The defense of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including those living in voluntary isolation or initial contact, continues to face significant challenges across Latin America, particularly when such defense conflicts with economic and political interests related to extractive projects. Despite formal recognition of their individual and collective rights, a concerning pattern of censorship, judicialization, and criminalization targeting Indigenous organizations and their representative authorities persists throughout the region. Recent cases in Guatemala and Peru exemplify this troubling reality.
Peru: FENAMAD and Judicial Censorship
In July 2025, the Supreme Court of Peru lifted a gag order imposed since 2021 on the local indigenous organization, the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and Tributaries (FENAMAD). This injunction had restricted the organization’s rights to due process and freedom of expression.
FENAMAD functions as the regional representative body for Indigenous Peoples inhabiting the Madre de Dios River basin, advocating for their fundamental and collective rights, including those of Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact.
The organization is dedicated to defending collective and fundamental indigenous rights as enshrined in both national legislation and international law, as well as promoting equality among communities with diverse historical backgrounds.
In 2020, the logging company Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT) filed a lawsuit against FENAMAD and its president, Julio Cusurichi Palacios, following his public denunciation of illegal logging activities within the territory of the uncontacted Mashco Piro Indigenous People.
Notably, a regional court imposed a gag order on FENAMAD, effectively prohibiting the organization from advocating for the Mashco Piro People’s right to inhabit their ancestral lands.
In Amparo case file 13420/2023, the Supreme Court ruled that the regional tribunal’s judicial response was disproportionate. It emphasized that FENAMAD’s communiqué did not constitute an unwarranted attack but rather a legitimate expression of concern for the welfare of Indigenous Peoples in extreme vulnerability.
The Court affirmed that freedom of expression protects critical opinions, particularly regarding matters of public interest such as the human rights of Indigenous collectives.
Moreover, the Supreme Court noted that the contested ruling lacked an appropriate intercultural approach, disregarded the precautionary principle that should guide decisions involving Indigenous Peoples, and failed to consider that the area in question has been protected under precautionary measures imposed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights since 2007.
The Role of FSC
This case also prompted action by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which on September 13, 2024, provisionally suspended for six months the forest management certification of Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT) as a precautionary measure, given the proximity of its concessions to the traditional territory of the voluntarily isolated Mashco Piro People.
During this suspension, MCT was barred from marketing products bearing the FSC certification or using its registered trademark, underscoring FSC’s preventive approach to mitigating risks that directly threaten the rights of vulnerable Indigenous communities.
According to its official website, FSC is a non-profit international organization established in 1993, dedicated to promoting environmentally responsible and economically viable forest management.
FSC’s governance structure ensures balanced representation among non-governmental organizations, private enterprises, forest communities, Indigenous Peoples, and labor unions. Its voluntary certification system is audited by independent bodies, and only operations meeting FSC’s rigorous standards are permitted to use the FSC label and access responsible markets.
In Peru, the Callería community concession, led by the association AIDER, received the country’s first FSC community certification in 2011, which incentivized sustainable practices and enabled economic benefits while preserving the community’s ecosystem and cultural identity.
The issues discussed herein reflect a critical tension recurring in many regions: the expansion of logging activities—both legal and illegal—has encroached upon protected territories, resulting in extreme vulnerability, forced displacement, exposure to diseases, and violence.
At the end of August 2025, members of the Yine community reported the presence of Mashco Piro individuals in their village, a consequence of expanding logging operations in the region.
According to Survival International, incursions into the territories of uncontacted peoples lead to deadly epidemics among their members and the destruction of their habitat, often provoking violent confrontations.
In response, FSC extended the provisional suspension of MCT’s Registered Trademark License Agreement until November 2025.
Simultaneously, FSC is reviewing necessary regulatory reforms to ensure that the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI) are adequately reflected in FSC’s forest management standards in Peru.
Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact
Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI) are indigenous communities that either maintain no sustained contact with external society (isolation) or have recently begun re-establishing such contact (initial contact).
The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues acknowledges the presence of PIACI in South America, Indonesia, West Papua, the Andaman Islands of India, and parts of Africa.
