According to this Spanish-language article published in Pagina Siete, “in addition to the extractive megaprojects that are advancing in their territories, indigenous people now also face the loss of those who keep their memory.”
The United Nations dedicated this year’s International Day of Indigenous Peoples to the topic "Covid-19 and the resilience of Indigenous Peoples." On August 9, the United Nations stated that “it is more important than ever to safeguard these peoples and their knowledge. Their territories are home to 80% of the world's biodiversity and can teach us a lot about how to rebalance our relationship with nature and reduce the risk of future pandemics ”.
The “elderly”, those who are most vulnerable to Covid-19 —remarks Ruth Alipaz Cuqui, from the Amazon community of San José de Uchupiamonas in Bolivia— “are our libraries, our library of knowledge that must be transmitted to the next generations. The death of an old man means a lot of loss for the indigenous peoples ”.
“n the Amazon basin, a territory inhabited by 511 peoples and distributed in nine countries, there is a state of alert. Indigenous communities not only face the advance of mining, oil projects or deforestation for the expansion of industrial agriculture.” Over the past 5 months, they now have to contend with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Panamazonic Ecclesial Network (Repam) and the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (Coica) have documented 34,598 cases of indigenous people infected with Covid-19 and 1,251 deaths in the region as of August 4. “Almost 15 indigenous brothers are infected daily in the Amazon basin. Five or six siblings die every day ... There are towns with 40 inhabitants, if the Covid arrives there, the town ends ”, highlights José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, from Coica.”
“"Indigenous peoples have always lived like this: abandoned to our fate", remarks the Bolivian indigenous Ruth Alipaz Cuqui, from the National Coordinator for the Defense of Indigenous, Native, Peasant and Protected Areas (Contiocap)… In Bolivia, where half of its inhabitants are indigenous, it was not until July 8 that it was announced that there would be an aid plan for this population.”
“Ruth Alipaz explains that , in Bolivia, the government has allowed extractive activities , such as oil exploitation, to continue in the Chaco region. Mining also did not stop in the Bolivian Amazon and this has caused , according to Alipaz, that indigeneous populations who are in initial contact, such as the Yuquis, “are already beginning to register infections….Megaprojects are justified with words like “development” or “sources of employment.”
“From the institutions they say that these projects are going to give work, but they do not say everything that we are going to lose; we are going to lose the land ... Our existence is linked to the earth, the cosmos, the water, the stones. How are we going to maintain the bond with the earth if they destroy it, if they end our way of existing? ”Asks Wilma Esquivel.
Not even those countries whose governments “said they had an indigenous profile”, Ruth Alipaz points out: “In 2009 the Plurinational State was born (in Bolivia) and we believed that it was consolidation, that we, the indigenous peoples, represented plurality. That has become mere political speech. The Constitution has been filed on a shelf ”.
Even with the transitional government in Bolivia, things did not change. The previous government’s efforts to encourage clearing of land for agribusiness through burning were not annulled—the burning of more than 5 million hectares of Chiquitano forest has been legalized
“Indigenous peoples also have limited political rights, highlights Ruth Alipaz. In the case of Bolivia, a law was passed stating that no one can participate in political life if it is not through a party.”
“The organizations that are part of Coica and others that are in the region are promoting a moratorium on extractive activities in the Amazon, have filed legal actions against governments such as Brazil and will begin a global campaign that will have as main issues climate change and the protection of the Amazon. This campaign starts on this International Day of Indigenous Peoples and will run until September 22, as part of World Climate Week.”
“Despite the fact that they live in different geographies, Wilma Esquivel, Lizardo Cauper and Ruth Alipaz, Gregorio Díaz and Wilson Herrera agree that the pandemic has not only further exposed the abandonment faced by indigenous peoples. Also, they point out, it has been a trigger for reflections and for strengthening their capacity for collective organization.”
A version of this article was also published in Tec Review and Animal Politico.