Territorial organization and defense

Indigenous peoples from this region have been organizing for multiple decades to secure legal recognition of their territories and to defend their rights and interests. Following the adoption of Brazil’s Federal Constitution (1988) and Peru’s Native Communities Law (Ley de Comunidades Nativas, 1974), several Indigenous associations and organizations were created to strengthen political representation and to develop strategies that uphold their cultures and protect the environment.

Policy gaps and growing pressures

In both Brazil and Peru, government neglect of the Amazon has left Indigenous peoples unprotected, costing lives and deepening the absence of policies that defend their rights.

These borderlands face a combination of threats: invasions, illegal hunting and fishing, expanding deforestation, and the spread of both legal and illegal logging. New roads, clandestine airstrips, and international drug trafficking have only increased socio-environmental pressures on the region.

Expansion of logging and Indigenous resistance

In the late 1990s, numerous logging invasions violated Indigenous lands and crossed national borders. At the time, reports of these invasions in the Apiwtxa Indigenous Territory (Acre, Brazil) were submitted to both the Brazilian and Peruvian governments.

The Ashaninka of Apiwtxa led the resistance against these invasions, bringing the issue to international media to raise awareness about the serious environmental, social, and cultural consequences of logging. They also began building broader political alliances with Ashaninka leaders in Peru, which led to new partnerships between Indigenous communities on both sides of the border. These partnerships represented important exchanges of information, and the early development of joint strategies for the binational protection of their territories.

Saweto and the ongoing struggle for justice

In coordination with Apiwtxa, Ashéninka leaders from the community of Alto Tamaya–Saweto, at the headwaters of the Tamaya River in Peru, began denouncing illegal logging activities in the region.

In September 2014, four of its leaders — Edwin Chota, Leoncio Meléndez, Francisco Pinedo, and Jorge Peres — were murdered while traveling to the Apiwtxa village to discuss ongoing efforts to monitor and defend the border area. They had spent over a decade fighting for legal recognition of their territory in Peru and against the actions of loggers and drug traffickers.