This article was first published by Mongabay on 27 May. You can read the original here.In April an official from IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency was violently assaulted by loggers and needed hospital treatment in Pará state. The incident was caught on video.The IBAMA operation was targeting illegal deforestation carried out by land grabbers, wishing to convert large...
Both the United Nations and World Health Organization have labelled the spread of disinformation during the coronavirus crisis as an ‘infodemic.’ ‘We have faced pandemics before,’ said Graham Brookie, Director of the Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Laboratory, ‘but never in an era in which humans are so connected and with as much access to information as they...
This article was edited by LAB. The authors’ original text (in Portuguese) can be found here.
The authors argue that the acceleration of Amazonian deforestation and environmental degradation —powered by successive blows from Bolsonaro’s government to neuter environmental protection policies — in a region where public healthcare is at best precarious, has amplified the...
The Boa Vista Quilombo in Oriximiná, Pará state, is like many Brazilian quilombola communities. Quilombolas are Afro-Brazilian runaway slave descendants, and point to centuries of inequality and neglect by the government. Quilombos often lack running water, basic sanitation and health services.In the 1970s, Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) annexed much of Boa Vista’s land and established the...
15 May 2020. As Brazil lurches from one political crisis to another, the death toll rises steadily, making it the new epicentre of the global pandemic. Over 16,000 have now died since it began.
Doctors and specialists point to a disastrous lack of coordination by the federal government in fighting the virus. Initiatives by...
This article was first published in Portuguese by Público. It has been translated for LAB by Theo Bradford and edited by Mike Gatehouse
There was a great moment of silence on the banks of the river Uraricoera when Macunaíma, the 'hero without a character’, was born in the...
It was billed as an important presidential announcement, and his ministers stood behind him, dark suited, hands clasped in front of them like a football team defending a penalty shot. One stood out - Finance Minister Paulo Guedes – not just the only one wearing a mask, but the only one in shirtsleeves, and apparently, socks. This...
Excellent video from The Guardian showing Brazil's favela-dwellers working hard to implement lock-downs and to supply food and essentials to their communities, while President Bolsonaro openly belittles such measures, whether by communities, state governors or his own (now-ex) health minister. Video published 21 April 2020
This article was first published on 6 April 2020 by Newsweek. You can read the original article here.
The COVID-19 pandemic could “wipe out” entire indigenous populations in Brazil, experts who have described the situation a “matter of life and death” have warned.
Survival International, a human rights organization which...
This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic, published on Somatosphere.
Main image: CCPY doctor examines a sick Yanomami child, Balaú, Brazil. Image: Fiona Watson/Survival
Two weeks ago, Kanari Kuikuro called me from Canarana, a small town in the Brazilian Amazon, where...