[News] Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Confront Double Threat of COVID-19 and Bolsonaro's Policies

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/14/brazilian-indigenous-peoples-confront-double-threat-of-covid-19-and-bolsonaros-policies/
Brazilian
Indigenous Peoples Confront Double Threat of COVID-19 and Bolsonaro's
Policies by Gabriel Leão <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/gleao0987/> -
May 14, 2020
------------------------------

After six days of fighting for his life in an intensive care unit in a
Amazonas state hospital, a 15-year-old
<https://g1.globo.com/rr/roraima/noticia/2020/04/10/morre-adolescente-yanomami-infectado-pelo-coronavirus-em-roraima.ghtml>
Yanomami teenage boy died
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/first-yanomami-covid-19-death-brazl-indigenous>
in April 9 from complications caused by the novel coronavirus. The boy’s
death sounded the alarm for Brazil’s Indigenous peoples who now face the
fear of the virus alongside the stress
<https://www.americas.org/new-reports-show-indigenous-leaders-land-defenders-environmental-journalists-risk-their-lives-to-save-the-amazon/>
of increasing criminal activities by land grabbers, illegal loggers, gold
diggers, poachers, drug traffickers, hitmen and questionable “guests” like
missionaries and tourists in their lands. Add to that the prospect of
another potentially devasting dry season like last year’s, which saw more
than 82,000 fires
<https://www.americas.org/fires-raging-in-the-rain-forest-add-to-environmental-economic-crisis-for-brazilian-government/>
destroy precious rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon.

Brazil
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil-indigenous/after-smallpox-and-malaria-brazils-tribes-fear-coronavirus-is-next-lethal-import-idUSKBN21C1LK>
has 850,000 Indigenous peoples distributed between 300 tribes. Their
reservations cover nearly 13% of the country’s territory. Access to hygiene
and medical services demands long journeys and the practices of tribes
commonly that reside in communal hamlets under huge thatched structures
make protocols for prevention such as social distancing difficult.

Andrey Moreira Cardoso, a physician who specialized in epidemiology and
Indigenous peoples health from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, stated to the UOL
news site
<https://www.uol.com.br/vivabem/noticias/redacao/2020/05/02/covid-19-e-indigenas-os-desafios-no-combate-ao-novo-coronavirus.htm>:
“Limitations on the traditional lands available for the preservation of
Indigenous peoples, access to basic sanitation systems and considerations
such as the recurring infections, malnutrition, anemia and the emergence of
chronic illnesses make Indigenous populations even more susceptible to the
current pandemic”. Epidemiologists have long noted that Indigenous peoples
have a particular susceptiblility to respiratory diseases.

Experts publishing in the scholarly magazine Science
<https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/17_april_2020/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1577677#articleId1577677>
recently documented that the risks of the virus spreading are higher than
for populations with more services and closer to well-equipped hospitals.
Indigenous leaders warn that the incursions of outsiders could bring
disease and death to their peoples. Many Indigenous communities have
decided to put chains on the entrances to their lands.

In an interview to Americas Program, Indigenous leader Dinamam Tuxá
<https://twitter.com/dinamam>, a member of the Tuxá People who mostly live
in the state of Bahia in the northeast region  and coordinator of the
Articulation
of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) <http://apib.info/>, stated that his
people have been tracking the death of indigenous peoples, given the
underreporting or lack of reporting by the government.

With obvious concern in his voice, he reported that an elderly Borari woman
recently died in Pará state, along with a male from the Umura people in
Manaus, capital city of the Amazonas state, both in northern Brazil.
Although the Brazilian state most hard-hit by the coronavirus so far is São
Paulo in the southeast, where the densely populated capital city of São
Paulo is located, that reegion also has some of the most advanced medical
facilities in Latin America. In the Northern region, Amazonas is suffering
the most and is least prepared to contend with the pandemic.

Bolsonaro’s lax policies on the pandemic, including on frequent occasions
denying its seriousness, have faced heavy criticism at home and abroad. On
April 16 Bolsonaro fired his Minister of Health
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-52316150> Luiz Henrique
Mandetta <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-52316150> due to
Mandetta’s insistence on social distancing and lockdown measures. For
Brazilians, particularly Indigenous, traditional and poor people, things
took a grim turn as the outside world
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/29/coronavirus-live-news-brazil-deaths-exceed-known-china-toll-as-us-infections-pass-1-million>
points to Brazil as among the nations with the worst response to the
Covid-19 crisis.

