Manu Park (Figure 2). Numerous petrochemical and lumber concessionsexist in this region, as well as indigenous and colonist communities alreadydemarcated or in the process of demarcation. There are also several largeindigenous communal reserves in various stages of study and demarcation,including the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. Furthermore, the lower Manu,Los Amigos, and Piedras basins include substantial areas where isolated indig-enous populations transit. The Los Amigos river has recently been set aside asa sustainable use and conservation concession, while parts of the upperPiedras have been included within the Purus Reserve Zone. For these rea-sons, major emigration, voluntary or otherwise, of Matsigenka and other pop-ulations to lands outside the park would provoke a series of social and



environmental conflicts that would certainly affect Manu Park in ways per-haps more immediate and dire than the long-term threats Terborgh considers.

In short, the resettlement of park inhabitants has today little political orpractical viability. After the SIL emigration, not even the blatant neglect and mis-treatment of the park administration toward the Matsigenka through the late1980s led to any major emigration. On the contrary, as we have seen, PNM isbecoming increasingly attractive as a safe haven for the less market-integratedindigenous groups. It is this dynamic that provides us with a possible resolutionof the people/park conflict, at least over the next several decades.

COMMON INTERESTS

It would be unfair to describe only the negative impacts of the park on itsindigenous inhabitants. The park also benefits its human inhabitants byallowing them to avoid or alleviate several socio-environmental conflictsobserved in other regions of Peru. Most directly, because outsiders are keptfrom entering, the park protects intact a large forested area that serves as asource for wild game, fish and other resources that park inhabitants cantake advantage of. The people of Tayakome and Yomybato are increasinglyaware of the specter of game animal scarcity in communities outside thepark, where firearms and commercial hunting have visibly reduced animalpopulations. For indigenous populations, animal protein is a crucial aspectof daily subsistence, since the agricultural staples of manioc and plaintainsprovide almost no dietary protein. The park also benefits communities onits borders. For example, Manu Park is one of the few locations in Madre deDios Province where there still exist significant populations of the valuabletropical cedar (Cedrela odorata), which the indigenous and mestizo inhabitantsof Boca Manu exploit sustainably (for the valuable boat construction trade),under the supervision of park guards, by taking only those tree trunks thatfloat out of the park each year.

Secondly, despite the lack of control over the “backdoor” entrancesvia the Camisea and Mishagua headwaters, the existing guard posts onthe Manu River itself have stopped colonists, loggers, gold miners, andother destructive invaders from occupying and exploiting park lands andthe indigenous populations (including the uncontacted groups) withinand immediately surrounding Manu. Thirdly, since about 1990, the inter-national fame of Manu has attracted a number of research and conserva-tion and development projects that have conferred both direct andindirect benefits on the Matsigenkas. And finally, over the longer term, iftheir ecotourism lodge should establish long-term commercial viability,the profits and the training opportunities will help to reinforce a positiverelationship between the Matsigenka and the park’s physical integrityand conservation goals.



Just as indigenous inhabitants have benefited from Manu Park withoutalways being aware of these benefits, so has the park benefited from thepresence of indigenous inhabitants. The most dramatic example were Yoraattacks along the upper Mishagua and Camisea—the park’s unprotected“back door”—that repelled loggers, petrochemical prospectors, and mostnotoriously, the government survey team sent to inaugurate the highway-building project that would have destroyed Manu Park a mere decade afterits inauguration. Today, the contacted and settled Yora are struggling toprotect the Kugapakori-Nahua Reserve from loggers who will certainly haveno qualms about crossing into park territory to cut mahogany once itbecomes commercially extinct along the Mishagua River. Illegal logging hasalso increased dramatically to the east and north of Manu Park during the1990s, especially after Brazil banned mahogany exports in 1999, raisinginternational prices and creating a mahogany boom in Madre de Dios. In2001, Peruvian scientists implementing the Rio de los Amigos ecologicalreserve zone, adjacent to Manu, discovered logging camps located less than2 km from Manu’s borders (C. Flores, personal communication, June 4,2001).

