At Chacruna: Urgent Action Needed: COVID-19 Pandemic Devastating Amazonia

Bernd Brabec de Mori

(1) Background: While European countries have more or less successfully evaded the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the situation in South America is far more complicated. Infrastructure, economics, and supply chains are much more vulnerable, as is the general population, but indigenous and other marginalized communities, especially, are under severe threat; not only from the virus itself, but likewise, because of corresponding damage, like lack of food, lack of medical attention for other illnesses, or lack of access to funds or government assistance. In the slums, favelas, or AAHH of many rainforest cities, people are dying on the streets without medical attention and without being registered for death tolls that would figure in international statistics. Indigenous and rural people are fleeing the cities, often carrying the disease with them into their home villages and communities. Indigenous people are more exposed, immunologically speaking, because of extremely high percentages of diabetes and other chronic illnesses that result from oppression, racism, and marginalization. For more background information, see the website of my colleagues at the Society of the Anthropology of Lowland South America... continue reading.