An image making the rounds in the international press shows the “utter
disaster
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/brazil-manaus-coronavirus-mass-graves?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other>”
looming in Manaus state, as it fills mass graves with the victims of the
pandemic. The internationally renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastiao
Salgado published an open letter
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/eve-of-genocide-brazil-urged-save-amazon-tribes-covid-19-sebastiao-salgado>
to President Jair Bolsonaro denouncing the situation titled “We are on the
eve of a genocide” and signed by famous artists, celebrities, scientists
and intellectuals.

Tuxá believes the Brazilian government is trying to hide the spread of the
virus from the Brazilian population, but especially among Indigenous
peoples. The Federal Prosecutor Office
<https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-52481306?at_custom3=BBC+Brasil&at_custom2=facebook_page&at_custom4=2F051358-8A62-11EA-8CCF-1C09FDA12A29&at_campaign=64&at_medium=custom7&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&fbclid=IwAR3yST48dv4TFhLc31o4OHWBGcb2-1Qk8It6CkZceccICLLAjWV3ptR6qUs>
has demanded information from the new Health Minister Nelson Teich on
underreported cases of Covid-19 victims.The “utter disaster
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/brazil-manaus-coronavirus-mass-graves?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other>”
looming in Manaus state as it fills mass graves with the victims of the
pandemic.

*Government Response Called “Genocidal”*

The governmental division responsible for the well-being of Indigenous
peoples, Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI- <http://www.funai.gov.br/>National
Indian Foundation), responded to an Americas Program request for
information by pointing to its programs to face the pandemic. These include
distributing information through its decentralized units made up of 225
Local Technical Coordinators, 39 Regional Coordinators and 11 Stations for
Ethnical-Environmental Protection. The Foundation uses word-of-mouth, cell
phone and social media messages, mostly in Portuguese, to reach native
Brazilians.

Governmental institutions have also been facilitating Indigenous
transportation from city to villages, delivering food and health items
including masks and gloves, while keeping track of the activities by the
Special Indigenous Sanitation Districts and the Special Secretary of
Indigenous Health.

FUNAI addresses Indigenous matters through the three branches of political
power in Brazil: Executive, Legislative and Judicial System. However, the
FUNAI, along with other governmental departments focused on environment and
human rights, have been mutilated
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-environment-ibama-exclusive/exclusive-as-fires-race-through-amazon-brazils-bolsonaro-weakens-environment-agency-idUSKCN1VI14I>
by deep financial cuts under the administration of President Jair
Bolsonaro.
<https://www.americas.org/brazils-far-right-candidate-banks-on-fear-and-fundamentalism/>

Moreover, Bolsonaro has put in charge large-scale farmers and evangelicals,
members of the caucus known as the “Bible, beef and bullet
<https://www.theweek.in/theweek/more/2019/01/11/bible-beef-and-bullet.html>”
caucus. The political alliance, which now has considerable influence over
policies that affects indigenous peoples, also includes representatives of
the firearms industry.

“We, the Indigenous peoples, need to confront this situation. We’ve always
fought to empower FUNAI, but we saw at the beginning of the pandemic how it
changed policy to allow missionaries to come in, especially among those in
voluntary isolation who are the most vulnerable. We cannot allow this to
happen”,  said Célia Xakriabá Akwē from the Xakriabá tribe in the
southeastern state of Minas Gerais. At first, FUNAI attempted to contact
isolated Indigenous groups, but after pressure
<https://g1.globo.com/politica/blog/matheus-leitao/post/2020/03/23/funai-recua-refaz-portaria-sobre-coronavirus-e-mantem-zero-contato-com-indios-isolados.ghtml>
from Indigenous leaders, human rights groups and federal prosecutors, FUNAI
on March 23 forbid all contact with isolated Indigenous peoples as they
requested for their own protection.

Tuxá and other indigenous leaders indicate that governmental actions will
not protect their peoples. In a press release
<https://amazonwatch.org/news/2020/0420-indigenous-peoples-across-the-amazon-issue-demands-in-response-to-coronavirus-pandemic>
Nara Baré, coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations from Brazilian
Amazon (COIAB), stated: “Since Jair Bolsonaro took office, our Indigenous
lands are increasingly threatened by predatory economic activities that
threaten the integrity of our ancestral territories and the natural
resources essential for our survival. With the Covid-19 crisis, the illegal
activities of miners, loggers, missionaries, drug traffickers and other
invaders pose an even greater threat, because they can bring the virus to
our territories and communities. For this reason, we demand that this
economic activity in our territories be stopped immediately, thus
guaranteeing the protection of all our children, women, men, young people,
wise elders, and our relatives in voluntary isolation.”