Drug trafficking also poses a serious threat, as exemplified by anepisode that occurred in the Cultural Zone of Manu Biosphere Reserve in1994. Colombian and Peruvian traffickers, fleeing the increasingly policedHuallaga valley, occupied the small tourist airport at Boca Manu and estab-lished a coca-paste-processing operation. The traffickers forcibly paid offlocal indigenous and mestizo community authorities and employed communitymembers as laborers. In such a high-profile tourist airport, authorities werenotified almost immediately of the problem, yet the operation continuedfor nearly 6 months. It was finally closed down by a dramatic drug bust thatincluded participation of the Peruvian Marines and the U.S. DrugEnforcement Agency. Most of the Colombian and Peruvian traffickers whoran the operation escaped prior to the bust, apparently having receivedearly warning. Virtually all of the “drug traffickers” captured in the operationwere local indigenous and Andean colonist residents with minimal involvementand financial benefit from the lucrative, large-scale operation. At least oneresident (unarmed and fleeing along the bank) was shot and killed duringthe operation. Some twenty suspects, a significant proportion of the adultpopulation of two quiet jungle villages, were charged with “internationaldrug-trafficking and terrorism,” carrying a penalty of 40 yr in prison. Thankslargely due to legal counsel paid for by the regional Catholic Church, thesecharges were eventually reduced. Nonetheless, thirteen heads of familyserved up to 2 yr in Cusco’s high-security prison.

Rumors still abound of unusual airplane traffic, campsites, and clandes-tine landing strips in the hinterlands. Cocaine traffickers also seem to havescouted native communities in and around Manu Park in search of knowl-edgeable native guides. The threat of further drug-trafficking operations in



Manu gives all the more urgency for viable, dignified economic alternativesfor indigenous populations.

Whether the Manu Matsigenka will aid in discovering, denouncing, andresisting such incursions, or whether they will greet them as badly neededeconomic alternatives, will be a key determinant of the success or failure oflong-term efforts to defend the integrity of PNM. The Matsigenka possessunique advantages with regards to controlling such incursions, as they candraw upon the support of national and international indigenous rightsorganizations while providing a human face for PNM in political battlesover access to the park’s resources.

If, on the other hand, the Matsigenka were to leave the park through theproposed voluntary relocation plan, Manu would become a demographic anda political vacuum, surrounded by politically savvy extractive enterprises withlegions of politicized laborers. In 1999, logging interests carried out behind-the-scenes manipulations leading to a general strike and violent outbursts inthe capital of Puerto Maldonado (and elsewhere) in response to an INRENAoperation to confiscate illegal mahogany. Similar kinds of protests and vio-lence have occurred sporadically since throughout Peru. One can easily imag-ine how such interests might manipulate the press against a Manu Park devoidof visible indigenous inhabitants, pitting poor, jobless loggers and farmersagainst the wealthy gringo scientists and tourists of Manu. For example, theloggers operating in the Alto Purus National Park are publicly denying thepresence of its isolated indigenous inhabitants, despite numerous eyewitnessaccounts of abandoned camps, thereby undermining the legitimacy of thepark (C. Kirkby, personal communication, June 25, 2005). Over the longerterm, the ongoing paving of the (politely re-named) Interoceanica highwaythat runs from Brazil through Madre de Dios to Peru’s coast is bringing enor-mous colonization and deforestation pressures to bear on the entire region.

Given such political realities, arguments such as Alvard’s (1993)—namely, that native hunters maximize short-term returns and hence are notconservationists—seem narrow. Whether or not one chooses to define indige-nous people as conservationists in an absolute or technical sense, thereseems little doubt that they are better conservationists, relatively speaking,than the logging companies, colonists, miners, cattle ranchers, and agribusinessthat await access to their largely unexploited forests. In this way, the obviouscosts to biodiversity from local human inhabitation could be outweighed bythe real, even if difficult-to-quantify, benefits of preventing large-scale incur-sion by more destructive, outside interests.

THE “TENURE-FOR-DEFENSE” TRADE

Could this, then, represent a possible resolution of the people/park conflictin Manu, one that does not need to invoke resettlement but rather relies on



the continued presence of indigenous peoples (Schwartzman et al., 2000)?To give a definitive answer, we would need to show that the defensivebenefits of inhabitation will outweigh the local costs of exploitation over thelong run. That is, we must realize that even when indigenous inhabitants cansuccessfully repel commercial resource extractors (e.g., Zimmerman et al.,2001), the more the indigenous population itself grows, Westernizes, andexploits the park’s natural resources, the blurrier becomes the distinctionbetween internal and external threats until such point as the park loses itsconservation value (Terborgh, 1999).

