On June 8, chief José Carlos Ferreira Arara, known as Zé Carlos, felt shortness of breath and fatigue. He was taken from his village in the Amazonian state of Pará to the São Rafael General Hospital, in Altamira. As his condition worsened, there were no vacancies at the regional hospital’s intensive care unit — but no time to transfer him to another facility. He died on June 9 of cardiac arrest, due to complications resulting from a coronavirus infection. He was 41.
Information on Zé Carlos’ death spread on Facebook and in the media. Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), an environmental NGO based in Brasília, ran an eloquent blog post about his life and legacy. A strong and charismatic leader who met with filmmaker James Cameron and actor [and former California Governor] Arnold Schwarzenegger when they visited the region a decade ago, Zé Carlos lived just a few miles from where the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam was built, on the Xingu River.
For years, he joined a coalition of activist groups who protested the construction of the dam, which completely obliterated his community’s way of life.
“The death of Zé Carlos is a great loss,” wrote ISA’s Marcelo Salazar. “Despite all the efforts of governmental and non-governmental institutions, the alerts raised by indigenous leaders themselves and sending of basic food supplies and tools to support social distancing in the communities, it was not possible to counter the arrival of the virus in the villages.” According to Mr. Salazar, over the last few weeks Zé Carlos had raised concerns about the danger of illegal gold miners and loggers traversing indigenous lands and infecting tribe members.
Despite the published reports, Sesai — the federal government agency tasked with tracking indigenous deaths from the virus in Brazil — has, at the time of writing, no record of Zé Carlos’ passing on its website. The omission is not surprising. Late last week, Brazil’s Health Ministry took down its official online Covid-19...
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