Tuxá recalled ancient times and compared it to the present crisis. “Today
we are experiencing a phenomenon very similar to what happened during the
‘discovery’, in fact, i*nvasion,* of Brazil.” He noted that when the
Portuguese conquerors arrived, the original peoples didn’t have immunity
for the novel diseases they brought with them like smallpox.  After the
“Discovery of America”, malaria, measles and influenza struck native
peoples, brought by gold miners, settlers and rubber tappers.

In the 20th century  government highway construction brought more fatal
diseases. “In a second stage, with the so-called development implanted by
the 1960’s dictatorship, they used many instruments such as clothes
impregnated with smallpox
<https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/geral/noticia/2014-10/comissao-da-verdade-reconhece-violencia-da-ditadura-contra-povos-indigenas>
and many other transmissible diseases through virus. These were introduced
in Indigenous territory with the aim of decimating the native people”, Tuxá
said.

During the dictatorship (1964-1985) military personal trained
<https://intercontinentalcry.org/military-personnel-trained-by-the-cia-used-napalm-against-indigenous-people-in-brazil-25998/>
by the US government’s CIA targeted indigenous Brazil’s indigenous peoples,
carrying out massacres, land grabs, enforced removal from territories. They
forced many into prisons, tortured, carried out human hunting games
<https://www.ufmg.br/brasildoc/temas/5-ditadura-militar-e-populacoes-indigenas/>,
and spreading infectious diseases. At least 8,300
<https://amazoniareal.com.br/comissao-da-verdade-ao-menos-83-mil-indios-foram-mortos-na-ditadura-militar/>
Indigenous Brazilians were killed during this period.

One of the cruelest acts perpetrated by the army happened when airplanes
rained napalm
<https://truthout.org/articles/military-personnel-trained-by-the-cia-used-napalm-against-indigenous-people-in-brazil/>
on natives to use their territories to enlarge Brazilian roads. Napalm was
used during World War II and the Vietnam war, but the native peoples
weren’t armed, nor did they have armies. Bolsonaro is a staunch defender of
the Brazilian dictatorship
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/30/bolsonaro-tells-students-to-read-book-by-dictatorship-era-torturer>
and an espoused admirer of American
<https://theintercept.com/2020/05/04/brazil-bolsonaro-military-coup/>
military methods.

When asked if such a tragic scenario could be repeated, Jonathan Mazower of
Survival International responded, “Sadly, it’s definitely possible, and
quite likely. There are many tribes with large numbers of outsiders on
their land”. He stated that these forces have been empowered by Bolsonaro’s
election
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-indigenous/emboldened-by-bolsonaro-armed-invaders-encroach-on-brazils-tribal-lands-idUSKCN1QK0BG>,
increasing their activity since 2019 and accelerating a new phase of
Indigenous genocide that the activist noted is rarely portrayed in media.

Indigenous leaders and Human Rights activists believe that the dead
Yanomami teenager was exposed to the Coronavirus by illegal miners. “It was
probably brought in by illegal miners, of which are 25,000 in Yanomami
territory,” stated Christian Poirier, director of the U.S.-based Amazon
Watch.  “There are only 26,000 Yanomami people still living within their
territory, to give you a sense of scale of the land invasion here and the
threat it represents for this people,” he added.

Xakriabá Akwē sees Bolsonaro as the Indigenous peoples’ main enemy and
further accuses the state governor, Romeu Zema, a political ally of
Bolsonaro, of not recognizing the plight of her people.

“I can say that we are two-time orphans of both the Federal and regional
power. Zema, along with seven other (governors) didn’t question Bolsonaro
while he was taking part in public rallies during weekends
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics/brazil-president-takes-selfies-cheers-demonstrators-despite-virus-warnings-idUSKBN21218W>in
the midst of the pandemic, openly defying social isolation despite what’s
going on, and disobeying the recommendations from World Health
Organization”, said Xakriabá Akwē in a phone interview to Americas
Program.  She dubbed the president’s actions “a genocidal process putting
peoples’ lives at risk”.

