Numerous open letters by global figures and photojournalist Sebastião Salgado alert that the novel Coronavirus pandemic could eradicate indigenous peoples, stating that Brazil’s leaders must take immediate action. Artists, celebrities, scientists, and intellectuals alike have urged the Brazilian government to intervene and save them from the potential “genocide”.

Paul McCartney, Madonna, David Hockney, Oprah Winfrey, and Brad Pitt are amongst those who are worried for the survival of these tribes, all writing open letters to Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian President. A petition has been organized to immediately expel trespassers and illegal loggers from indigenous lands to stop them from importing the illness. This petition was organized and coordinated by Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, saying “We are on the eve of a genocide”.

This is not the first time that these ethnic groups have been unjustly exposed to illness. This dates back to European colonizers, who five centuries ago brought several diseases, devastating indigenous populations. With no means whatsoever to combat Covid-19, these tribes are put in an outrageously unwarranted situation.

Far-right populist Bolsonaro has been openly criticized various times since he took power in January 2019, accusing him of provoking the assault of indigenous reserves and systematically destroying their governmental protection. In these past years, indigenous peoples in Brazil have been in an atrocious battle for survival.

In the words of Salgado himself, “Indigenous communities have never been so under attack […] The government has no respect at all for the indigenous territories”.

Signatories of Salgado’s petition include Gisele Bündchen, Naomi Campbell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ai Weiwei, Meryl Streep, and Norman Foster. These signatories have argued that there is absolutely nothing in place that will protect these people from the risk of genocide. The risk of infection is undoubtedly provoked by outsiders that ingress into their land illegally.

Salgado also documented the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and is now comparing it to Brazil’s situation. He explains that Rwanda’s was a violent act, with physical attacks, but the fact remains that the coming situation also threatens death of the indigenous.

“When you endorse or encourage an act that you know will eliminate a population or part of a population, this is the definition of genocide … [It will be] genocide because we know this is going to happen, we are facilitating … the entry of coronavirus … [and therefore] permission is being given for the death of these indigenous people,” said Sebastião Salgado

“It would mean the extinction of Brazil’s indigenous peoples,”

The death of a Yanomami teenager on April 9 sparked the fear currently felt towards the survival of these peoples’ survival. Part of Yanomami’s reserve is located in Manaus, the Brazilian city that has took the hardest hit by Coronavirus. Health workers in the northern state of Roraima expressed their concern that the 15-year-old may have spread the disease to his neighbors, family, and friends. This teenager had been moving along an area packed with wildcat gold miners and other trespassers.

There have been more deaths since, including an 87-year-old Borari woman in Pará. Hundreds attended a ceremony to mourn her, potentially obtaining the disease.

“Owing to the high degree of movement of people from one state to another in the Amazon, together with a lack of public policies…COVID-19 has fertile terrain to spread rapidly among the populations that live in Amazônia, which could lead to disaster in the short and medium term,”

Roque Paloschi, archbishop of Porto Velho, Rondônia and president of the Catholic rights group Indigenist Missionary Council.

Salgado has called for an army-led taskforce to be created in order to banish intruders from indigenous regions. He believes that international pressure will be enough to oblige Bolsonaro into taking proper action, citing the Amazon fires of last year, because he believes that the president will not act of his own good will.

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