Cruzeirinho (Brazil) (AFP)
The wooden huts of Cruzeirinho, a small indigenous village in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, are almost all empty: most of the inhabitants have fled into the forest, for fear of being contaminated by the coronavirus.
Only five of the 32 families from this indigenous community stayed behind, the others having abandoned their wooden houses to find refuge in the lush vegetation of the jungle.
"They preferred to take their business to the forest and avoid contact," said AFP Bene Mayuruna, one of the only residents who decided to stay in the village, whose population lives mainly from fishing and growing cassava.
The village is much quieter than usual, the silence being barely disturbed by the cackling of a few chickens.
Located on the banks of the Javari river, an important tributary of the Amazon, Cruzeirinho is far from being the only indigenous village deserted by part of its inhabitants.
"Many natives are forced to flee the coronavirus, not only in Brazil, but also in Colombia, Peru or Indonesia," reported in April Oyvind Eggen, director of the NGO Rainforest Foundation Norway.
"The health crisis is additional pressure for these people who are already in a very difficult situation," he said in a statement.
A team of health professionals was recently sent by the Brazilian army to Cruzeirinho to go to the residents who remained there, communicating with them using interpreters.
None of them has tested positive for coronavirus so far.
- Road blocked -
One week by boat from Cruzeirinho, the inhabitants of the Umariaçu indigenous reserve have decided to adopt a different strategy.
Rather than fleeing into the forest, they blocked access to their villages to anyone from outside.
"Be careful, native land. Closed for 15 days", can we read at the entrance to this 5,000 hectare reserve where around 7,000 indigenous people live, near the border with Peru and Colombia.
The Ticuna people, who live on these lands, have also installed a barricade to block access to the reserve, which overlooks a busy road leading to Tabatinga, a border town of 65,000 inhabitants.
A difficult decision to make, the subsistence of the inhabitants partly dependent on the sale of products to visitors.
"The pandemic has posed a lot of problems for us. We are only 15 minutes from Colombia and people from there came here to buy us fish or fruit," says Sildonei Mendes da Silva, cacique of the Umariaçu people.
These efforts were not enough to stop the pandemic net: 24 residents of the reserve were contaminated and two died from the Covid-19.
Inside the reserve, the use of protective masks is not widespread, AFP noted, with gatherings during Masses, the faithful seem little concerned about respecting the barrier gestures.
- "Irreversible damage" -
The Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) however tried to broadcast Monday on social networks a message for young indigenous people, asking them to stay at home as much as possible to avoid contaminating the older ones.
"The virus kills leaders, elders and healers, (...) and the pandemic risks causing irreversible damage to our communities and our culture," we can read on this message.
Brazil is the second country most affected by the virus in the world, after the United States, with more than 52,000 deaths and more than one million people infected.
Indigenous peoples, decimated in the past by other diseases from outside, are also hit hard.
According to the APIB, more than 7,700 indigenous people have been infected with the coronavirus in Brazil and more than 346 have died from it.
The association accuses the government of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro of "doing nothing" to prevent the virus from spreading among the approximately 900,000 indigenous people living in the country.
© 2020 AFP