The Pandemic, Mining Violence, and the Case of the Sanöma/Yanomami People.

Abstract

In Brazil, the health emergency unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic must be understood in the context of the government administration of the former president, Jair Bolsonaro. The new coronavirus was turned into a war machine, something already seen in other moments of the history of indigenous peoples, when epidemics were strategically used to promote indigenous genocide and usurp their territories. The Sanöma, a subgroup of the Yanomami language family, assert that Covid-19 did not leave individualized traces of 'sequelae' but made itself felt in the deaths that could not undergo the traditional funeral rites due to the sanitary measures, generating a cosmological and existential tension for the collective as a whole. It was also felt in the invasion of their lands by thousands of miners who brought violence and malaria to the communities, debilitating their food sovereignty, and in the dismantling of public health services in the indigenous land. Time was suspended, and the infection continued with the accompanying violation of rights, with a divergent understanding of who is recovered or who is healthy. This article is the result of a Covid-19 researchproject conducted in partnership with the Sanöma leaders. Based on reports from the Sanöma themselves, reports about the Yanomami and the government of former President Bolsonaro, interviews with indigenous leaders in newspapers and reports produced by indigenous organizations and their supporters, a set of information about Covid-19 among indigenous peoples and violations of human rights among the Sanöma people were systematized and analyzed and now make up this article.