Pandemic, racism and indigenous and black genocide in Brazil: coronavirus and extermination policy
Felipe Milanez[I] e Samuel Vida[ii]
Tragédias are always socially unequal and expose in a more striking way the historically constructed inequalities, such as the degree of exposure to the cliffs and the construction of vulnerabilities. The new coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 is a non-human agent originating from a zoonose that infects people and causes respiratory infections, and was not produced by humans in laboratories, as some conspiracy theories speculate. It is a new virus circulating among humans and quickly spreading to all continents. However, exposure to viruses and treatment of their infectious effects among human populations has been distributed extremely unequally. While some people have privileged access to medical care, to equipment to guarantee the right to breathe, to inspire oxygen, other social groups deal disproportionately with the two evils, in a structured logic for social classification. This unequal distribution can be manipulated to control lives and further expose social groups to death, a typical exercise in necropolitics (Mbembe, 2018, 2020).
Among the crimes that characterize the crime of Genocide according to the UN Convention of 1948, is the “intentional submissiveness of a group to conditions of existence that cause total or partial physical destruction.” The new UN special rapporteur on the rights of two indigenous people, José Francisco Cali Tzay, of the Maya Kaqchikel people of Guatemala, whose former president Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide, had a long career in his career combating racism in his country. Em, your first official statement in your new position, highlighted that “Covid-19 is devastating indigenous communities around the world and it is not just about health”[iii]. In Brazil, Abdias Nascimento (1978) unmasked in a pioneering way the direct link between racism and black genocide, which the current moment of crisis is not just exposed, as accelerated and also against indigenous people. The National Truth Commission recognizes responsibility for the death of 8.350 indigenous people by the State, or is bulho das indigenous lands and violations of rights “for this reason or omission.” The crime of Genocide is not characterized by the number or quantity of dead people, nor by the express manifestation of genocidal intentionality, but rather by the comissive or omissive manner of the actions undertaken and their objective effects. Any death caused by the interest of exterminating a group affects the entire existential dynamics of the group, directly and indirectly, jeopardizing its autonomy, weakening its political protagonism and its strategies of cultural resistance, contributing to the disintegration of its identities and physical disappearance.
In the case of Brazil, even before the release of the video of the ministerial meeting of April 22, the political use of the coronavirus as an element to produce deaths of specific and racially defined social groups assumes the characteristic of genocide. The Minister of Education does not need to scan the fascist ideology by saying that he has hatred for “the term 'indigenous people'”, “povos ciganos”, “may be black, may be white”, or “descendant of Indians”, and is victimizing himself to “end this business of povos and privileges”, to expose how the pandemic has accelerated. implementation of a fascist policy that materializes as extermination. There are more than 24 thousand deaths, and they are not distributed due to the nature of the virus among the more than 380 thousand infected in the second most affected country in the world. A society historically structured by the socio-racial asymmetries that cross even the social classes, defining differentiated groups of reconstitution and access to the basic social, civic and political rights, the victim preferences of this genocide are, fundamentally, the urban black communities (favelas, invasions, cortiços, vila, occupations etc) and rural areas (quilombos, farm and pasture communities among other traditional forms of occupation of territories) and the various ethnic groups of indigenous peoples, generically called indigenous peoples, also living in urban contexts, in rural areas and in forests.
A genocide related both to ethnic cleansing and interest in the economic exploration of lands and bodies — it means black workers subjected to a regime of superexposure to the risks of contagion for the maintenance of domestic work activities. white family residences[iv], there are two black workers in the informal market, there are two indigenous and black workers linked to agricultural production, there are indigenous communities and quilombolas plundered from their lands in measures that aim to legalize garimpos and grilagem approved in the middle of the pandemic. Fanon had identified a perfect correlation between economy and ideology in a racist society "Numa cultura com racism, o racist é, pois, normal. A adequação das relações econômicas e da ideologia é, nele, perfeita" (2018, p. 86). And, in the case of Bolsonaro and a government that has demonstrated inspiration in the Nazi regime and, soma-se, também, a eugenia with the exposure to death of talented, talented, marginalized people[v]. In the same ministerial meeting, the ministers Paulo Guedes, of Economy, and Ricardo Salles, of the Environment, developed the alignment between the ideology of Boslonarism and the economic interest through the implementation of fascist politics, as Fanon had denounced: a “opportunity” that is the moment of “tranquility” of the genocide It offers profit expansion, mining, new lands for the escravagista agribusiness, besides having been placed a “grenade” in the bag of the working class.