As a practical matter, it is far from easy to quantify the risks and costsof incursion into Manu Park by commercial agents, even though we can besure that both numbers are greater than zero, nor can we predict withcertainty whether the Matsigenka will be successful in opposing thoseagents. Instead, with respect to this “tenure-for-defense” trade, we view theMatsigenka as a conservation wager: a known, small, but growing biodiver-sity cost that is paid for the possibility of a much larger conservation benefit(or benefits) some undefined time (or times) in the future. The lower thecost (and the more slowly that cost grows), the higher the conservationreturn will be on that wager and the longer that Manu’s biodiversity cancoexist stably with its human inhabitants. A key issue, then, is estimating thecost to biodiversity as the Matsigenka population grows and Westernizes.Matsigenka agricultural practices by themselves will cause little disturbanceto the park. Even allowing for a 50-yr fallow period, soils within the imme-diate vicinity of the current settlements will be able to sustain agricultureindefinitely for a population of at least 2100 people, five times the currentpopulation (Ohl, 2004; Ohl et al., 2007). The greater cost to biodiversityconservation would appear to be the reduction in game populations causedby hunting. Preferred game species are large vertebrates, which are themost extinction-prone, have a high intrinsic conservation value, and areimportant for seed dispersal. If populations of large vertebrates can be pro-tected from over-hunting, then we can be fairly sure that other componentsof biodiversity in Manu (tree cover, top predators, small vertebrates, andarthropods) will also persist.

In short, a viable “tenure-for-defense” trade requires an effective gamemanagement plan for the Matsigenka. To this purpose, the authors areengaged in a 3-yr research project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, to assessthe degree to which “source-sink” processes can stabilize game exploitation(Ohl-Schacherer et al., 2007). Like most hunters, the Matsigenka are central-place foragers, who limit most of their hunting to one-day forays on foot.The most important implication of this is that for each game species, therate of mortality due to hunting should scale up more slowly than doeshunter population growth, and eventually asymptote at the rate of immigra-tion from the unhunted source population (the rest of the park) into thehunting zone “sink.” Therefore, by limiting the number and location of



Matsigenka settlements, it should be possible to put a cap on the biodiversitycost of indigenous inhabitation. Such source-sink dynamics are credited withallowing the persistence of game species within the larger indigenous reservesacross the Amazon, despite local hunting pressure (Novaro, Redford, &Bodmer, 2000; Peres, 2001; Sirén, Hamback, & Machoa, 2004; Peres &Nascimento, 2006), and of course, parks themselves are partially justified onthe basis of their source-sink benefits.

Our study has assessed: (a) current rates of game animal harvest in thetwo Matsigenka villages; (b) the extent of the current hunting zones; (c)game animal densities in both hunted and non-hunted areas; and (d) histor-ical and current rates of human population growth. Our overall objective isto calculate the degree to which limits will need to be imposed on the num-ber and location of Matsigenka settlements, given different scenarios ofpopulation growth and spread. Settlements are, of course, more easily mon-itored than are hunting quotas. Significantly, the project includes the Matsi-genka as active participants in the research process. Twenty-eightMatsigenka households (96%) monitored their own game harvest profiles,using participatory monitoring sheets adapted from those developed byTownsend (1997) for use among indigenous Amazonian peoples with mini-mal reading and writing skills. In this way, we were able to amplify ourobservational powers as compared to single-year, single-researcher studies,both in the numbers of households being monitored and in the continualcoverage of households over the course of the study. Furthermore, theinvolvement of the Matsigenka in the data collection will be crucial to theirsense of ownership, commitment, and validation to the research results.

The project is also undertaking an interdisciplinary study of the natureand scale of the conflict between the Matsigenka and Manu Park, and of theextent of external threats, both currently and in the future. Ultimately, incollaboration with the Matsigenka, INRENA, and other stakeholders, theauthors will design a management plan to minimize and stabilize the costsof park occupation. The goal of the management plan will be to build onexisting park policies by clarifying and delimiting the rights granted to theMatsigenka, and conferring new responsibilities on all sides to make explicitthe tenure-for-defense trade.

