As Covid-19 reaches Amazon, indigenous tribe put at risk

Bloomberg

Since his 2018 election, Jair Bolsonaro has pushed for opening up the Amazon to mining and making Brazil’s indigenous population less like “animals in a zoo.” Now the government is helping those same communities seal themselves off from the outside world in a bid to hinder the coronavirus.
As the vast state of Amazonas becomes one of Brazil’s virus hotspots, many indigenous leaders have blocked the entrances into their territories and, with support from federal police, are preventing passage. The number of Covid-19 cases has continued to climb all the same in those communities, which are spread widely across the country.
Those who live deep in the Amazon are especially vulnerable to coronavirus due to the difficulties inherent in being far from an urban centre. \Requirements for maintaining sanitary conditions — including running water and sanitising supplies — are often lacking and, for some, the closest medical help is an overburdened, ill-equipped hospital days away by boat.
“Agents are keeping the communities isolated, distributing portions of pantry goods and doing whatever possible to impede both indigenous people from leaving their tribes and outsiders from entering the communities,” Justice Minister Sergio Moro, who coordinates Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, said in a text message. “Government workers who deal directly with indigenous people are using personal protection equipment such as masks and gloves.”
Yet the government’s efforts to shield indigenous people from the worst ravages of the virus contrast with the president’s public disregard for their culture, and his eagerness to integrate them into broader society through, for instance, the introduction of a bill that allows for mining in indigenous territories.

Outsider Risk
Emboldened by that stance, wildcat miners and illegal loggers caused deforestation in the Amazon region to jump 51% in the first quarter of this year, compared with the first three months of 2019. That increase happened in part because the government shifted its focus to fighting the pandemic, according to Vice President Hamilton Mourao.
“When one runs to one side, the group that wants to commit illegalities takes advantage,” he said.
Indigenous leaders worry those wildcatters are bringing the virus closer to their communities, but even medical workers sent to help indigenous communities have transmitted the illness.
Brazil’s 800,000 indigenous citizens are scattered among 690 territories covering about 13% of Brazil’s land, almost
all of them in the Amazon
region.