WHERE WE REPORT


The Indigenous people of Yomibato, the farthest Indigenous community from Manu National Park, say they have been abandoned by the Peruvian government. Its inhabitants belong to the Matsigenka ethnic group, and they have quickly gone from living in isolation deep in the Amazon to having poor internet access or studying in the city of Puerto Maldonado. But the remoteness of their homeland, the inviolability of their ancestral territories, and the contradictions of a region in crisis have condemned them to an alarming decline.

Two decades after Peru passed a pioneering law for Indigenous people, this project will go to the jungle of Madre de Dios to show what life on the edge of "civilization" is really like. Unfortunately, the society they are entering shows symptoms of the same gold rush that devastated the fields of Canada or California, endangering the biological, historical and cultural treasures hidden in this region. The unstoppable advance of illegal mining, the corruption of the authorities, uncontrolled deforestation, and the influence of various lobbies are cornering forests that were once thought to be protected.

In this context, Yomibato is at the heart of one of the greatest challenges facing the Amazon: What is the future of the original inhabitants of this jungle?