No Brazil, or institutional racism (Carmichael; Hamilton, 1967) impregnated in the structures and public policies established by Aimé Cesaire (1978) and Frantz Fanon (2005). The plasticity of racist practices adopted over the long history of the social and institutional formation of the country makes possible a vigorous reworking and adaptation to the new conjunctures of the new coronavirus pandemic. The narcissistic pact of branquiitude (Bento, 2002) produces the legitimacy of racist policies, causing a large-scale silencing of self-declared progressist sectors, including their political parties and representative institutions of civil society, hegemonized by white sectors of historical beneficiaries of policies of racial exclusion of blacks and indigenous people, as it happens. unequal appropriation of material and symbolic resources and access to political-legal structures. Cida Bento identified these inter-group alliances between brancos, or “pact”, which is narcissistic because it built a project on the black man loaded with negativity, inventing the other inferior, threatening the superiority of the branco. This denial avoids facing the problem of maintaining two racial privileges, or even losing them. This silencing promotes the interdiction of blacks and Indians in spaces of power, and the exclusion of spaces of life, such as access to mechanical respirators.
In just over two months of confrontation with the pandemic in Brazil, there is also an evident and criminal political strategy by the federal government to minimize the risks of the pandemic and hinder the establishment of a common strategy coordinated and structured jointly with States and Municipalities, as well as the policies and efforts undertaken by state and municipal governments that are marked by resources, measures and discourses typically directed at the white segments comprising the urban and rural upper and middle classes. And when it's not enough, white elite embarks on a plane ICU for differentiated treatment access in a hospital for whites at the headquarters of the center of national capitalism[vi].
In short, the adopted pandemic combat policies are centered on a supposedly general and universal goal that, I do not believe, takes as a measure the life circumstances and the resources accessed by the white segments of Brazilian society. Thus, the main guidelines and measures, for example the intensification of hygiene through the use of alcohol in gel, water and sabão, the addition of social isolation, the development of work activities in the home office, the suspension of school activities and part of two public services and activities Economic measures are not essential, apart from other social distancing practices, they are only shown to be effectively possible for the white plots of Brazilian society.
There are no specific policies for black and indigenous communities, considering their historical material deprivation, their concentration in the precarious sphere of service labor activities, the informal market and rural activities linked to food production and agroindustry, the peculiarities of their community sociabilities, especially in situations of moradias precarious, with high demographic density and lack of basic infrastructure benefits, their difficulty in accessing the basic items for the intense prescribed hygiene, as well as their sociocultural singularities. Given this criminal omission, we proliferate the data that confirm a greater lethality among these groups, who are effectively left to die[vii].
The new coronavirus is an epidemiological novelty for the human species, there is no vulnerability due to previous contacts, such as ancient epidemics that may have emerged from Asia, Africa, Europe, and transported to the Americas, all humans are equally vulnerable, but some have died more than others. There is no genetic structure that explains and justifies differences in why Brazil does not black morrem five times closest[viii] What are the risks for covid-19, or why the infection rate is? major among indigenous people, até 744%, do que entre brancos[ix]. diferença está no muro: What side are the indigenous people and black people on, and what side of the wall are the white people on?[X]. This wall expands the territory in a movement structured by environmental racism (Bullard and Wright, 2009) leading to exposure to the risk of racially inferiorized populations, such as, for example, the destination of a hotel for social isolation in the vicinity of the Tupinambá territory in Bahia,[xi] or the irresponsible police action to reintegrate people verified in São Paulo, evicting 50 families[xii]ou ainda a criminous decision of the government federal[xiii] de evict 800 quilombola families under the pretext of the installation of the Alcântara Space Base, not Maranhão.
