Territories Under Siege: Risks of the Decimation of Indigenous and Quilombolas Peoples in the Context of COVID-19 in South Brazil

Abstract

The current health, political, and environmental crisis ongoing in Brazil and the advances of the impacts of COVID-19 in traditional populations (as indigenous and quilombolas) are not yet prioritized in the scientific production about the novel coronavirus. We performed spatial correlation analysis to map the clusters and outliers of COVID-19 in South of Brazil to identify indigenous and quilombolas communities impacted right now in the pandemic. We show that communities located nearby metropolitan areas and mid-sized cities are the most impacted by the COVID-19 and the advance of the transmission to inner states may intensify the ongoing historical process of elimination of indigenous and quilombolas people. We call for a global response to the indigenous and quilombolas situation in Brazil, pointing to the need of more analysis in the country;

Brazil’s policies threaten Quilombola communities and their lands amid the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Quilombolas, as well as Indigenous Peoples, have rights over their lands guaranteed by the Brazil's Federal Constitution of 1988. Nevertheless, they are constantly threatened by political decisions, agribusiness, mining, and the impacts of oil and gas exploitation (Leite 2015;Polidoro et al 2020).…”

“…Internationally, there are several urgent concerns about protecting vulnerable groups, given the prospect of further and ongoing infections in Brazil that would mainly affect the Amazon region and the southern region of Brazil, decimating hundreds of Indigenous Peoples and quilombola communities (Ferrante et al 2020;Polidoro et al 2020). Although the Brazilian government has been denounced several times to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its actions on COVID-19 and the environment, and these cases await the court's consideration, the government has taken no action to safeguard the quilombola communities, their vulnerable societies and their role in conserving biodiversity (Ferrante and Fearnside 2019).…”

“…The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of people is not limited to health risks, but also to their livelihoods in nature, and consequently, to uses of ecosystems. In Brazil, among the different social groups, the quilombolas are even more threatened during the pandemic (Polidoro et al 2020). Quilombolas are Afro-Brazilian descendants of slaves who fled slavery, and Brazilian legislation recognizes quilombola communities due to their forms of territorial occupation and use of nature according to their traditions, which are derived both from African ancestry and from traditions passed down from generation to generation (Leite 2015).…”

“…In times of pandemic, the Brazilian government's actions are widely considered by the international community as negligent with respect to scientific guidelines to deal with COVID-19 (Polidoro et al 2020). The effects of this negligence on quilombola communities have been tragic (Ortega and Orsini 2020), as attested by the lethality rate among the quilombolas (11.1%) being more than double the national average (4.9%) (Brasil de Fato 2020).…”

Framework for enhancing the estimation of model parameters for data with a high level of uncertainty

“…Turning attention to the impact of the pandemic in Brazil, a country with a continental dimension, such problems tend to become even more evident [14]. Socioeconomic inequalities [15, 16] and cultural factors [17, 18] have a direct impact on access to information and health services, which translates into high rates of infection and, as a consequence, underreporting cases. Veiga e Silva et al [19] also analyze presumptive inconsistencies in the data collected and made available by the Ministry of Health in Brazil.…”