- In 2024, the Wampís Indigenous nation formed the territorial monitoring group Charip to combat the expansion of illegal gold mining, loggers and other invaders in their territory in the Peruvian Amazon.
- Charip combines traditional knowledge with monitoring technology but lacks the financial resources to expand its control posts and cover more ground.
- Members of the group are unpaid, which has led to a decline in the number of available guards.
For several years, illegal gold mining, loggers and other invaders have impacted the territory of the Indigenous Wampís people (or Huambisa) of the northern Peruvian Amazon. To combat these threats amid a lack of state support, the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation (GTANW) formed the territorial monitoring group Charip.
The group’s formation in February 2024 led to quick results. Within two months, Charip arrested three Peruvian police officers for their involvement in illegal gold mining near the Wampís community of Villa Gonzalo, on the banks of the Santiago River. A high-level commission from the Peruvian government visited the Wampís Nation a few days later and promised to eradicate illegal mining in the area. However, sources told Mongabay the state has still not fulfilled its commitments.
Peru’s Ministry of Culture and the country’s Amazonas and Loreto regional governments did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time of publication. Neither did the Sixth Jungle Brigade, the unit of the Peruvian Army responsible for conducting land, river and air patrols, especially in border areas and the Amazon, to prevent the entry of foreign personnel and support environmental conservation.
In 2024, the Charip group also confiscated and destroyed at least seven mega-dredges along the Santiago River, according to a report by the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), a U.K.-based advocacy group that has supported Charip with fuel and food.
When the group was formed, it had about 60 personnel to fight against illegal miners, the Charip president René Santiago Ti, told Mongabay by video call. However, this number has dropped to nine because the work is unpaid, and the members have families to support.
“The comrades who left, it’s not that they don’t want to be here — they do,” Santiago said. “But they have families. And those who are active feel forgotten by the state. Those who are firmly active here are truly committed. Without food and money, we fight.”
Threats to the community
Deninson Sunka Ti, the secretary of Charip, was a student when the group was formed. During a school vacation, when he returned to his community for a few weeks, he learned about the illegal miners who had entered Wampís communities and polluted the rivers. Like many other members of the community at the time, he joined Charip to defend the territory and still remains committed to the work today.
“We work from day and night without rest, without sleep,” Sunka said. “Sometimes we go without food. There are days when we go without lunch, dinner or anything, because sometimes we don’t have enough money to buy food. We don’t have any financial means.”
The 1.3 million-hectare (3.2 million-acre) Wampís territory straddles the departments of Amazonas and Loreto — two regions that have seen an emergence of new deforestation fronts and the invasion of water bodies for gold mining activities. A new Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (MAAP) report found that between 2017 and 2025, in Peru, the Amazonas and Loreto regions had the greatest number of mining infrastructure in their Amazonian rivers, with 989 and 174 mining dredges, respectively.
Across both departments, the Wampís people depend on the Kankaim River, also known as the Morona River, and the Kanus River, or Santiago River. MAAP identified the Santiago River as one of the Amazonian rivers most affected by gold mining activity in the northern sector of the Peruvian Amazon.
“Here on the Santiago River, we haven’t seen any presence of the military or the Peruvian National Police,” Santiago said. “It is a wide river, approximately 100 meters [328 feet] wide, and it is long. But here, state territorial control is lacking. The state has abandoned us. We feel very outraged because we haven’t had any support in terms of security.”
Silvana Baldovino, who leads the Peruvian Society of Environmental Law (SPDA) Biodiversity and Indigenous Peoples team, told Mongabay via WhatsApp voice messages there is “a fairly clear pattern of the state’s absence in a large part of the national territory, especially to combat illegal activities.”
Indigenous guards are necessary because they assume the responsibility the state should have, Baldovino added. “But it must also be clear that they are putting their lives at risk for their territory, for its natural resources.”
The role of Charip
Santiago and other leaders told Mongabay the number of illegal miners in their territory has declined since Charip was formed. “Now we live more peacefully because in the beginning there were confrontations with the [miners],” Santiago said.
In Indigenous territories, guards like those working with Charip have the right to administer justice under a framework of intercultural justice, as established in Peru’s 1993 Constitution (Article 149). “As Indigenous peoples, they have their own rules and apply their own conditions,” Baldovino said. “It is not entirely clear what the limit is yet because it’s not fully regulated. But there must always be a framework or limit. You can’t violate the human rights of other people by applying intercultural justice.”
During interventions, Charip does not use guns and instead uses the same tools as their ancestors did. “As Wampís, we have always confronted [invaders] with our spears, our nanki.”
Charip control posts, which are set up along the riverbanks, are monitored day and night by the guards. Like border officials, they stop boats that wish to enter their territory and carry out inspections. If anything seems suspicious, they report it to the authorities.
While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to territorial security for Indigenous communities, Cameron Ellis, the field science director for the Rainforest Foundation US, explained to Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages that for Indigenous-led monitoring to be effective, the community’s territorial boundaries need to be clear, as well as what is permitted and not permitted within their territory. For instance, the community needs to agree that it will not accept mining or logging inside its boundaries.
“One big thing is visibility and making sure that the boundaries are clearly delineated and demarcated,” Ellis said. “On top of that, it can be really helpful if they have some amount of early warning systems or alert systems so they know where the threat is occurring in their territory.” It’s also really important that the Indigenous community itself has open channels of communication and open relationships with multiple state agencies, he added.
To ensure they are able to continue to control the invasions, Charip members told Mongabay they would like to set up more control posts but they lack financial resources and guards. They have plans to construct another post along the Santiago River and near the Ecuador border, but the request is still pending.
“We want to ensure this control, but we lack funds,” Pamuk Teófilo Kukush Pati, the elected leader of GTANW, told Mongabay in an interview. “We’re not installing more Charip [control posts] because, well, we want to implement it well with internet, with the boat, with all communication and also the recognition of Charip members. They also have their children who are in university, in college, and we don’t have funding.”
“Later, we want to ensure all of this so that [Charip members] feel good, so that they can control [the territory] well and that it performs its function well.”
Banner image: An oil pipeline through Wampís territory in the Amazonas department. Image by Jacob Balzani.
The making of an autonomous Indigenous nation in Peru’s Amazon
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