Very little information is generally available about the region of the upper Río Purús. Only a single small municipality, Puerto Esperanza, is found in the entire provincia of Purús, located in the departamento of Ucayali. Puerto Esperanza is one of Peru's more isolated towns, reachable only irregularly by air from the rest of Peru, or by river from Brazil. Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that the facts concerning isolated indigenous peoples in the Purús region are little-known in the rest of Peru. The purpose of this report is to address this deficit of information. In doing so, Cabeceras Aid Project seeks to influence the policies of organizations and individuals concerned with the welfare of indigenous groups, such as those I discuss below. Our hope is that this information will be used to make better-informed decisions about actions that may effect what are some of the last isolated peoples in the Peruvian Amazon Basin.
Below I present the information I gathered on two groups found in the region of the upper Río Purús: the Mashco and the Deños. I then discuss contact efforts that have been made in the past, and those which are currently underway in the region. Finally, I discuss the attitudes towards these isolated peoples among both the more acculturated indigenous peoples of the region and the mestizos of Puerto Esperanza.
The information presented here was gathered during travels motivated by an interest in the Panoan languages spoken in the Purús region, during June and July of 1998. As a fieldworker for Cabeceras Aid Project I was also interested in gathering information about isolated indigenous groups in the region and efforts being made to contact them. Most of this information was obtained by means of interviews with people personally involved in the encounters discussed. I gathered much of this information with the help of Chris Beier, another Cabeceras Aid Project fieldworker, who provided invaluable help on many occasions.