‍Photography: Tui Anandi & Mike van Kruchten (Xapiri Ground)

The Matsés live in the Javarí valley, in the province of Requena in the department of Loreto, along the Yaquerana river, situated on the border between Peru and Brazil. On the Peruvian side, they have a population of approximately 2,200 people, covering more than 1 million hectares; on the other side of the river, in Brazil, the population is around 1,300 people. In Brazil, they are often referred to as Mayoruna, who all share the Matsés language, which is part of the Pano linguistic family.  

In 2009, the Matsés National Reserve was created, a protected area rich in biological diversity that represents the recognition of an extensive territory, covering 4,206.35 hectares. The reserve also supports regional conservation by forming part of the Binational Biological Corridor with the Sierra del Divisor National Park in Peru and the Alto Juruá and Alto Tarauacá reserves in Brazil.

The Matsés established peaceful and permanent contact with the national society in 1969. This contact came after years of intermittent hostility. It is known that, during this time, the Peruvian government bombed several Matsés settlements, forcing the displacement of the Indigenous people towards the Brazilian border (Quoted, in Montoya, et al. 2021). In the same year, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and the Matsés people met and founded a mission in the Yaquerana area, as a result of which the Matsés families, who until then had been scattered and isolated, began to gather around the SIL mission.

In older times, the Matsés were known as fierce warriors who raided other Indigenous villages nearby in order to capture women and take them as wives. They were great nomads, constantly changing their residence for food reasons (scarcity of game, new farms) or the death of a member of their family, or threats from other Indigenous groups.

The Matsés have struggled to protect their territory from external threats, harassed by illegal logging and multinational oil companies. The Matsés people together with the Regional Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of the East (ORPIO) filed a new action on the 10th April 2018, to demand the annulment of oil lots 135 and 137, which overlap with their territory by 50 per cent.

Currently, a supreme decree has established the creation of the Yavarí Tapiche Reserve, which guarantees the protection of isolated indigenous peoples in initial contact, including the Matsés, Remos (Isconahuas) and other unidentified peoples.  For this purpose, 1,095,877 hectares of forest in the districts of Soplín, Alto Tapiche and Yaquerana, in the province of Requena, in Loreto, have been demarcated. The establishment of the reserve is a historic event, and is the beginning of a great joint effort.

We have been developing sustainable fair-trade with the Matsés since 2016. All of our projects with the Matsés are directly coordinated with the Matsés leadership, and with the help and facilitation from Acaté Amazon Conservation. Acaté is an on-the-ground conservation organization founded in 2012 that works directly through projects developed and led by the Matsés to help maintain their self-sufficiency and cultural survival as they adapt to the outside world. For the projects, all of the Matsés are paid in advance at a fair price determined by and agreed upon by the communities and leaders. Acaté offers their expertise and advice to help the Matsés facilitate the trade but does not receive any percentage or monetary gain.

We have been on multiple expeditions to the Matsés territory since 2017.  Our mission is to visit and develop relationships with the many Matsés artisans we are working with while also documenting the processes behind the art. The long-term aim of our work is to ensure that the ancestral artistic practices are maintained and transmitted to the younger Matsés generations throughout their territory while introducing a sustainable economy.

In collaboration with the Matsés and Acaté Amazon Conservation we have produced 2 exhibitions, in 2019 at Qorikancha in Cusco, and in 2022 at the Centro Cultural Inca Garcilaso in Lima.

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^{BIBLIOGRAPHIC SOURCES:}

^{Erickson, P. (1999). El sello de los antepasados, marcado del cuerpo y demarcación étnica entre los matis de la Amazonía . Quito, Ecuador : ABYA-YALA/ IFEA.}

^{Erikson, P. (1994). Mayoruna. In F. Santos, & F. Barclay, Guía Etnográfica de la Alta Amazonía (Volume 2) (pp. 1-44). Quito, Ecuador. FLACSO.}

^{Fleck, Z. D., Uaqui, B. F., & Jiménez, H. D. (2012). Diccionario, Matsés-Castellano, con Índice Alfabético Castellano-Matsés e Índice semántico Castellano- Matsés. Lima: Tierra nueva .}

^{RENIEC, & Fleck, Z. D. (2016). Tesoro de nombres Matsés. Lima: RENIEC}

^{FIELD NOTES: Xapiri Ground}

^{NOTES: David Fleck}

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