It is the white man “who brought the disease to the indigenous peoples of the Amazon”, Joilson Karapanã told me bitterly. In June, the indigenous warrior from the Karapanã tribe embarked with his father, the village chief, and his older brother on a half-day boat ride downstream to Manaus to seek medical help. Days later, both his relations had died of Covid-19.
The story of how “white” men have brought disease and destruction to American indigenous groups is as old as the Spanish and Portuguese conquest five centuries ago. But today, abetted by advancing deforestation, the pandemic is ripping through the Amazon, devastating indigenous communities with little access to healthcare and almost no natural immunity. The policies of Brazil’s hard-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has criticised what he sees as the excessive legal protection afforded to Brazil’s more than 300 ethnic groups and the “enormity” of their constitutionally-mandated land reserves, has made matters worse.
“Indigenous peoples are a separate chapter in this sad story,” says Luiz Henrique Mandetta, a doctor and former health minister who was sacked in April for publicly disagreeing with Mr Bolsonaro. “They have always had a bad relationship with viruses of the white people.”