This past weekend, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited the vast Yanomami indigenous territory on the country’s northern border with Venezuela, bearing witness to what some have called a humanitarian catastrophe and others have called genocide.
Malnutrition and disease have brought some Yanomami communities to the brink of extinction, and shocking images from inside the villages have alerted the world to the gravity of what is happening in the Brazilian Amazon.
The images show emaciated children, adults, and elderly people with limbs as thin as tree branches, faces drawn and haggard, and bellies distended. The government has declared a public health emergency in the Yanomami indigenous territory and is sending supplies and personnel to the region.
According to Brazil’s indigenous health secretary, more than 1,000 Yanomami have been evacuated from their villages to receive critical health care.
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In this episode:
- Jonathan Watts is an Amazon rainforest-based journalist. He is a co-founder of Sumaúma, a journalism website that, according to its manifesto, “stands with the forest-peoples on the front lines of the war now being waged against nature.” He is also The Guardian’s global environment correspondent.
- Euan Marshall is the deputy editor at The Brazilian Report and hosts Explaining Brazil in the absence of Gustavo Ribeiro. He covers environmental issues.
Background reading:
- Read Sumaúma’s report about the Yanomami crisis: in English and Portuguese.
- Malaria, mercury, and miners are not only a threat to the Yanomami. Renato Alves tells the story of the Munduruku indigenous people.
- Experts say the mental health of Brazilian indigenous people has been put under stress due to the encroachment of extractive industries and the subsequent introduction of vice. Suicide rates among indigenous people are three times that of the rest of the country.
- The Lula government promised to be “100 percent different” from the Jair Bolsonaro administration in regard to indigenous rights and the environment. Its first moves denote that will. After a bemusing suspension under Jair Bolsonaro, Lula has brought back the Amazon Fund and is keen on gathering new donations in the government’s quest to slash deforestation figures.
- Amid the Yanomami crisis, the government proceeded to shake up Brazil’s indigenous foundation.
- InfoAmazônia showed, in pictures, four years of Jair Bolsonaro’s Amazon destruction.
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