According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights:
“Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation are peoples or segments of Indigenous Peoples who do not maintain sustained contact with the majority non-indigenous population and typically avoid all forms of contact with outsiders. They may also be peoples or segments previously contacted who, following intermittent interactions with non-indigenous societies, have returned to isolation and severed contact.”
Conversely, Indigenous Peoples in initial contact maintain intermittent or sporadic interactions with the majority non-indigenous population, generally referring to those who have recently commenced a contact process.
The term “initial” does not denote a temporal stage but rather a degree of contact, describing peoples in voluntary isolation who, for various voluntary or involuntary reasons, maintain limited contact but do not know or share the social codes of interaction of the majority population.
In Peru, the State officially recognizes these peoples through Law No. 28736 (PIACI Law, 2006), which protects their choice to remain uncontacted, safeguards their culture, traditional way of life, right to self-determination, and territorial rights through the demarcation of indigenous reserves.
Approximately 25 PIACI groups are recognized, including the Mashco Piro, with an estimated population of around 7,500 individuals residing in Amazonian regions such as Madre de Dios and Ucayali.
Part of the Mashco Piro’s territory has been protected since 2002 with the establishment of the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve, designed to preserve the forest of the uncontacted Mashco Piro, Yora, and Amahuaca Peoples.
However, the Peruvian government excluded a significant portion of this recognized territory, which was subsequently allocated as logging concessions to various companies, including MCT. Following sustained pressure from local indigenous organizations, authorities agreed in 2016 to expand the reserve—a measure that remains unimplemented.
In a context where fundamental individual and collective rights such as life and the survival of a people are at stake, the repeated imposition of measures censoring the defense activities of Indigenous Peoples and their organizations is difficult to justify.
It is important to note that, in most cases, these claims seek enforcement of existing state legal norms, which should compel the State to protect rather than obstruct such demands.
Regrettably, this combination of censorship and criminalization is not limited to Peru but occurs throughout several countries in the region.
Criminalization of Indigenous Authorities in Guatemala
A recent example of state structures being utilized to criminalize social activism, rights defense, and even Indigenous authorities themselves is currently unfolding in Guatemala.
At the end of July, Mr. Esteban Toc Tzay, former indigenous vice-mayor of the department of Sololá, was apprehended while en route to a hospital for his routine hemodialysis treatment.
His arrest adds to the cases of Luis Pacheco and Héctor Chaclán, former members of the traditional authorities of the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán—a historic governance structure of the Quiché people in the Guatemalan highlands—who face criminal prosecution for peacefully defending the 2023 electoral results.
However, according to the Guatemalan Public Ministry, led by officials accused nationally and internationally of illicit conduct, these three indigenous leaders are charged with sedition, terrorism, illegal association, obstruction of justice, and hindrance of criminal proceedings. This information remains unofficial, as the case is under judicial secrecy.
As is customary, the case details remain confidential, limiting available information. However, it is known that their detention is linked to their participation, alongside other indigenous leaders and authorities, in protests demanding respect for the citizens’ electoral will expressed in the 2023 elections.
In other words, according to these Guatemalan authorities—whose continuation undermines the rule of law—defending citizens’ political rights is treated as a criminal offense, and indigenous ancestral authorities are deemed seditious organizations.
Conclusion
The cases of Peru and Guatemala reveal a disturbing instrumentalization of the justice system and state apparatus to repress, censor, and criminalize the defense of fundamental rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In situations where essential rights such as life, territory, and self-determination are at stake, institutional responses have ranged from neglect to outright repression.
This phenomenon is particularly alarming when Indigenous Peoples’ demands concern compliance with existing state laws and respect for international treaties ratified by the States themselves. Rather than being recognized as legitimate human rights defenders, many Indigenous organizations and leaders are treated as threats to the established order.
In this context, it is imperative to strengthen legal and political protection mechanisms for Indigenous Peoples, ensure effective access to intercultural justice, and prevent the state apparatus from being wielded as an instrument of repression.