SRT Survival

LAB received this open letter from the Teachers of the EEB (State Basic Education School) Padre Anchieta,  Florianópolis, to  School Community, March 2021. Main image:...

Strong opinions about the gravity of the Covid outbreak in Brazil and international comparisons. Read Sue Branford's post and join the discussion on Facebook.

Confronted with the denial of science, racism and land-greed of the modern 'colonisers', indigenous communities decided to resist and are receiving international recognition for their work.

While the pandemic rages and Bolsonaro and his ministers ignore or belittle its effects, indigenous communities face renewed invasion by miners, loggers and land thieves who bring infection with them

Brazil’s indigenous peoples face the most serious threats since the military dictatorship: a government determined to eliminate their rights, abolish their culture and ‘integrate’ them into an ultra-neoliberal economy; and a pandemic to which they are particularly vulnerable and which threatens their very existence. This first of three articles examines the history of 'pandemonium'

Covid 19 will affect Brazil’s indigenous groups for many years, not only because of the number of lives it has taken but also because among those dead are many important indigenous leaders. LAB briefly profiles one important leader who recently succumbed to the disease.

In a letter describing pandemic conditions as “dire,” the government of Brazil’s Amazonas state is pleading for urgent medical assistance from the international community. The authenticated letter apparently bypassed the Bolsonaro administration which critics say has been ineffectual in dealing with COVID-19.

The city of Manaus made world headlines last April when a first wave of the coronavirus swept through the city. Now that city, and the entire state of Amazonas, is being swept by a second wave of the pandemic, which is shaping up to be far worse than the first.

All over the world leaders have celebrated the beginning of vaccination in their countries, some of them taking the first jab themselves. But when the first vaccines were administered in São Paulo on Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro sulked in silence in his palace.

Covid must be bad in Brazil, even carnivals are being postponed. My favourite, Recife, will not take place in February. A new date of 9–17 July has been set, but even this may be cancelled.