By Richard Munday, Alumni and Desk Officer for the Conservation Program in Peru

For nearly three years we have been trying to get our foot in the door – so to speak – with the community of Palma Real. Palma Real is a relatively new community, only about 100 years old really, which was set up with the work of Catholic priests that came to do missionary work in Peru and the Amazon.

The Indigenous people of the lower Madre de Dios region naturally lived in small groups with a few families in one place then a few more in another and so on with the main hub in one place, far away from large rivers and lakes. But when the priests came, the first thing they did was round-up all the locals and move them into two areas. One is called Palma Real (with around 300 people living there) which is located about one and a half hours further down river from the Taricaya reserve and one called Infierno, which is located about one hour from Puerto Maldonado itself and is accessible by road.

Volunteers arrive in Palma Real

Typical house in Palma Real

Over the years many NGOs have entered the community with good intentions but little foresight. One of them actually built a cement water tower and fitted tubing to a local fresh water creek, gave them a generator and water pump but failed to provide a daily budget for them to run it all so now it stands mainly unused. The early ones insisted that the community hold on to their native activities and try not to change at all whilst they were giving them western clothes, western food and many other habits that westerners have developed. So the community has developed a mentality of reliance.

Now as you all know this is not the philosophy of the Taricaya reserve. We help those who help themselves. So our first attempt to work with them failed as we were not insistent enough with them. In 2005 we planned to build a dam for them so they could use a water wheel to pump their water. All we asked is that they cut the wood for the structure. We gave them our chainsaw, gasoline and all the measurements. The chainsaw was returned a month later with no sign or news of any wood. So about six months ago we began trying again, this time with something a lot smaller in regards to work but that should have a huge visual impact and give them more confidence in us as well us in them.

So far our plans and negotiations are going very well, we have been speaking with the teachers of the community who seem to have a lot more power in the town (The community actually has a president who rules over the town but seems to be more of a puppet of the teachers) and have decided upon an interesting new idea. Palma Real has a really bad rubbish problem, with no collection system or a place to dump it, so most it goes on to the floor and is left there which you can imagine is a horrible sight. Using one of our donkeys and a specially designed cart we are fairly certain we can help them set up a system of rubbish collection and transport to an area away from the town and we have also managed to get the community to promise to cut the posts for the donkey enclosure and plant them as well as organise a “Community Day” where with the help of Taricaya volunteers, staff and hopefully most of the community we will clean the whole town of rubbish, so in one day they can see the huge difference a clean community can make.

The future of Palma Real

In fact all Taricaya will have to do is put the wire onto the posts, bring the donkey and spend a few hours explaining and showing the community what the donkey can do, which will be done via a variety of demonstrations.

This work will be started and should be completed early next month as there isn’t a huge amount of labour. Then we hope that they will see that we can provide sensible, long term solutions that cost them next to nothing and begin to trust us a lot more and begin putting more and more cooperation into our ideas. We will also begin to slowly start suggesting bigger projects, which as you can hopefully tell means we are potentially embarking on a major new route for Taricaya and hope to bring you some great news on this project soon.

Learn more about Tariaya and our Conservation Program in Peru HERE