“For the Indigenous peoples in Brazil, we need to denounce the government
for justifying the extermination of Indigenous lives as casualties of
disease. The State is responsible from the moment it fails to establish
contingency measures and carry them out, because, for example, there is
infrastructure in the city centers but there is no campaign for hospitals
focused on Indigenous issues even though 300 Indigenous peoples reside in
Brazil, besides the isolated groups. So it’s important that government
measures be taken or denounced now because we are marching toward a moment
that already took place in history”, Xakriabá Akwē added.


*Coloonization in Times of Pandemic *

Mazower said that encroachment on Indigenous resources have stepped up
since the pandemic hit. “There are many reports from Brazil that loggers,
goldminers and others are taking advantage of the lockdown to increase
their activities. There was already clear evidence that such illegal
activities had been increasing
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/world/americas/amazon-fires-bolsonaro-photos.html>
in recent months anyway, as they feel emboldened by President Bolsonaro’s
rhetoric. His cuts to FUNAI, the Indigenous Affairs Department, and
environmental monitoring teams mean they can increasingly act with
impunity”.

He stated that the Brazilian president has an end goal of eliminating
Indigenous people and opening up their territories to exploitation
<https://www.americas.org/as-bolsonaro-and-trump-target-the-amazon-indigenous-peoples-seek-to-unite-to-defend-the-earth/>
by national and international industrial and farming interests. “Those
policies were in place before Covid-19, and will almost certainly continue
afterwards”.

On Feb. 2 Bolsonaro named the theologist and anthropologist Ricardo Lopes
Dias <https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-51319113> as General
Coordinator for Isolated and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples at
FUNAI. The appointee is a former member of the Brazilian arm of the
American evangelical group Ethnos360, called locally New Tribes Mission
Brazil. As stated in Ehtnos360 official site: “By unflinching determination
we hazard our lives and gamble all for Christ until we have reached the
last tribe regardless of where that tribe might be”
<https://ethnos360.org/about>. The organization states that “of the world’s
6.500 people groups, 2.500 are still unreached. Ethnos360, founded in 1942
as New Tribes Mission, helps local churches train, coordinate and send
missionaries to these peoples”.

For Célia Xakriabá Akwē, Lopes Dias represents a continuation of the
violent historical processes of colonization and religious conversion.  She
notes that the *Bible, Beef and Bullet Caucus *now wields considerable
influence in local, state and national government and warns that they are
longtime “enemies of Indigenous peoples as they try to usurp what was left
us from the extermination”.

For Tuxá, FUNAI is being completely undermined by the Lopes Dias
appointment and through the efforts of others on the inside “without
technical knowledge and with ties to evangelical groups pushing forward an
evangelization process of Indigenous peoples”.

Asked directly by Americas Program if FUNAI was following a strategy to
open up Brazilian Indigenous peoples for evangelization, the institution
responded tersely through a press office email: “Within FUNAI there is no
plan to evangelize Brazilian Indigenous peoples”. The reply did not address
the degree to which the agency would or would not promote outside
evangelization.

*“Deep Connections”*

Recently Indigenous people won an unexpected right to reply
<https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/waimiri-atroari-right-of-reply-bolsonaro-racist-invective/>
to Bolsonaro’s racist claims. In an unprecedented decision, Federal
judge Raffaela
Cássia de Sousa
<https://www.mpf.mp.br/am/sala-de-imprensa/docs/decisao-direito-de-resposta-waimiri>
granted the Kinja indigenous people the right to reply to racist invective,
a legal move that experts position as a new chapter in the fight against
Bolsonaro’s racist portrayals of  Indigenous peoples.

“Bolsonaro in a very racist discourse says that Indigenous peoples aren’t
willing to evolve, but in fact we are cautious of any sort of ’evolution
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-indigenous/brazils-indigenous-to-sue-bolsonaro-for-saying-theyre-evolving-idUSKBN1ZN1TD>’
coming from an anti-humanitarian government”, Xakriabá Akwē said.

A 2011 study <https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/7870> by the World
Bank, an institution that has frequently violated indigenous rights
<https://www.icij.org/investigations/world-bank/how-world-bank-broke-its-promise-protect-poor/>,
was forced to conclude that Indigenous peoples are the most effective
environmental factor in conservation. Now that Bolsonaro has increased
pressures to dismantle environmental protection
<https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/04/29/coronavirus-amazon-deforestation-bolsonaro-brazil-weakens-indigenous-environmental-safeguards/>
efforts in Brazil under the pretext of the pandemic, the defense of the
nation’s indigenous peoples is critical.