Likewise with the alarming expansion of lethality along with historically vulnerable racial groups, the various governments begin to outline a cynical discourse of responsibility for victims, based on suggestions such as alleged "indiscipline" and insistence on violating the rules of isolation and social distancing, in addition to curbing with measures of Intensification of police repression, criminalization and increase of oppression on these groups, indicating “lockdown” as the last solution, in urban spaces, we do not need to elaborate and adopt other policies adapted to the specificities of these groups.
As such, people belonging to indigenous peoples die and fear their identity is denied. Likewise, at the time of death, people belonging to the original people have their identity denied, because, without consultation or against or desejo de sus relatives, they are buried as “brown", as we scream for help[xiv]. Among the Kokama of Alto Amazonas, for example, more than among the branches of the national society, the new coronavirus has a “high lethality"[xv] What differentiates the white segment of the national society. But their deaths do not appear on the official list of the Ministry of Health. For this reason, the indigenous movement, through the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), began to carry out its own transmission of the dead and infected to denounce the policy of extermination and criou of the National Committee for Indigenous Life and Memory. This difference between the data of the movement and the federal government exceeds 100% in the number of deaths: 143 deaths registered by the Committee on May 26, while the same data the Federal Government counts 40 deaths and ignores the case of another 103 indigenous people who died in that period. These data reveal that the lethality rate among indigenous people, which has reached 67 countries, may be higher than 16%, compared to approximately 6% of the Brazilian population in general. Situação semelhante confronts Coordenação Nacional de Articulação das Comunidades Negras Rurais Quilombolas (CONAQ), which has the same initiative and passed to produce an epidemiological bulletin of its own given the inviability and denial of the State. Nele, we will identify 48 deaths, 200 cases, in 1st different States, and a specifically reported tragic case in the ongoing non-Amapá with relation to quilombolas populations, ea “negligence on the part of two local governments"[xvi]. A quilombola lançou entity MANIFESTO[xvii] Quilombola Lives Matter. Both coalitions of movements denouncing institutional racism as subnotificações[xviii] as a strategy of invisibilization of extermination, and construct epidemiological bulletins of our own and independent of the State.
The assertion that there is a genocide in progress in Brazil is not rhetoric. It has been denounced by the indigenous and black movement as a “policy of extermination.” The Genocide is a process. There is an “atomic bomb” played on the spot. This process of Genocide of indigenous and black people, which is accelerating and becoming open under the Bolsonaro government, in the face of Covid-19, can be used as a “final solution” for the advancement of agriculture and management of indigenous lands, as well as for the deepening of policies of deconstitutionalization of social rights and increase of the criminalization and repression of urban and rural black communities.
When the silent silence is produced by the narcissistic pact of tranquillity, we must redress the relationship between racism, colonialism and Genocide, as alert Chief Juliana Kerexu[xx] It is pertinent and fundamental to understand what is happening specifically in Brazil, but it can also be reproduced in other situations with similar contexts. It is worth remembering that, historically, all wars of conquest benefited from epidemics to occupy territories, against quilombolas or, mainly, indigenous peoples. Also, under the pretext of combating epidemics, real ethnic faxes have been implemented in large diaspora cities, especially at the beginning of the 20th century, targeting the exclusion of black communities, pushing for morros, ghettos and other areas of abandonment and the absence of public benefits and services.
In addition to seeking the mobilization of political alliances together with Brazilian society and social movements to stop and reverse the current situation, putting pressure on Public Powers to adopt specific policies to confront the pandemic in black and indigenous communities, it is also necessary to convince legal institutions such as the Federal Public Ministry and the MPE's, the Public Defender of the Union and the DPE's, will fulfill their constitutional powers and act in defense of the diffuse and collective rights of these segments. In this sense, international public opinion can play an important role as a valuable ally in the fight against the indigenous and black Genocide in Brazil. Finally, there will also be a common effort to activate the instances protecting Human Rights on a regional scale, such as the OAS, and on a global scale, such as the UN, impacting the complaints and holding governments accountable for the Genocide in progress.
