Logging, drug trafficking and the climate crisis endanger the world’s largest isolated Indigenous group, on the border with Brazil

In 1999, Beatriz Huertas, then a young anthropologist, travelled deep into the Peruvian Amazon to investigate reports of uncontacted Indigenous peoples. Along the Las Piedras River, people in Monte Salvado, a Yine Indigenous village, described how every summer, “aislados” – those who avoid sustained contact with outsiders – would appear across the river.

“They were coming into the fields and taking bananas,” says Huertas.