This archive report was first published on 14 July 2020.
On a rooftop in Belo Horizonte, a Brazilian city far from their ancestral home, a 53-year-old Pataxo Ha-ha-hae woman named Angoho gazed out at the urban landscape, her traditional tribal headdress and yellow protective mask a stark contrast to the concrete jungle below.
Angoho and her husband Hayo, the community's chief, were diagnosed with COVID-19 in early July and were fighting the disease with a combination of ancient tribal remedies and Western medicine. They were among 13 families from their village who had settled in Vila Victoria, a favela on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, after being forced out of their land in Bahia due to eucalyptus farms.
"Here in the neighborhood, there are already 120 cases, if we go on like this more people from our group will be contaminated," Angoho said, panting for breath as she spoke. Her family was among those receiving compensation from the Vale mining conglomerate following a court decision in the wake of the 2019 Brumadinho dam disaster, but she said it was not enough and they had to rely on donations to survive.
Angoho's family had originally been forced out of Bahia, where they were deprived of water on their land due to eucalyptus farms. They traveled over 1,000 kilometers to settle on the banks of the Paraopeba River in Minas Gerais state, but the 2019 dam disaster killed 270 people and swept away the livelihood of hundreds of others.
"We left there because we couldn't take it anymore, the river was dead, we couldn't plant or fish, we were getting sick," Angoho said, who became a prominent critic of the environmental and human tragedy. Her family was among those who had to rely on donations to survive, and she said they just wanted their land back so that they could live in peace.
