TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Hervé BAR and Sandra FERRER and VIDEO by Elena BOFFETTA
Aerial view of the Aguarico river, in the Amazon region of Lagartococha, Peru, on January 12, 2023. - They call themselves "the multicolored people" or Siekopai after the eye-catching traditional body paint and adornments they used to wear in their ancestral home in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Now, the Amazonian Siekopai people, displaced by decades of war and commercial and cultural intrusions, live scattered between villages straddling the Ecuador-Peru border. Teetering on the brink of cultural extinction, Siekopai leaders say it is a matter of survival to reclaim their ancestral land -- still largely untouched in the remote heart of the Amazon. (Photo by Pedro PARDO / AFP)