Buried Alive: Covid in Iquitos
'Uncle Covid', a man who survived interment at a secret mass-burial site in Iquitos, has become a macabre symbol of the disaster that engulfed the Peruvian Amazonian city of Iquitos, where 70 per cent of the inhabitants had been infected with Covid-19 by July 2020. A decrepit health system, an acute lack of medical oxygen, poverty, the corruption of local elites and the power of criminal gangs conspired to aggravate this catastrophe.
Digital writing in the time of Corona
A new project, ‘Archiving Real-Time Literary Responses to the Covid-19 in Latin America’, is housed at the University of Birmingham. aims to document some of this literary production in this exceptional period of global history. It will make a body of viral literature in Latin America available through open access for future researchers and the wider public before it is lost.
Mexico: lessons from coronavirus in Chiapas
For the Indigenous communities in pre-pandemic Chiapas, Mexico, weak health systems and even weaker trust in authorities had dangerous consequences.
The homeless street: São Paulo during Covid-19
Homelessness has increased dramatically during the Covid pandemic in São Paulo. A film and exhibition explore the way homeless people convert the street into a place of semi-permanent dwelling.
Brazil is on fire
With crucial votes pending on land rights, Bolsonaro ramps up threats of violence and casts the shadow of coup across the 2022 presidential elections
Brazil’s vaccine underworld
Brazil's CPI senate commission is hearing damning evidence of widespread corruption in the vaccine procurement of the Bolsonaro government, with evidence mounting of the direct involvement of the president himself and his family. One of the main planks of his diminishing reputation is crumbling - his claim to be the clean, anti-corrpution candidate.
Brazil: no prayers for the dead
President Bolsonaro is beginning to discover fear -- as deaths mount, protests multiply and his old adversary Lula emerges onto the political scene as a credible threat in next year's elections. However, those elections might spark a coup spearheaded by the Bolsonaro-loyal Policia Militar.
Brazil’s Uru-eu-wau-wau document COVID-19 victory with new video
The Uru-eu-wau-wau in Rondônia state sealed off their territory in March 2020. In a new video, they narrate how they survived the pandemic for more than a year with no major cases.
The assassination of Brazil
So illogical are his actions that people are starting to question Jair Bolsonaro's sanity: as he persists in denials about coronavirus, antagonises China which supplies Brazil's vaccines and foments murderous violence by the police
Brazil: a shutdown for life
Despairing of any action by the Bolsonaro government, Brazil's MST movement of landless workers organizes rural communities to defend themselves, isolating but maintaining production and supporting members