Encroachment in the Amazon: Bolsonaro and COVID-19 Displace Indigenous People
Illustration: Cozette Ellis for the Davis Political Review.
In January of 2019, Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil. He rose to power in the midst of extreme economic and political instability, posing as an alternative to inefficient, lackluster leaders of the past. As the country saw alarming rates of rising criminal activity (in 2017 alone, there was an average of 175 deaths per day), Bolsonaro’s far-right campaign capitalized on fear and promised to step up and reestablish order. Beyond the urban issues of unsafe cities and favelas, he focused his campaign on denouncing indigeous land and the demarcation of environmental reserves, promising to fuse together the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of the Environment.
Bolsonaro’s campaign commitments to reduce indigenous territory and commercialize the Amazon have since been realized through logging and encroachment of the forest. Both are inevitably accompanied by the targeting of natives— Bolsonaro routinely fuels this targeting with incendiary and racist comments about their legitimacy as Brazilians and as human beings. His track record extends as far back as 1998, when he lamented: “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated their Indians.” In the 20 years since, Bolsonaro’s thinking has not managed to evolve; his most recent showcase of that was in January of 2020, when he took to Facebook to broadcast the statement: “Indians are undoubtedly changing… they are increasingly becoming human beings just like us.”
Despite Bolsonaro’s election victory and overwhelming support, his comments and actions are often met with varying degrees of backlash. The core issue of Amazon deforestation sets the stage for the intersection of human rights and environmental activism as groups try to save both the land and rights of indigenous people. However, these forms of resistance can prove futile in Brazil— a country which has been named “the worst place” for advocates of land rights and nature protection.
With each passing day, activist efforts risk being in vain, as Bolsonaro aggressively moves forward with his agenda. In February of 2020, he presented to Congress a bill that would legalize mining and fund hydroelectric power projects and other commercial ventures in demarcated Indigenous territories. These proposals pose a direct threat to native tribes, compromising their health and destroying their livelihood.
The rainforest quite literally sustains the lives of indigenous tribes, and the relationship between the two is balanced. Natives are often called the “guardians of the Amazon”, and their contributions to the protection of the thriving biodiversity is unparalleled. Given that the rainforest produces incredible amounts of oxygen, and just as importantly, stores almost as much carbon dioxide, it is paramount to preserve its levels of biodiversity. Bolsonaro, however, has proved indifferent to that reality and seeks to commercialize regions in the hope that it will pave the way for economic development.
Rather than recognizing the immense contributions that a preserved Amazon could provide to Brazil— and the world—, Bolsonaro has instead opted to defund environmental regulation institutions, dismiss experts who he accused of “manipulating data”, and hide behind claims of deforestation being “cultural”. The aftermath is clearly seen in the 64% increase in destruction of Brazil’s Amazonian territory. This surge in deforestation comes at a time where much of the news is clouded by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Since the outbreak emerged in Brazil, over 160,000 people have died and multiple members of Bolsonaro’s administration have resigned in response to the government’s poor handling of the crisis.
For indigenous tribes, COVID-19 poses an even greater threat than it does to the general population. Early in the outbreak, experts voiced fears that geographic isolation and inadequate access to health care would lead natives to disproportionately suffer the consequences. Those fears quickly materialized— to date over 15,000 Indigenous Brazilians have contracted COVID-19, with significant problems in the healthcare made available to them. In July, over 1,000 workers with the Indigenous health service tested positive. Officials denied the outbreak but according to the New York Times, “the share of infected workers was above the Amazon region’s average of 8 percent for the general population.”
The Coronavirus could prove to be the extinction of many tribes in the Amazon. With over 600 indigenous deaths, survivors of the disease cite their concerns for the loss of knowledge and culture that comes with losing elderly members— a demographic particularly at risk for health complications when contracting COVID-19.
Moreover, with poor protection in the region from illegal miners and logging groups, the tribes have been left vulnerable, with some turning to the only option, moving deeper into the rainforest. For Bolsonaro, of course, this only serves to benefit his agenda. His commitment to profitizing the Amazon and his encroachment on indigenous land has not lessened amid the growing coronavirus-related deaths. In the face of popular pressure to supply much-needed support to the indigeous communities, he vetoed legislation that would provide invaluable resources, claiming it was “against the public interest.”
Bolsonaro has chosen to push forward his plans for the region with hopes that the global community will be too preoccupied with the pandemic to stop him. It has, after all, only been a year since he met significant backlash for the mishandling of the Amazon fires and faced a near boycott of Brazilian exports and trade agreements. French president, Emmanuel Macron, in particular, got personally involved in a twitter dispute with Bolsonaro over his response to the fires and rejection of a G7 aid package. Bolosonaro and his administration then began to publicly further the narrative that Western powers, such as France, were attempting to infringe on Brazilian sovereignty; the tension eventually culminated in social media disputes where Bolsonaro took to Facebook to make derogatory attacks against Macron’s wife, Brigitte.
The debate, since then, has been largely— yet wrongly— centered around those sovereignty claims as a diversion from reality. Bolsonaro has turned to use tactics from his presidential campaign— including fear mongering and misinformation— as a way to minimize the irreparable damage now being done to the Amazon under his watch.
The ramifications of such will be markedly observed and difficult to contain. Indigenous people, as mentioned, continue being exposed to the risk of COVID-19 and their pre-established marginalization prevent them from adequate care. If their survival is unlikely, so is that of the rainforest. As the lines of first defense against deforestation and illegal miners, displacing them, in combination with Bolsonaro’s ambitions will result in irreversible harm wreaking havoc on the ‘Earth’s lungs’.