Aimé Cesaire showed that a society that dates back to its most crucial problems is a teaching society. The hypocrisy of the colonialist European bourgeoisie produced by Hitler within Europe itself, because it tolerated Nazism when it was practiced like others, before suffering and being its own victims. Césaire denounced that Hitlerism lived within bourgeois humanism, was his demon, and that Hitler was a crime against the white man, to the application in Europe of colonialist processes that as soon as the colonized were subordinated. Ninguém colonizes with impunity.
If Brazil does not have the government incentivizes the situation of invading lands and killing indigenous people and quilombolas, as Ailton said in a recent interview krenak, calling Césaire the support of the doença of society produced by Nazism, or genocide and the politics of death confronting the lives of all Brazilians. The problem, Krenak says, is that “the brans continue to do so because we have a civilized country.”[xx].
i Professor of the Institute of Humanities, Arts and Sciences (IHAC) of the Federal University of Bahia, integrates the Multidisciplinary Postgraduate Program in Culture and Society. Professor in sociology at the University of Coimbra, and coordinator of the CLACSO Working Group Ecology(s) Politics(s) from the South/Abya Yala. He was editor of National Geographic Brazil magazine and Indigenous Brazil magazine (Funai). Author of Memórias Sertanistas (Ed. Sesc) and Guerras da Conquista (Harper Collins).
[ii] Ogã de Xangô do Terreiro do Cobre, Salvador, Bahia. Militant of the Black Movement. Doutorando em Direito, Estado e Constituição, UNB. Professor of Law at the Federal University of Bahia. Coordinator of the Direct and Racial Relations Program (PDRR/UFBA). Executive Secretary of the Afro-Gabinete de Articulação Institucional e Jurídica (AGANJU). He acted as a consultant to the UNDP/UN and the Chamber of Deputies in the elaboration of the Statute of Racial Equality. Coordinate the Na Fé e Na Raça campaign.
[iii] See: “COVID-19 is devastating the world’s indigenous communities and it’s not just about health” – warns UN expert. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, May 18, 2020. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/SP/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25893&LangID=S
[iv] See the following news: “Parents of the first person to die from coronavirus in Brazil reveal that they are still not subject to testing.” O Globo, March 17, 2020. Available in: https://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/coronavirus/parentes-do-primeiro-morto-pelo-coronavirus-no-brasil-revelam-que-ainda-nao-foram-submetidos-teste-24310745; “RJ Government confirms first death due to coronavirus.” G1, March 19, 2020. Available in: https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2020/03/19/rj-confirma-a-primeira-morte-por-coronavirus.ghtml; “Casamento na Bahia becomes the focus of coronavirus”. The State of S. Paulo, March 12, 2020. Available in: https://noticias.uol.com.br/ultimas-noticias/agencia-estado/2020/03/12/casamento-na-bahia-vira-foco-do-coronavirus.htm; “Businessman is in isolation after testing positive for covid-19 and turns around the PGE.” Afternoon, March 17, 2020. Available in: https://atarde.uol.com.br/bahia/noticias/2123285-empresario-foge-de-isolamento-apos-testar-positivo-para-covid19-e-vira-alvo-da-pge
[v] “Director of HC vê eugenia em Bolsonaro's report on pandemic.” Uol, May 12, 2020. Available in: https://noticias.uol.com.br/saude/ultimas-noticias/redacao/2020/05/12/diretor-do-hospital-das-clinicas-eugenia.htm
[vi] “Coronavirus: Rich people from Belém escape from the collapsed air ICU in the city's hospitals.” Em Time, May 06, 2020. Available at: https://epoca.globo.com/sociedade/coronavirus-ricos-de-belem-escapam-em-uti-aerea-de-colapso-nos-hospitais-da-cidade-1-24412850
