Taís de Sant’Anna Machado

 

   Mass cemetery of Corona victims in Manaus (Photo: Michel Dantas/AFP)

..the narrative about the naturalisation of deaths in the pandemic is useful for deepening the genocide of the Black and indigenous population in Brazil, and the Brazilian state has taken advantage of the health crisis to actively violate their fundamental rights and continue with a policy of killing or letting them die.

 

 "So what?! I'm sorry. What do you want me to do?" The president of Brazil, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, said this phrase in April when confronted by the fact that the number of deaths by coronavirus in the country exceeded the same number in China. Since then, Brazil is in the ranking of states with the highest number of fatalities by coronavirus, with more than one hundred and forty thousand deaths, at an average rate of more than one thousand deaths per day - and even the president himself contracted the disease. In addition to demonstrating the elected president's indifference to the deaths, the phrase points to the use that Bolsonaro (and other ultra-right presidents around the world) has made of the pandemic. The speech denotes a supposed inevitability of these deaths, a fact that would be beyond president's control, with no possibility of action. The argument in this text is that it is a disguise: the narrative about the naturalisation of deaths in the pandemic is useful for deepening the genocide of the Black and indigenous population in Brazil, and the Brazilian state has taken advantage of the health crisis to actively violate their fundamental rights and continue with a policy of killing or letting them die (Mbembe 2017).

 I analyze here how the pandemic's devastating impact in Brazil, as elsewhere, is unevenly distributed because of an already unequal structure in terms of race, gender, and class. And how the Brazilian state acts intentionally in maintaining this inequality, whether by direct action or by omission, while keeping a discourse of neutrality and the certainty of the situation's gravity. Taking as an example the position of the Black population, the quilombola[1] population, and the indigenous population, I defend the argument that racism has a direct impact on their living conditions from the actions (and omissions) of the Brazilian state - before and during the coronavirus pandemic.

 The negation of the seriousness of the health crisis marked the actions of President Jair Bolsonaro since February, with the registration of the first cases of contamination. The disease arrived in the country with the upper-middle class (mostly white) Brazilian tourists returning from European countries and the United States. While some of the state governors implemented steps to try to slow down the contamination, such as social distancing, restrictions on circulation of the population and suspension of the operation of commercial establishments and schools, the president questioned these measures and defined them as a crime, as they affected the economy. There was no national campaign to raise awareness about disease's risks or efforts to contain it. What existed was an active stance by the federal government on not supporting these states (beyond what is requied legally) and, even more seriously, it tried to undermine these containment measures' credibility. Therefore, the federal government's position directly impacted the lack of control of virus in Brazil - and allowed it to reach all segments of the population.

 Another action of the Brazilian state that impacted the speed of contamination was the delay in creating an emergency cash transfer system that could make the isolation measures possible. In a country where only 11 percent of the working population had the privilege of working from home during the pandemic, a mostly white minority, the system is essential to ensure workers' survival in terms of their subsistence. The virus had already been circulating for about a month when the emergency aid, proposed and approved due to popular pressure, began to be paid to informal and low-income workers.   

 Allied to this policy of contamination, perpetrated mostly by the federal government, it is also necessary to highlight its actions (and omissions) in the management of health institutions, since the disease has caused devastating burden on the hospital system. Brazil is recognized worldwide for the existence of the Unified Health System (SUS), a system of universal access to health care, on which at least 71.5 percent of the population depends since it has no health insurance. Observing events in other countries, such as the impact of lack of testing, ICU bed capacity, and respirators' unavailability, the SUS proved to be a fundamental tool to avoid even more severe virus lethality. However, the system has suffered from a lack of investment resulting from "economic austerity" measures. Even in the face of the pandemic, the government was against suspending or relaxing the public spending ceiling. The Brazilian government's health actions are responsible for the high number of deaths, which could actually be more than the number recorded due to low testing. The situation would have been worse, were it not for the existence of the SUS.

 

In a country with Black population of 55.4 percent, state's anti-blackness racism makes this group more susceptible to premature death – by its direct action, as in police operations like the one that murdered João Pedro, or by omission to restrict necessary health services to its citizens in Black and low-income populations.

 

The scenario of action and omission in the management of pandemic in Brazil is already dramatic enough for the Black, indigenous, and low-income populations, which depend mostly on state services. Although it is not said, as is familiar in the way anti-blackness and anti-indigenous racism operates in Brazil, government's stance of indifference about fatalities has to do with the fact that those most affected are racialized populations. The policy of killing or letting die directed at these groups reveals itself when we observe government’s actions in the face of the pandemic. But not only that: they are even more efficient when we analyze the other agendas of the violation of their rights by the Brazilian state and deepening the genocide of the Black and indigenous population.

