Conservatives in Peru are seeking to exploit the chaos caused by the overthrow and arrest of President Pedro Castillo by passing a new law to strip Indigenous people of legal protections and abolish reservations designed to protect their land.

A 2006 law protects Indigenous peoples who are considered to be in isolation/uncontacted or in the stages of "initial contact" and facilitated the establishment or maintenance of reserves, including seven in Peru's section of the Amazon rainforest.

A group of right-wing legislators are now seeking to amend this law, stripping it of fundamental provisions and rendering it meaningless.

Pedro Castillo defeated Keiko Fujimori, former congresswoman and daughter of notoriously corrupt former president Alberto Fujimori, in 2021. It was the third time Ms Fujimori has attempted to become president and lost.

President Castillo was targeted by a hostile Congress several times, including an attempted impeachment in March, before he sought to dissolve the body.

"Peru is going through an institutional crisis without precedent… We will send to the Congress of the republic a set of reforms that will allow us to overcome this structural crisis," he said in March.

Attempts at reform stalled, and Mr Castillo was arrested after seeking to dissolve the current Congress. His wife and children took refuge in Mexico, and the new self-installed junta in Peru responded by expelling Mexico's ambassador.

Jorge Morante, a legislator with Fujimori's party Fuerza Popular, is the front man for the push to change the law to stop the creation of new reserves and allow the elimination of those already established.

Peru's Amazon rainforest the second-largest after Brazil's and home to as many as 25 isolated Indigenous groups.

Beatriz Huertas, an anthropologist working with ORPIO, the Indigenous federation in Loreto, Peru's largest Amazon region, told The Guardian that in 30 years of working for the protection of isolated Indigenous peoples she had "never seen such a nefarious bill".

In a statement issued earlier this month, Peru's Indigenous federation organisation, AIDESEP, said the new bill "would cause genocide".

"From AIDESEP, we warn about these manoeuvres that threaten the rights and lives of our PIACI brothers and sisters," they said.

"We demand that the senior official of Congress comply with referring this harmful bill to the Peoples Commission, and that the legal analysis of AIDESEP, ORPIO and ORAU be considered in rejection of this harmful norm that would mean the genocide of the PIACI."

AIDESEP noted its analysis had found the proposed bill was unconstitutional and "contravenes international standards" on the protection of Indigenous peoples.

"This modification seriously and objectively risks the life, health and integrity of the PIACI. PL 3518 (the amendment bill) proposes granting powers to Regional Governments to 'determine the revocation or extinction' of the acknowledgments of the existence of the PIACI and the Indigenous Reserves created in their favour."

AIDESEP said the isolated Indigenous peoples were highly vulnerable and already under pressure from logging, illegal mining and the drug trade, and were particularly susceptible to common illnesses such as influenza or the common cold.

The overthrow of President Castillo has led to protests, blockades and strikes across Peru, with at least 22 people killed and hundreds injured.

Fresh elections will not be held until April 2024

The proposal to shift jurisdiction for the protection of Peru's isolated Indigenous peoples from the national government to regional governments, who are more likely to be influenced by local industry, has been backed by powerful business interests in Peru's Loreto region.

The group, calling itself the Loreto Sustainable Development Coordinator, has run a campaign via regional media and public events denying the existence of the Indigenous groups in the Amazon and attacking the reserves created to protect them.

Foreign capital is also playing a role. Anglo-French oil and gas company Perenco, which has been drilling for oil in the Napo-Tigre region, opposed the creation of a reserve established in the region after a 19-year struggle by Indigenous campaigners.

Perenco filed an injunction earlier in 2022 to oppose the reservation, which they then withdrew.

Four reserves are in the process of being created, three of which are also in Loreto.

Peru director for the Environmental Investigation Agency Julia Urrunaga told The Guardian that hundreds of civil society groups in Peru were gravely concerned about the bill.

"Peru can't take more conflict," she said.

"In a world where we each day have more evidence of the role of Indigenous peoples in the protection of the world's last remaining natural forests, it is suicidal to attempt to eliminate protections for Indigenous peoples and their forests."