[vii] “Without social protection, coronavirus must affect blacks, poor and indigenous people more severely, says Opas.” Radioagência nacional, April 17, 2020. Available in: https://radioagencianacional.ebc.com.br/internacional/audio/2020-04/sem-protecao-social-coronavirus-deve-atingir-mais-severamente-negros
[viii] “In two weeks, the number of black people dying from coronavirus is five times higher in Brazil” A Pública, May 06, 2020, available in https://apublica.org/2020/05/em-duas-semanas-numero-de-negros-mortos-por-coronavirus-e-cinco-vezes-maior-no-brasil/
[ix] “Number of cases of indigenous people infected by coronavirus triples every 5 days in the country; village in Amazonas has 33 new records”, O Globo, April 24, 2020, available in https://outline.com/sjBK8Z https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/numero-de-casos-de-indigenas-infectados-por-coronavirus-triplicacada-5-dias-no-pais-aldeia-no-amazonas-tem-33-novos-registros-24390810
[X] “Morumbi have more cases of coronavirus and Brazil's more deaths” G1, April 18, available in: https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2020/04/18/morumbi-tem-mais-casos-de-coronavirus-e-brasilandia-mais-mortes-obitos-crescem-60percent-em-uma-semana-em-sp.ghtml
[xi] “First hotel for isolation of infected people in physical quarantine in Olivença.” Bahia Notícias, May 11, 2020. Available in: http://www.jornalbahiaonline.com.br/noticia/38936/Primeiro-hotel-para-isolamento-de-infectados-em-quarentena-fica-em-Oliven%C3%A7a.html
[xii] “In the midst of a pandemic, PM carries out reintegration of employees within SP.” CartaCapital, May 7, 2020. Available in: https://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/em-meio-a-pandemia-pm-realiza-reintegracao-de-posse-no-interior-de-sp/
[xiii] “Confinement Direto: Heleno orders the removal of quilombos in Alcântara (MA) during the pandemic.” Socioenvironmental Institute, April 01, 2020. Available in: https://www.socioambiental.org/pt-br/blog/blog-do-isa/direto-do-confinamento-heleno-ordena-remocao-de-quilombos-em-alcantara-ma-durante-pandemia
[xiv] “Povo Kokama asks for help and says that deaths from Covid-19 are being registered as brown,” Look at the Ruralists, May 03, 2020. Available at: https://deolhonosruralistas.com.br/2020/05/03/povo-kokama-pede-socorro-e-diz-que-mortos-pela-covid-19-estao-sendo-registrados-como-pardos/
[xv] “APIB Alert #17 High Covid-19 fatality in Brazil hits violently in Kokama.” APIB, May 9, 2020. Available in: http://apib.info/2020/05/09/17-alta-letalidade-da-covid-19-no-brasil-atinge-violentamente-povo-kokama/
[xvi] “COVID-19: No 25-day period Amapá represents 41% of deaths mapped among the quilombola population.” CONAQ, May 5, 2020. Available in: http://conaq.org.br/noticias/alerta-publico/
[xvii] Manifesto Vidas Quilombolas Importam, launched on May 12, 2020. Available in: http://conaq.org.br/noticias/manifesto-vidas-quilombolas-importam/
[xviii] “The growth of Covid-19, the underreporting of death cases among the indigenous population in Brazil.” APIB Quarantine, May 6, 2020. Available in: http://quarentenaindigena.info/2020/05/06/o-crescimento-do-covid-19-e-a-subnotificacao-de-casos-de-obitos-na-populacao-indigena-no-brasil/
[xx] “For the chief of Paraná, the coronavirus pandemic repeats the tragedy of colonization.” Brasil de Fato, May 12, 2020. Available in: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2020/05/12/para-cacique-do-parana-pandemia-de-coronavirus-repete-a-tragedia-da-colonizacao
[xx] “Bolsonaro confronts everyone's life, denounces Ailton Krenak” Tutaméia, May 4, 2020. Available in: https://tutameia.jor.br/bolsonaro-afronta-a-vida-de-todos-denuncia-ailton-krenak/
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