Abstract
The consequences of coronavirus in favelas in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) point to social inequality as a structuring factor in Brazilian society. The contagion spread and multiple death cases reveal the multiplicity of existence ways that cohabit the urban context, indicating that in many of these scenarios, access to decent housing, drinking water, and minimum income is not a reality and recommendations from international health agencies are challenging to implement. Against government technopolitics that drive different forms of death to the poorest, black communities, and slum dwellers, territorial insurgencies indicate other paths for the construction of a dignified life and access to fundamental rights, targeted solidarity practices, territorial political organization and the construction of specific public policies to deal with the effects of the virus which takes into account the particularities and distinct realities of the territory. The experiences of community organization around Crisis Offices in the favelas, led by social organizations and supporting institutions, have guaranteed (i) food and personal hygiene items distribution, (ii) sanitization of alleys, (iii) dissemination of information on the virus, and (iv) political articulation for disputes in defense of life preservation in the favelas, in opposition of genocidal processes carried out by the state power. Such local spaces represent practices of resistance to the death policies undertaken by the state policies, which most are not configured as spaces for collective construction and disregard inequalities and different needs in these territories. That way, community associations are presented as an inflection point, a deviation from the normal course of modulated subjectivities by the social principles and practices of neoliberalism, with the indication that the most efficient way to deal with social crises is through the strengthening of the collective and the popular organizations.
Highlights
The effects of the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil show the existence of a serious abyss, revealing that social inequality produces violations of rights and dictates who should live and who is destined to die and how their death is going to be
Brazilians, the news about the outbreak of the disease caused by the new coronavirus, the Covid-19, begin to appear by the end of January 2020 in a massive way and soon after, in early March, the spread of the virus was an international health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) and affirmed as a pandemic
It is worth mentioning that at the time of submission of the article, no vaccine had yet been developed to combat the virus and one million and 170 thousand deaths worldwide according to Pan American Health Organization1,2— with more than 157 thousand deaths in Brazil alone, a country that occupies the second place in the ranking of mortality by covid-19 despite underreporting, given the low testing of the population—one of the major problems in Brazil, warned by WHO even in the first months of the pandemic3
Summary
The effects of the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil show the existence of a serious abyss, revealing that social inequality produces violations of rights and dictates who should live and who is destined to die and how their death is going to be. Brazilians, the news about the outbreak of the disease caused by the new coronavirus, the Covid-19, begin to appear by the end of January 2020 in a massive way and soon after, in early March, the spread of the virus was an international health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) and affirmed as a pandemic. It is worth mentioning that at the time of submission of the article, no vaccine had yet been developed to combat the virus and one million and 170 thousand deaths worldwide according to Pan American Health Organization1,2— with more than 157 thousand deaths in Brazil alone, a country that occupies the second place in the ranking of mortality by covid-19 despite underreporting, given the low testing of the population—one of the major problems in Brazil, warned by WHO even in the first months of the pandemic
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