“This pandemic has risen in a context very tied to capitalism and the
powerful nations’ imposition of economic measures and this disease is
closely linked to climate changes”, Tuxá said. “The coronavirus has
revealed the very visible fragility of poor and/or authoritarian countries
such as Brazil, where authoritarian presidents without technical knowledge
try to upset science while dealing with the crisis in their own way”.

Amazon Watch’s Poirier said that Brazil’s Indigenous peoples will be vital
in a new scenario as guardians of the environment, with the responsibility
of leading the fight against global warming. Indigenous peoples also
possess important knowledge that could save lives. “Their traditional
knowledge may hold the key to cure this virus and other incoming pandemics
through the years”, he said.

Xakriabá Akwē, who holds a Masters in “Sustainability Linked to Peoples and
Traditional Lands” from the University of Brasilia, argues for “the
transmission of knowledge, and science bred in the womb of the territory”.
“There is a deep connection that isn’t taught in schools, but the land has
always existed with its wisdom”. In addition to closing off lands to
outsiders, indigenous measures to confront the virus include the use of
traditional plant medicines and philosophy.

The Indigenous scholar described how native peoples are finding new forms
of prevention and psychological healing, with an emphasis on returning to
tribal knowledge and inner resources. In Brazil, the month of April is
known as “Red  April
<http://apib.info/2020/04/14/participe-do-abril-vermelho/>” to celebrate
and honor their heritage of tradition and survival.

“This is Indigenous April, Red April, and to better understand this deep
history, remember that before people encountered the Green and Yellow
Brazil, Brazil was Red. It started with the brazilwood (*Paubrasilia
echinata*
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10520295.2015.1021381?journalCode=ibih20>)
and its seed, which is red. Today people are rethinking Indigenous identity
a lot, and our cultural transformation, which also had and still has to
deal with violence”, Xakriabá Akwē said.

For the Xakriabá Akwē leader, “staying home” may be something very
difficult for others, but for natives it has always been their struggle:
“The right to stay home, to keep our territory. However, every time we
fight for this right, we are stripped of our homes and land.”

The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples carried out in-depth consultations
with Indigenous healthcare specialists and developed the following urgent
action points to help protect indigenous communities from the spread of
Covid-19:

1) Coordination between all state and municipal health secretariats and
indigenous health agencies in order to guarantee access to information on
the epidemiological situation and the actions being carried out in each
indigenous territory and village, and among indigenous populations in urban
areas;

2) Guarantee that emergency plans for the care of critically ill patients
in the states and municipalities include the indigenous population, making
explicit plans for transporting indigenous patients and responding to
requests for assistance in a timely manner, in conjunction with indigenous
health agencies;

3) Coordination among health secretariats, social assistance agencies, and
other social policies to enable the isolation and quarantine of indigenous
people in transit who are returning to their territories and need to take
these preventive measures before their entry, or in the case of suspected
infections or confirmed cases of coronavirus within communities;

4) Provision of rapid tests for Covid-19 to all Special Indigenous Sanitary
Districts to screen the entry of indigenous people from urban centers who
seek to return to their territories. Tests must be prioritized to control
entry and exit in indigenous territories to ensure that the virus does not
spread widely among this population;

5) Inclusion of indigenous populations as a priority group in speeding up
the provision of the annual flu vaccine;

6) Guarantee of stocks and provision of Personal Protective Equipment
(PPEs) for indigenous healthcare workers, and suspected and confirmed cases
and their family members who accompany them;

7) For the duration of this health crisis, ensure the supply of medicines
indicated for the groups most at risk of complications from the
coronavirus, which in this case includes indigenous peoples, according to
protocols from the Ministry of Health;

8) Support Special Indigenous Sanitary Districts (DSEI) for training health
professionals to deal with and monitor the coronavirus, since in indigenous
territories access to on-line communication is often insufficient or
non-existent;

9) Provision of hygiene materials and PPEs for all Indigenous Health
Centers for patients, their caretakers, and health professionals;

10) Include indigenous organizations that are members of APIB in planning
and emergency meetings in each state to ensure that the specific needs and
realities of indigenous peoples are addressed.

*For more information and to support efforts: *

*APIB – Indigenous Peoples Articulation *

Official site – http://apib.info/

Donations – http://apib.info/2819-2/

*Amazon Watch*

Official site – https://amazonwatch.org/

*Survival International *

Official site – https://www.survivalinternational.org/
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