 João Pedro, a Black teenager, was with a cousin at his uncles' house in a favela[2] in Rio de Janeiro on May 18, 2020. João Pedro had bronchitis and, for this reason, was considered part of the group whose contagion by coronavirus is riskier. For this reason, his parents were careful with his isolation. However, his uncle’s house was invaded by civilian police who was carrying out an operation in the favela, and he was killed by a rifle shot in the back. What happened from there was a sequence of rights violations that are routine for the Black population. Wounded João Pedro was taken away by policemen in a helicopter. Without any news, his relatives started looking for him in hospitals in the region. They came to know that he was dead only eighteen hours later (Medeiros 2020). The local and international media covered the murder investigations, which pointed out various irregularities. João Pedro is just one of the many "accidental" deaths of a genocidal policy of the Brazilian state, which mostly affects the Black population and has young Blacks as its primary victims - and it predates the pandemic. Among the protests after his murder, a poster drew attention to the doubly lethal situation for the Black population amid the pandemic: "To die of gunshot or virus”.

Brazilian indigenous people’s prtotest  (Image courtesy: democratic-erosion.com)


 In a country with Black population of 55.4 percent, state's anti-blackness racism makes this group more susceptible to premature death – by its direct action, as in police operations like the one that murdered João Pedro, or by omission to restrict necessary health services to its citizens in Black and low-income populations. In the case of favelas like the one inhabited by João Pedro's family, where the majority of the population is Black, precarious access to water and basic sanitation results in the possibility of more serious contamination. The social distancing measures needed to control the contamination severely impacted Black workers' income during the pandemic. They were more affected than white workers. This situation indicates that income from emergency relief has been essential to this population - and may not have been enough. Studies show that, compared to the white population, the coronavirus's lethality is three times higher in Black patients, without considering the class. The higher lethality can be explained by Black patients’ limited access to the public health system overloaded by a contagious disease, even while they commonly need to remain at work and face higher chances of getting exposed to the virus. In the health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus, the policy of death becomes even more efficient:

The racist and authoritarian structures of control institutions act to prevent Black lives from being treated as dignified, sometimes in the face of limitations and difficulties to meet the needs of care and access to health, sometimes by the militarized and bureaucratized violence of police brutality. (Medeiros 2020, 6)

 This racist reality affects another segment of the Black population in Brazil: the quilombolas. Quilombos are communities created by escaped slaves, inhabited by their descendants, who maintain traditions derived from this ancestry. Mainly located in rural areas, most of the quilombos' population does not have access to water, basic sanitation, or medical care, especially the specialized structure demanded by the most severe coronavirus cases. These conditions impact the higher rate of coronavirus lethality in the quilombola population: twice the national average. It is estimated that 75% of the quilombolas live in extreme poverty, and having access to emergency aid can be difficult for this population since it requires the use of a cellphone and traveling to an urban area (a displacement that increases the chance catching the virus). As one of the quilombola leaders, Núbia Cristina, said: "The pandemic has shown a wound that we have had for centuries, the lack of public equipment within the community and the neglect of public management, of all spheres, with the rural Black population" (Carvalho 2020).

 The advance of the pandemic among indigenous peoples also attests to the government's death policy, whether in its direct action or omission. Since the beginning of the pandemic, indigenous organizations have warned about the lack of hospital facilities and resources to treat the most severe disease cases and how indigenous peoples may be more vulnerable to the disease because of their specific social and economic conditions. They also denounce how contamination has accelerated in the villages due to the State's stance: how untested health professionals have brought the virus; how the invasion of indigenous lands by miners and loggers has increased, causing deforestation and contamination; and how indigenous people have become contaminated in the displacement necessary to obtain the emergency aid.

 For rural and forest people such as quilombolas and indigenous population, another agenda of the Brazilian government's death policy has deepened: ecocide. Since the beginning of the pandemic, criminal fires have hit the Amazon and the Pantanal. The government's negligence in the face of these environmental crimes, in addition to the agenda to make environmental protection legislation more flexible, demonstrates how the government continues to act actively on the destruction of the environment and the way of life of the indigenous and quilombola population.

 I conclude this text by highlighting that, even amid the deepening of the Black and indigenous genocide, organizations of the Black, quilombola, and indigenous movement have acted tirelessly to denounce the actions of the Brazilian state during the pandemic that have deepened the racialised structure of unequal distribution of precariousness and death. These social movements demand changes by showing that race is not a lethal factor for the coronavirus, but that the anti-blackness and anti-indigenous racism that marks the state's actions are.

 

Taís de Sant’Anna Machado is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Brasília (taimachado@gmail.com)

 

References

Batista, Vera. 2020. “Quilombolas pedem ao STF plano emergencial de enfrentamento à Covid-19”. Blog of Servidor. 21 September 2020.

Carvalho, Igor. 2020. “Taxa de letalidade por coronavírus entre os quilombolas é o dobro da média nacional”. Brasil de Fato. 17 June 2020.

Mbembe, Achille. 2017. Políticas da Inimizade.1st Edition. Lisboa: Antígona.

Medeiros, Flavia. 2020. “Operações policiais, produção de mortos e investigação de mortes: violência policial em meio à pandemia”. Boletim extraordinário CAAF/Unifesp de enfrentamento da Covid-19 7 (June): 4–7.

 


[1] Quilombola population refers to residents of quilombo settlements. Quilombos are settlements that were created by escaped slaves, inhabited by their descendants, who maintain traditions derived from this ancestry

[2] A favela is a slum or low-income informal settlement located in large cities such as Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo