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Fernando Carniel Machado

A live parakeet and a yellow spotted Amazon river turtle are kept in a wire cage in the market, for sale as pets. Animals are typically captured in the jungle by hunters and then sold to market vendors. Investigations have found that animals are often kept in dirty cages and fed poor diets.

Yellow footed tortoise meat intended for commercial sale. A wide diversity of animals across taxonomic classes are being sold as wild meat at the Belén market, including many reptile species such as the yellow footed tortoise. Vendors commonly receive live tortoises that they slaughter themselves and sell on the market stalls.

Caiman intended for commercial sale. Caiman are sold as wild meat, and for decorative and medicinal use. The preserved and decorated heads are sold as amulets for protection and prosperity and are also used to draw the attention and curiosity of passers-by.

Jaguar and ocelot skins hang in Belén Market in TK 2019. Jaguars are frequently poached for their skin and teeth, both of which are in demand for traditional Chinese medicine. The animals can suffer tremendously during capture, according to nonprofits who monitor the trade.

A preserved caiman head, adorned with glass eyeballs and decorative berries, is sold in the market as an amulet, believed to bring protection and prosperity to the owner.

After shutting down during the pandemic and undergoing extensive renovations, Peru’s Belén Market is back open. Sales of live wild animals have resumed, as have sales of animal parts and meat, such as venison, photographed here in 2017.

Tuk-tuks, shoppers, and fruit vendors line the street outside Belén Market, in August 2021. The market, a vital trading point, lies on the Itaya River in Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon.

A seller holds a three-toed sloth paw for sale in Iquitos’ Belén Market in 2017. Some local residents believe that the paws, sold by several vendors in the market, have spiritual properties. Ingesting powder scraped from the claws, it’s believed, can help calm angry men, or quell gossip. Three-toed sloths, a protected species in Peru, are typically illegally captured in the jungle and killed for their paws, or sold live as pets. The docile creatures do not fare well in captivity.