- Peruvian authorities are backing a highway project that would cut through 5,400 hectares (more than 13,300 acres) of the largely preserved ancestral territory of the Shawi Nation.
- The road will connect the departments of Loreto and San Martín, threatening sensitive and biodiverse ecosystems, including unique white-sand forests and montane forests, and critical water sources.
- Indigenous leaders say the road will open up their territory not only to mining interests but also to an expansion of illegal coca cultivation, which is already growing in the region.
Peru’s Indigenous Shawi people continue to contest a plan to build a highway through their territory in the country’s Amazonian region, citing fears about losing their land — even as local authorities nudge the project forward.
The Yurimaguas–Balsapuerto–Moyobamba highway, backed by the government of the department of Loreto, would create a land link between two of Peru’s most important Amazonian regions, which until now have been connected only by a river course.
In a Sept. 8 statement, representatives of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Shawi Nation (GTAN Shawi) said establishing the highway “will encourage a wave of migrant settlers and illegal economies into our ancestral territory.” The Shawi territory covers around 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) straddling the departments of Loreto and San Martín. Yet only 160 Shawi communities have been granted land titles so far, with another 514 still seeking that recognition.
According to the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, the first recorded presence of the Shawi in the region dates back to 1538, when Spanish conquistadors and explorers crossed the territory.
“We have cared for our territory throughout the centuries,” GTAN Shawi vice president Clauber Tangoa Huayunga told Mongabay. “For the Shawi Nation, the [construction of the] highway is not viable if communities’ land title is not secured first.”
The planned highway would run 54 kilometers (34 miles), covering 5,400 hectares (about 13,300 acres) of Shawi territory. When Mongabay contacted the Loreto transportation office about the project, it declined to comment, saying the project is being carried out under the national government’s Provias Nacional slate of “special” infrastructure and transportation projects.
Even so, the Loreto and San Martín regional governments signed an agreement last year to promote technical studies regarding the new route. In late March this year, the Loreto government also gave the green light to the Moyobamba Consortium to undertake a feasibility study; that contract is worth 2.32 million soles, or about $667,000.
The consortium will determine the project’s technical and economic feasibility and must submit its report to the Loreto government by this October. As part of the process, representatives of the consortium met with some members of the local population to discuss the road construction. But Tangoa said the latter didn’t represent the interests of the Indigenous community: “Loreto officials and the consortium held meetings with migrant settlers and a group of Indigenous people who are not Shawi Nation leaders.”
He added, “We reject their intention to build the road.”
Threats to the Shawi territory
Concerns are legitimate, said Guisela Loayza, a legal adviser to the Sacred Headwaters Association (Asociación Cuencas Sagradas), part of an Indigenous-led alliance of civil society organizations promoting the protection of the Amazonian biome.
“From the moment a road is first planned until it is built and operational, it causes multiple impacts and damage. I can mention the migration of people in ‘waves’ — that is, in massive numbers,” she said.
She added that the arrival of a road can also result in land invasions and land grabs, as well as in the introduction of crops for which well-preserved forests would have to be cleared. “Even headwaters and water sources are impacted,” she said.
Loayza told Mongabay that the road’s establishment would trigger a massive “invasion spiral” into the area — a serious concern, given that 60% of the Shawi Nation’s territory is preserved. The territory straddles six districts within Loreto and San Martín, where land is increasingly being converted for agriculture through land leasing.
Biologist Cristina López, from the Peruvian nonprofit Law, Environment and Natural Resources (Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, or DAR), told Mongabay that although the territory doesn’t have sufficient space for agricultural production — due to its white-sand forest and montane forest biomes — the expansion of the agricultural frontier is one of the main problems.
“Outsiders rent [land by the] hectare from local farmers to grow fruit crops for three years. After that time, the land loses its properties, and they end up using more chemical inputs. This causes more damage to the territory,” López said.
There’s also the problem of coca production. Peru is one of the world’s top producers of cocaine, and part of the Shawi territory lies within the Bajo Huallaga coca-growing basin, on the Loreto–San Martín border. Coca cultivation here reached 1,441 hectares (3,561 acres) in 2024, according to a June report by Peru’s National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (Devida), a U.N.-backed entity in charge of drug-related policies.
“Without the [planned] road, we already have invaders planting coca, harming neighboring communities,” said Tangoa, the Shawi leader. “With the opening of this route, we will have more settlers and deforestation.”
In light of these issues, the government of Loreto promised to issue a regional ordinance to prohibit invasions, as communities are still in the process of obtaining land titles. But according to Loayza, “An ordinance can’t stop criminal groups [from acting].”
Mining concessions bring further problems
The Shawi Nation has also noted that the highway project coincides with INGEMMET, Peru’s mining regulator, preparing to grant 11 mining concessions in the district of Balsapuerto in Loreto. These concessions would overlap with the Indigenous communities of Puerto Libre, Nueva Luz, San Lorenzo, Nuevo Barranquita, Cachiyacu, Bellavista Nuevo Jumping and Churuyacu.
“It is common knowledge that our territories do not have access to drinking water or health services,” Loayza said. “The state does not reach us, and neither do newspapers. Indigenous peoples often find out about the granting of concessions when companies start working in the area.”
Clauber Tangoa also questioned whether the highway would serve to connect Indigenous communities with the cities of Yurimaguas, in Loreto, or Moyobamba, in San Martín. He said it would appear to be more beneficial to mining companies, allowing them to transport the ore extracted from the concessions.
In search of recognition
More than three-quarters of the communities that make up the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Shawi Nation still lack land titles, but this isn’t their main problem, according to Indigenous leaders.
“The Shawi have been talking about autonomous governments for more than 20 years,” López, the biologist, told Mongabay. “The idea behind this type of organization is to maintain territorial security for the Indigenous people, as well as to preserve their customs and language.”
This idea of an Indigenous-run area becomes violated when individual properties are handed over within the proposals of Indigenous nations, as has been the case within the Shawi territory, she said.
“We are moving toward a different model of government,” Tangoa said. “However, with the increase in invasions, illegality, and the granting of [mining] concessions in the territory, our way of life is being put at risk. What we ask for is legal security for our people before we have a highway — we are not opposed to the construction of the road, but we ask that it be done properly, protecting our Indigenous structure [first].”
Banner image: Houses of Shawi community residents on the banks of the Paranapura River in Peru. Image courtesy of the Field Museum.
This story was first published here in Spanish on Sept. 19, 2025.
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