52 Scientific American, February 2019Yet as remote as Curare is, life here in the borderland is none-
theless shot through with elements of modernity. Many of the
children attend a boarding school across the river from La Pedre-
ra that was run by Catholic priests until last year, when the gov-
ernment took it over. Tribespeople regularly travel to La Pedrera
for modern health care and to more distant cities such as Leticia
and even Bogotá when they have a serious illness or a broken
bone. Many wear modern clothing and use machetes, flashlights
and steel pots purchased in towns such as La Pedrera and have
been exposed to television. It is a testament to the determination
of the uncontacted tribespeople and their self-appointed guard-
ians that these influences have not reached the interior.
The indigenous people in Curare and Río Puré have known
for generations of the presence of their mysterious brethren in
the interior, believed by scholars to be members of two related
tribes called the Yuri and Passé. But it was the arrival of a Colom-
bian environmentalist named Roberto Franco and ACT in the
early 2000s that would thrust them into the center of Colom-
bia’s dialogue over how to defend its most isolated peoples.
Franco, the author of numerous books on the history of the
Amazon, was for years one of the leading Colombian proponents
of the idea that the best way to protect the rain forests was to
uphold the land rights of the nation’s indigenous tribes, whose
cultures were based on living in harmony with their surround-
ings. He had also worked as an anthropological consultant to
government agencies, had seen the ravages of first contact first-
hand and had come to believe that “self-isolation” was a human-
rights issue. Intent on finding a way to shield the nation’s most
vulnerable groups, Franco began collecting
scraps of information about isolated peoples
during his expeditions through the Amazon
in the 1980s. He scoured the historical litera-
ture for clues, pored over maps and conduct-
ed interviews—even meeting with former
rebel commanders and drug traffickers who
had come across uncontacted tribespeople in
their travels through the bush.
To win official government protection, how-
ever, Franco needed concrete proof of the ex-
istence of these tribes. In 2007 ACT agreed to support his efforts
to get it. By then Franco had already decided that Curare and
Río Puré were the most promising places to start. In the late
1960s a rubber tapper and fur trader named Julian Gil came
across a well-worn path deep in the jungle, far from any settle-
ment, and followed it to a vast longhouse, or maloca, where he
discovered scores of tribesmen in the middle of a celebration.
They wore nothing but tiny pouches covering their privates and
sticks as thick as pencils through piercings in their ears and nos-
es. They had painted their bodies in stripes. But the tribe wanted
nothing to do with the visitors, and the meeting turned violent,
resulting in the disappearance of Gil and the deaths of a number
of tribesmen. The Colombian military took several tribe mem-
bers prisoner, prompting a worldwide outcry. The military subse-
quently freed the prisoners and vowed to leave the tribe in peace.
These people are believed to have been members of the Yuri
and Passé tribes, groups that began fleeing white slavers hun-
dreds of years ago, settled in the area and were thought to have
gone extinct. But in 2010 Franco and a small crew flew over the
most likely habitation zones in Curare and Río Puré in a single-
engine Cessna. On the first day they spotted a longhouse sur-
rounded by fruit trees—and snapped photographs of an indige-
nous tribeswoman, her face and body painted, who could clear-
ly be seen gazing up at the plane. The footage, along with the
identification of four other malocas, was enough to get the gov-
ernment and the nation’s indigenous groups to agree to begin
the process of hammering out protections for the nation’s isolat-
ed peoples.
In 2014 Franco was flying home from another community
farther north when his aircraft went down, killing all 10 people
onboard—including Daniel Matapí, another ACT staff member.
It was a devastating blow for ACT and for Aristizabal, then a
young Ministry of Interior official, whose graduate thesis
focused on preserving the privacy of isolated tribes. Aristizabal
had been closely collaborating with Franco to develop new laws
to that end. After Franco’s untimely death, Aristizabal agreed to
join ACT and continue his legacy.A CENTRAL TENET of that legacy has been partnering with the
indigenous groups in Curare to support their protection efforts.
While I was in Curare, the communities were holding their an -
nual meeting to review those efforts and plan for the year ahead.
Aristizabal and I made our way to an enormous maloca with a
30-foot-high thatched-palm roof to join them.
Once inside, Aristizabal and I were greeted like old friends.
In the center of the structure, eight male community elders
dressed in soccer shirts and T-shirts were clustered together on
their ritual wood benches. As they chatted and laughed, theypassed around tall, cylindrical Tupperware containers of mam-
be, a mixture of coca leaves and ash, copious amounts of which
they shoveled into the space between their lips and gums with
metal spoons. Around them, children chased one another, trip-
ping and laughing, as their parents watched from long planks
arrayed between the pillars holding up the structure. Others
reclined in hammocks slung to the far walls.
Over the next three nights, various tribal figures would step
across the hard-packed earth to the front of the maloca to deliv-
er reports on a wide range of activities, conducted over the pre-
vious year, aimed at securing the reserve and its inhabitants.
The proceedings were unhurried and deliberate, offering ample
opportunity to reflect on the challenges facing both the uncon-
tacted peoples and their guardians.
Some participants spoke about preserving the cultural tradi-
tions of the tribes that do have contact with the world beyond.
One young tribesman described his efforts to make story books
for the smallest children detailing the traditional legends that
would help explain the importance of the protection of sacred
places and the reserve management plan. “As you know, the sto-e t n er in an rain
ere a me a e fr m t e i er
e e a in ea e a ne
—Alfonso Matapí, shaman
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