This archive report was first published on 23 June 2020.
Published on June 23, 2020, a report by AFP highlighted the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on indigenous communities in Latin America.
The region's indigenous populations have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic due to weak immune systems and centuries of state neglect.
One of the most notable victims was Brazilian chief Paulinho Paiakan, a prominent defender of the Amazon rainforest, who died in a hospital in northern Brazil.
According to the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), more than 300 indigenous people have died in Brazil, five times the number of deaths reported in 2019.
The APIB accused the government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of doing nothing to prevent the spread of the virus in areas where 750,000 indigenous people live.
Over 5,300 indigenous people have been infected with the virus, and Brazil is the second-worst-hit country in the world, with over a million infections and over 50,000 deaths from Covid-19.
"If he had adopted preventative measures from the beginning, we would have avoided this number of deaths," said Sonia Guajajara, APIB coordinator.
Nonagenarian Kaiapo leader Raoni Metuktire claimed that Bolsonaro was taking advantage of the pandemic to further exploitative projects in the Amazon that could endanger indigenous communities.
The Pan American Health Organisation reported that at least 20,000 people living in the Amazon River basin are infected with the virus.
On the border between Brazil and Venezuela, the Yanomamis territory is occupied by around 20,000 illegal miners, who often carry the virus with them, exposing indigenous populations to danger.
A study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the Socio-Environmental Institute predicted that 14,000 Yanomamis could become infected if authorities don't act to protect them.
Wearing a crown of feathers, a necklace of tusks and a surgical mask, Remberto Cahuamari, a member of the Ticuna community in Colombia, expressed his concern that the loss of "grandparents" to COVID-19 would rob his community of its ancestral wisdom.
"We'd be left with our young who in the future won't know anything about our cultures and our customs. That's what scares us," he said.
