The coronavirus spreads rapidly in the indigenous communities of the Amazonia in Brazil, Colombia and Peru.
People in the border crossings from Venezuela are more vulnerable to infection, and that affects the indigenous refugees.
In Chiapas, Mexico, 27% of the population is indigenous and they are exposed, “because they have medical centers that only treat basic ailments,” according to El Tiempo.
And in the United States, the Navajo community registers, in proportion to its population, more infections than New York and New Jersey.
In all of these cases, the absence of state care aggravates the situation and increases the speed of spread of the virus. Although the various indigenous peoples of these territories maintain their customs and traditions, and try to use their ancestral knowledge to prevent the disease, they are nestled within regions that keep pace with the ruling system. They are exposed to contagion in urban centers and do not have access to clean water or immediate and sufficient health care in hospitals.
The Amazon River is the main communication route between these communities that touch Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Alejandro Millán Valencia reported for BBC Mundo that this river is also serving as a channel of contagion to other communities in the Amazonia Basin.
“The river is the axis of the Amazonia that connects the people of Peru, Brazil and Colombia. And although on the map it looks like something very dispersed, everything is connected through its course and its tributaries,” Millán Valencia quotes Colombian doctor Pablo Martínez, who has been working in the area for 20 years.
According to the piece in El Tiempo, which uses several news agencies as sources, there are more than 1,000 infections in Leticia, the capital of the Amazonia department in Colombia. “The virus has caused one of the worst tragedies in its history,” the report says. The two health centers in Leticia “have reported saturation and a lack of resources to attend to all the sick.”
A group of doctors in that region have refused to treat cases of Covid-19 because they themselves have no guarantee of protection against the disease.
The article reports on 38 indigenous communities at risk in Brazil’s Amazonia region.
In Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazonia, doctors told BBC Mundo’s Millán that they do not have “enough beds to attend to the health emergency.” “People go to die in their homes, because we don’t have a way to take care of them,” they added.
The director general of the Pan-American Health Organization, Carissa Ettiene, said at a press conference that there is an estimated 20,000 cases of coronavirus among the indigenous peoples of the Amazonia, which affects Brazil, Peru and Colombia, Europa Press reported.
“These groups live both in isolated villages with minimal access to health services and in densely populated cities like Manaus (Brazil), Iquitos (Peru) or Leticia (Colombia),” she said. Ettiene added that “the impact of COVID-19 on indigenous people tends to be twice as high, compared to other states in the same countries,” according to Europa Press.
The second week of May, EFE reported, saw the death of Covid-19’s chief Messias Kokama.
Kokama was considered “the main indigenous leader of the city of Manaus,” and one of the founders, in that city, of the largest urban indigenous community in the Amazonia, Parque das Tribus-Tarumá, where 3,000 people live: 700 families from 35 different ethnic groups in Brazil’s Amazonia region. He was buried without the traditional rituals.
Altací Robim, a spokeswoman for this community, told EFE that more than 40 of its inhabitants are infected and that “at the regional level the Kokama ethnic group, which has 14,300 people in settlements, is the most affected by the spread of the coronavirus” throughout the state of Amazonas.
Arthur Virgilio Neto, mayor of Manaus, told BBC Mundo’s Millán Valencia that in the city there are “more than 4,000 infections and 620 deaths.” “We don’t want miracles. What we need is a plane full of scanners, fans, medicines and protective equipment,” he said.
“Most governments, for centuries, have only seen the Amazonia as a place from which to draw resources, but never where to invest in issues such as health or education. That’s why they have chosen to face this problem from each country, individually and with different strategies, and they haven’t realized that the river connects this region as a whole and needs integral attention,” said doctor Pablo Martínez.
In Venezuela, to the south, the border crossing with Brazil is the epicenter of contagion for the state of Bolivar, which borders Brazil, according to a report by Joelnix Boada for El Correo del Caroní.
Shabia Mantoo, spokeswoman for the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), spoke on May 19 about the vulnerability of indigenous people living in border areas and the displaced in Venezuela, according to IPS.
Mantoo referred to the Wayú and Barí, indigenous binational people who live in Colombian territory near the Venezuelan border and “who in Colombia are considered undocumented ‘despite having lived in that area for generations’. Many of them “live in isolated or remote areas, where they do not have health services and do not have clean water and soap. Others are housed in informal urban settlements without access to protective equipment.”
“They are in a high-risk situation, because the lack of regularization leaves them helpless in the face of the emergency, and they are also threatened by the irregular armed groups that control these areas,” Mantoo said.
UNHCR estimates that “some 5,000 displaced indigenous Venezuelans, most of them Warao, are in the Amazonian region of Brazil,” without adequate hygiene or health services. According to Mantoo, 1,000 of these Waraos have currently “access to housing, food, medical attention and education” in government shelters, and another 770 are in municipal shelters in Belén and Manaus.
Meanwhile, Lioman Lima reported for BBC Mundo that the Navajo Nation, in the United States, has the highest number of coronavirus cases per capita in that country.
Updated figures from the Lima news report show that nearly 4,000 Navajo have been infected with the coronavirus and more than 170 of them had died from the disease. “The number of infections there, in comparison to its population, is above New York and New Jersey and is even higher than the total number of infections in entire countries,” the journalist writes.
The Navajo Nation, to the south, touches Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. It is the largest native reservation in the United States.
According to the report, “almost 40%” of the inhabitants of this reserve do not have access to potable water. That is their main obstacle to prevent the virus.
“They said you have to wash your hands for 20 seconds… And I said to myself, but how am I going to do that if I don’t even have water to drink, to cook with, to clean with,” Marie Hoskie told Lima. She and her neighbors must travel up to 30 kilometers, “several times a week,” to get a source of clean water.
Remedies and resources
Several of the indigenous peoples mentioned in this article are using their own resources to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
The Sateré Mawé people in the Brazilian Amazon use medicinal plants, which they know from their ancestors, to try to stay healthy, according to an AFP report reproduced by La Jornada. They make infusions with “carapanaúba (a tree with anti-inflammatory properties), saracuramirá (used popularly in the treatment of malaria) and tea with less exotic ingredients like jambú, garlic, lemon, mango peel, mint, ginger and honey.”
None of the Waikiru villagers have had any medical tests to confirm the diagnosis, but Valda Ferreira de Souza, 35, was suspicious of their symptoms. “The homemade medicine gave me a lot of relief. I felt a little tired, it seemed like I was taking my lung, I felt short of breath and I took the medicine,” she told AFP.
André Sateré Mawé, a leader of this community, explained: “We have treated all the symptoms we have felt with our own home remedies, as our ancestors have taught us. Each one of us, with a little knowledge, put the remedies together and tested them, using each remedy to combat a symptom of the disease.”
In the Colombian Amazon, given the lack of state support, the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC) launched a crowdfunding campaign, which will run until August, to help the most exposed communities, 64 indigenous peoples in six departments, so that they remain isolated and do not have to go to urban areas.
“We, the peoples of the Amazon, call on and invite Colombians to link up with medicines, cash and food throughout the Amazon,” said OPIAC President Julio Lopez at a press conference quoted by EFE.
In San Sebastián de los Lagos, in Leticia, the indigenous are making their own masks with a sewing machine and fabrics they were given, El Tiempo reported. A woman, whose name is not mentioned in the piece, prepares yambú or botoncillos tea, which is mixed with garlic and lemon, and sends it to the sick, who have been diagnosed without any further care. They must drink the tea three times a day.