Remarkable life of British anthropologist, Dilwyn Jenkins.
Spent 40-years learning about & defending Ashaninka in Peruvian Amazon.
Instrumental in creation of Otishi National Park.
Despite having Welsh parents and growing up in South London, Dilwyn Jenkins was attracted to South America from a young age.
He went to Peru as a teenage backpacker in the mid-1970s, and this is when he first met members of the Ashaninka.
Inspired by the indigenous peoples he had met in Amazonia, he studied anthropology at Cambridge University from 1976 to 1979.
While still a student, he made a documentary about the Ashaninka way of life for the BBC and Royal Geographical Society, that was screened in 1978. It was the first time the Ashaninka had been filmed and was received with great interest.
Jenkins with Ashaninka lady
Jenkins' next visits to the region were undertaken as author of the The Rough Guide to Peru, from 1985 onwards.
By this time, Peru was in the grip of a violent insurgency by the Maoist Shining Path and it was a much more dangerous journey, with the ongoing terrorism and counter-terrorism activities.
Nonetheless, he was determined to bring the Ashaninka's plight to wider attention and became an unlikely, but skilled, champion and ally.
Even though the terrorist insurgency died down, from 1993 onwards, there were still pressures from the outside world seeking to exploit the natural resources of the jungle in which the semi-nomadic Ashaninka live.
According to Jenkins, “Illegal loggers, cocaine smugglers, missionaries, anthropologists and TV documentary production teams all manifest real, if quite different, challenges.”
Therefore, Jenkins founded EcoTribal with the goal of 'facilitating processes and activities generating improved livelihoods and greater capacity in indigenous communities, while conserving rainforest resources and traditional culture'.
In practice, this meant projects such as helping the Ashaninka in exporting coffee, sustainable farming and rain forest management, and ecotourism, in the hope that the income generated from this would dissuade the community from cutting down the trees that are a resource for the future.
Sadly, Jenkins died suddenly in Lima in 2014, aged just 57. His obituary in The Guardian gives a good indication of how remarkable a man he was.
His legacy can be found in the fact that this generation of Ashaninka are claiming title to their lands to safeguard them against oil and logging interests, and are opening community-based tourism projects.
The strongest symbol of this is the creation in 2003 of Otishi National Park in the high jungle area of the Vilcabamba Range, traversing the Departments of Junin and Cusco, with the aim of protecting both the outstanding natural beauty of the area and the cultural integrity of the Ashaninka.
Men of the Ashaninka tribe.