Most of them do not have a document of identity, live isolated from the world, reaching a very primitive technology level, their subsistence is based on harvesting and hunting. That is the Manu population: around a thousand people, most of them Machiguenga, that have been preserved in time refuged behind the green shrub of the tropical forest.

After being created the Manu National Park, the human presence was frightened off or apprehended and their weapons and tools were confiscated in order to prevent the deforestation, which is why these tribes decided to penetrate the forest and continue living as they were doing for hundreds of years.

These tribes are constantly moving. Organized in clans of 25 approximately, related with other groups to establish matrimonial alliances and guarantee survival. These alliances suppose cyclic mobilizations. That is how they traverse the jungle and because of their hunting and gathering expertise, Machiguenga people are the perfect managers of the forest, based on a calendar that takes them from their main settlements to other temporary ones (tambos).

But the Machiguengas represent the “visible” population of Manu: 650 people. The other 350 are the invisible population, been seen in one or other place, always moving from one place to another, presumably coming from the central Andes of Peru, banished from their lands, either by their societies, or by the climatic changes, or by natural disasters or by the deforestation of their lands. Lost in the woods and in time, these inhabitants of Manu are still an unknown because of their survival ways as by the role they play in the equilibrium and substance of the National Park.