Madre de Dios is a department and region in southeastern Peru, bordering Brazil, Bolivia and the Peruvian departments of Puno, Cusco and Ucayali, in the Amazon Basin. Its capital is the city of Puerto Maldonado. It is also the third largest department in Peru, after Ucayali and Loreto. However, it is also the least densely populated department in Peru, as well as its least populous department. It has one of the lowest poverty rates in Peru.
Ucayali is an inland department and region of Peru. Located in the Amazon rainforest, its name is derived from the Ucayali River. Its capital is the city of Pucallpa. It is the second largest department in Peru, after Loreto, and it is slightly larger than South Korea.
Pucallpa is a city in eastern Peru located on the banks of the Ucayali River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. It is the capital of the Ucayali region, the Coronel Portillo Province and the Calleria District.
The Huallaga River is a tributary of the Marañón River, part of the Amazon Basin. Old names for this river include Guallaga and Rio de los Motilones. The Huallaga is born on the slopes of the Andes in central Peru and joins the Marañón before the latter reaches the Ucayali River to form the Amazon. Its main affluents are the Monzón, Mayo, Biabo, Abiseo and Tocache rivers. Coca is grown in most of those valleys, which are also exposed to periodic floods.
The Asháninka or Asháninca are an indigenous people living in the rainforests of Peru and in the State of Acre, Brazil. Their ancestral lands are in the forests of Junín, Pasco, Huánuco and part of Ucayali in Peru.
Peru has many languages in use, with its official languages being Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. Spanish has been in the country since it began being taught in the time of José Pardo instead of the country's Native languages, especially the languages in the Andes. In the beginning of the 21st century, it was estimated that in this multilingual country, about 50 very different and popular languages are spoken: which reduces to 44 languages if dialects are considered variants of the same language. The majority of these languages are Indigenous, but the most common language is Spanish, the main language that about 94.4% of the population speaks. Spanish is followed by the country's Indigenous languages, especially all types of Quechua and Aymara (1.7%), who also have co-official status according to Article 48 of the Constitution of Peru, as well as the languages of the Amazon and the Peruvian Sign Language. In urban areas of the country, especially the coastal region, most people are monolingual and only speak Spanish, while in many rural areas of the country, especially in the Amazon, multilingual populations are prevalent.
Panoan is a family of languages spoken in western Brazil, eastern Peru, and northern Bolivia. It is possibly a branch of a larger Pano–Tacanan family.
Shipibo is a Panoan language spoken in Peru and Brazil by approximately 26,000 speakers. Shipibo is a recognized indigenous language of Peru.
The Cashibo or Carapache are an indigenous people of Peru. They live near the Aguaytía, San Alejandro, and Súngaro Rivers. The Cashibo have three subgroups, that are the Cashiñon, Kakataibo, and Ruño peoples. They mainly live in five villages.
The Matsés or Mayoruna are an indigenous people of the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon. Their traditional homelands are located between the Javari and Galvez rivers. The Matsés have long guarded their lands from other indigenous tribes and struggle with encroachment from illegal logging practices and poaching.
The Indigenous peoples of Peru, or Native Peruvians, comprise a large number of ethnic groups who inhabit territory in present-day Peru. Indigenous cultures developed here for thousands of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532.
Peruvian Amazonia, informally known locally as the Peruvian jungle or just the jungle, is the area of the Amazon rainforest included within the country of Peru, from east of the Andes to the borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia. This region comprises 60% of the country and is marked by a large degree of biodiversity. Peru has the second-largest portion of the Amazon rainforest after the Brazilian Amazon.
Chapo is a beverage made of sweet plantains, water, and spices. It is from the Matsés and Shipibo people of the Peruvian Amazon jungle, and is made from boiled sweet plantains spiced with cinnamon and cloves. The Matsés squeeze the soft flesh of the plantain through homemade palm-leaf sieves, cook the chapo, and serve it warm by the fire.
El Sira Communal Reserve is a protected area in Peru created to preserve the biodiversity of the Sira Mountains and the ancestral sustainable use of the area's resources by the nearby native peoples. It also protects the headwaters of the Pachitea river basin. The reserve covers an area of 616,413 hectares (6,164.13 km2) within the regions of Huánuco, Pasco and Ucayali. The reserve was created in 2001 and in 2010, UNESCO recognized it as part of the Oxapampa-Asháninka-Yánesha Biosphere Reserve.
Jagua tattoo is a temporary form of skin decoration resulting from the application of an extract of the fruit Genipa americana, also known as jagua. This fruit has been used for body ornamentation and medicinal purposes in many areas of South America for centuries. It has recently been introduced in North America and Europe as an addition to henna body art, also called mehendi, mehandi, or mehndi in India.
Guillermo Arévalo Valera is a Shipibo vegetalista and businessperson from the Maynas Province of Peru. His Shipibo name is Kestenbetsa.
Sierra del Divisor is a mountain range located in the border between Peru and Brazil, rising up from the Amazonian plain. It is the only mountainous area in the lower Amazonian jungle. In 2015, a 3.3 million-acre area of rainforest in the mountain range was designated as a national park by the Peruvian government.
Mennonites in Peru belong to two quite different groups: converts to the Mennonite faith from different groups of the Peruvian population and very conservative Plautdietsch-speaking ethnic Mennonite Old Colony Mennonites of the so-called Russian Mennonites. Converts to the Mennonite faith are both people who speak Spanish and groups with an indigenous Amerindian background, notably Asháninka. These converts do not differ much from other Protestants in Peru.
Harry Tschopik Jr. was an American ethnologist whose researched centered on South American material culture, namely Peruvian indigenous communities. He worked to fuse a relationship between ethnology and archeology, while adhering strongly to a belief in the mission of museums to take anthropology to the public. He was a seminal figure in Peruvian ethnology having trained many of the first-generation Peruvian ethnologists, and as a scholar, he set the standard for field recordings for cultural anthropology.
Olivia Arévalo Lomas was a Peruvian Onanya of Shipibo-Conibo Indigenous people of Ucayali region, a Ayahuasca plant medicine healer, and environmental and cultural rights activist. She advocated “for the recognition of indigenous communities' rights and the preservation of their ancestral territories.” She was also being "considered a wealth of knowledge about Amazonian plants and native traditions."
Peru 
