Automatic cameras installed in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest have captured images of an indigenous people who have had no formal contact with the rest of Brazilian society.
These are the first photographs of members of this community called Massaco by researchers, from the name of the river which crosses their territory, located near the border with Bolivia.
Of course, no one knows what these people call themselves, nor what their traditions, their language, their beliefs or even their social structure are.
These are the British newspapers The Guardian and Brazilian O Globo who revealed these previously unpublished images (New window)taken between 2019 and 2024 by the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), an agency of the Brazilian government.
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According to the FUNAIwhich has worked for decades to protect the isolated peoples of the Brazilian Amazon, the Massaco population has doubled since the 1990s and is now estimated at somewhere between 200 and 250 people.
From the images, these people seem to be doing well. They even suggest that the number of its members continues to increase, while the state in which this community is located, Rondonia, is one of the Brazilian states most affected by deforestation and the pressure exerted by gold miners and traffickers. .
The photographs show men at a location where police officers FUNAI Periodically leave metal tools, such as machetes or axes.
These gifts, which were once used to encourage Aboriginal people to make contact, are now used to prevent this contact and discourage individuals from seeking tools themselves from farms or logging camps.
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An aerial image of an area of deforested Amazon rainforest covered in smoke from an illegal fire in the municipality of Cujubim, Rondonia state, August 20, 2024.
Photo: afp via getty images / EVARISTO SA
The Massaco are one of 28 isolated indigenous communities recorded in Brazil. Dozens of others are scattered across the Amazon and the Gran Chaco region, located between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia.
Avoid contact
Since 1987, the Brazilian state has had a policy of not making contact with these communities and respecting their isolation in order to protect them, after decades of a policy of making contact carried out by the central government which led to death. of 90% of individuals, mainly due to illness.
And this policy, since adopted by Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, is working: the demographic growth of isolated peoples is a trend throughout the Amazon, despite decades of demographic decline of indigenous populations, deforestation and all the pressures exerted on their territory.
This was revealed in a 2023 publication in the scientific journal Naturewhich noted the growth of populations along Brazil’s borders with Peru and Venezuela, notably through satellite images showing larger cultivated plots and larger homes.
With information from Guardian andThe Globe
