Diverse histories and traditions of critical epidemiology in Latin America provide an important, although underutilised, alternative framework for engaging with the embodied health inequalities of the Anthropocene. Taking COVID-19 as ‘a paradigmatic example of an Anthropocene disease’ (O’Callaghan-Gordo and Antó 2020) and drawing on ethnographic research in Brazil and Mexico on vaccination campaigns among Indigenous Peoples, we review and analyse the scope and limits of Latin American critical epidemiology in addressing Anthropocene health. While there are intersecting and parallel dynamics between diverse national and regional histories of epidemiology, we argue that the relatively differential focus on political economy, political ecology, and colonialism/coloniality in Latin American critical epidemiology, alongside the attention to non-western disease experiences and understandings, constitute a counterpoint to biomedical and specific ‘Euro-American’ epidemiological approaches. At the same time, Indigenous understandings of health/disease processes are intimately connected with territory protection, diplomacy with non-human entities, and embodied memories of violence. We examine how this presents new and challenging questions for critical epidemiology, particularly in how the ‘social’ is defined and how to address both social justice and social difference whilst also navigating the biopolitical challenges of state intervention in the era of Anthropocene health.
In this paper I draw attention to the happening of childbirth among the Guarani-Mbyá women. I highlight the centrality of a care language in the act of birth and of being born supported by the production of human bodies and kin. From Yva deliveries’ stories I explore the connection between silences, bodies and human and non-human socialities by interweaving it with native modes of care and a critical analysis of the medicalization of birth derived from the relationship with the “Juruá (“white”) system”. I emphasize a non-reductive understanding of life and health in the translation of epistelomogies of care between indigenous and biomedical sociocosmologies. The data presented are results from a long-term ethnographic research carried out among guarani-mbyá collectives of the southern Brazil.
Neste ensaio buscamos sistematizar informações de cunho histórico e etnográfico acerca da presença mbyá na região hidrográfica do Guaíba (Rio Grande do Sul), levando em conta as relações estabelecidas entre indígenas e brancos ao longo do processo de configuração territorial da Bacia Platina. Para tanto, embasamos a discussão a partir de pesquisa de campo, levantamento bibliográfico e fontes primárias acerca de três ocupações mbyá contemporâneas, a saber, Petim, Passo Grande e Arroio do Conde. Miramos dois objetivos: 1. reunir informações existentes e dispersas em vários documentos a fim de contextualizar ocupações guarani na Bacia Hidrográfica do Guaiba; 2. ressaltar as circunstâncias atuais de ocupações em beiras de estradas sob premissas diacrônicas, evidenciando a vida mbyá nos teko’a e ensaiando algumas considerações a respeito das alianças circunstanciais acionadas no acesso ao território.
This article is focused on methodological aspects impplied in a research on the responses of indigenous peoples to COVID-19 conducted by a network of indigenous and non-indigenous women researchers in different Brazilian states. We seek to share experiences and reflections on the limits and potentialities of a research carried out in the pandemic and with the pandemic, since the sickeness felt in the bodies and collective life of the researchers was an unavoidable agent in the methodological and analytical parcourses, in dialogue with feminist debates on the theme of care.
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