CONCLUSION

Currently, the conservation situation in Manu is far from dire. Game animalpopulations are healthy despite heavy hunting near the Matsigenka communi-ties (Ohl-Schacherer et al., 2007). Important large animal species such asspider monkeys, woolly monkeys, scarlet macaws, and many others, threat-ened or extinct in other parts of Peru, can be seen near both Matsigenka com-munities in the park (Shepard, 2002a; da Silva et al., 2005). Hunters report



41% of their kills within 500 m of the community perimeter (Ohl-Schachereret al., 2007), and they perceive no lack of game animals. On the contrary, theycomplain about the populations of collared peccaries and pacas that destroytheir manioc gardens. The Matsigenka rarely deign to eat howler monkey,brocket deer, or capybara due to cultural beliefs: only those with abundantand healthy game populations can afford to be so choosy (Shepard, 2002a).Accordingly, over the last 15 yr, hunted prey profiles have not shifted towardless valuable species (Ohl-Schacherer et al., 2007), as occurs with over-hunting(Rowcliffe, Cowlishaw, & Long, 2003; Peres & Nascimento, 2006).

Although relations between the park and its Matsigenka inhabitantshave been tested in the recent past, they have grown friendlier, especiallydue to the ecotourism project. The commercial resource extractors outsideManu have not yet shown serious interest in invading park territory, despiteminimal patrolling. We, therefore, emphasize that our diagnosis and pro-posed solutions, including the option of relying mostly on natural source-sinkdynamics to stabilize faunal offtake, are based on this set of circumstancesand must be understood as applicable to this place and time. Manu Parkappears to be an ideal place to achieve a “tenure-for-defense” trade. Elsewhere,where political, economic, and ecological circumstances are different, differentdiagnoses and solutions will be required.

But even for Manu Park, to achieve a sustained resolution to the conflictbetween people and parks, we will have to understand not only the culturalvalues of people who live in the parks we wish to protect, but also beaware of our own cultural biases as administrators, scientists, anthropolo-gists, and conservationists. We can no longer ask Nature and Culture to ruleover separate kingdoms in a crowded world. There is not the space,whether we mean that physically, legally, or politically. Strictly protected,people-free parks cover only a tiny fraction of the land area needed tomaintain critical ecosystem services such as carbon storage and hydrologicalcycles (Schwartzman et al., 2000). In South America, this state of affairs hasprompted a consensus that successful conservation will require a networkof extractive reserves, indigenous territories, national forests, and strictlyprotected parks, which only together can preserve basin-wide ecosystemservices, with parks serving the additional role of protecting the large verte-brate species crucial for biodiversity maintenance (Peres & Terborgh, 1995).

However, we cannot rely solely on parks for the latter role. Firstly,indigenous and extractive reserves are too numerous and large to ignore aspotential sanctuaries of wildlife populations. Indigenous territories accountfor 54% of all reserves by acreage in the nine Amazonian countries, andoverall cover 100 million ha or 21% of forested area in the Brazilian Amazon(Peres, 1993). Secondly, of the 186 national parks in Latin America, 86% arehome to indigenous communities or other local human populations (Amend& Amend 1992, Kemf, 1993; Brandon, Redford, & Sanderson, 1998) and are,furthermore, poorly protected from extractive incursions (Terborgh & Peres,



2002). Thus, indigenous societies, in a literal sense, have been made stewardsof half or more of the Amazon’s protected biodiversity. Given the long andmostly tragic history of indigenous peoples in Amazon reserves, it is imprudent,not to mention hypocritical, to alienate these potential allies in biodiversityconservation through preservationist polemics and threats of relocation. Par-ticipatory, community-based research on questions of resource use are animportant means of promoting dialogue between social scientists, biologists,and indigenous populations about conservation issues. The time is pastwhere we could continue to debate whether indigenous people are or arenot conservationists. For much of the Amazon, and elsewhere, the usefulquestion is rather how indigenous residents can both benefit from andstrengthen conservation in the lands where they live.

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Trouble in Paradise: Indigenous Populations, Anthropological Policies, and Biodiversity Conservation in Manu National Park, Peru

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