Genocide and Ethnocide on the Agenda of the Bolsonaro Government in the Context of the Covid19 Pandemic.

Carlos Kleber Saraiva de Sousa
Professor of anthropology, University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil

After Brazil's return to democracy with the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution and the first direct election of the president in 1989, following 21 years of military dictatorship (1964-85) and 5 years of transition political (1985-89), the country made progress for indigenous populations, whether it be the demarcation and protection of their traditional territories and their cultural organizations, the implementation of differentiated health care or also the establishment of a specific and intercultural higher education, among other achievements.

With the election of Jair Bolsonaro as President of Brazil in October 2018 and the start of his term on January 1, 2019, public policies in favor of the original Brazilian populations have changed course, to the detriment of indigenous peoples. This development, however, surprised only unsuspecting or naive voters, given that long before Bolsonaro thought of being elected president of Brazil, he was already showing his contempt for the country's indigenous peoples, be it their socio-cultural organization, their traditional territories or even their existence as human beings.

To get the idea, on April 12, 1998, he went so far as to declare that it was “a pity that the Brazilian cavalry is not as effective as the American which exterminated the Indians”. On another occasion, on April 3, 2017, he declared: “You can be sure that if I succeed (at the Presidency of the Republic), there will not be one centimeter set aside for an indigenous reserve or for a quilombola^[i]“. On January 21, 2016, he again declared: “In 2019, we are going to write off [the indigenous reserve] Raposa Serra do Sol^[ii]. We will give guns and weapons to all the fazendeiros^[iii]“.

Since his assumption of the most important post of the Brazilian executive power, Bolsonaro began to implement numerous projects and political actions aimed at limiting the territories and destroying indigenous cultures, whether by acts preventing the delimitation of the traditional areas of habitat of these populations, by the dismantling of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI ) or by attempted agreements within the federal legislative power allowing mining on the lands of indigenous Brazilian peoples.

In light of these elements, and in the bleak context of the Covid19 pandemic, which affects millions of human beings around the world and in Brazil (an estimated 501,918 people have lost their lives in this country as of July 20, 2021), the President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, is being prosecuted before the Federal Supreme Court (STF), as per criminal complaint no. 9020, for having committed the crime of genocide and ethnocide against indigenous peoples.

This could happen because the Brazilian National Congress approved Law 14021/2020, guaranteeing indigenous peoples the right to adequate sanitary, food, technological and hospital conditions to face the Covid19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the conscious crime was allegedly carried out by Jair Bolsonaro on July 7, 2020, when he sent to the Federal Senate his message 3784, prohibiting the natives from accessing a series of health, food, hospital and technological projects, as a measure to counter the Covid19. Among these projects, I list the following:

• universal access to drinking water,

• free distribution of hygiene, cleaning and surface disinfection,

• emergency supply of hospital beds and beds in intensive care units,

• acquisition or availability of fans and machines to oxygenate the blood,

• inclusion of severely ill patients in the emergency health plans of the municipal and state secretariats,

• provision of internet points to avoid travel to urban centers,

• distribution of basic food baskets, seeds and agricultural tools.

It is important to note that on December 11, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations recognized genocide as a crime against international law and against all humanity. For its part, Brazil has become a signatory to this UN convention, proclaimed by Decree No. 30822 of May 6, 1952, and has qualified genocide as a crime in Brazil by Law 2889 of October 1, 1956. As stated in this Brazilian legal norm, genocide is identified when:

“Art. 1 - Anyone who, with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:

• kills the members of the group,

• causes serious injury to the physical or mental integrity of the group members,

• intentionally inflicts living conditions on the group aimed to cause its total or partial physical destruction,

• adopts measures designed to prevent births within the group,

• carries out the forcible transfer of children from the group to another group.”

In these terms, Jair Bolsonaro is denounced before the highest Brazilian judicial body for having encouraged the extermination of indigenous populations and, in fact, of their cultures (ethnocide), for having opposed his veto to the minimum conditions necessary for these populations to be better protected from contamination, disease and death resulting from the pandemic of the new coronavirus and its strains. However, this complaint has not yet been judged by the Supreme Court. Its president, Judge Luiz Fux, has to face accusations from academic organizations, social sectors, sections of the legislative and judicial powers, in order for him to urgently put the issue on the agenda and proceed with the trial of the aforementioned 9020 complaint denouncing President Jair Messias Bolsonaro for genocide.

According to data from the National Committee for Indigenous Life and Memory, created by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the country currently has 163 ethnic groups affected by the virus; more than 50,468 indigenous people have been contaminated and more than 1,000 representatives of these indigenous peoples lost their lives. Of the five Brazilian regions, the Amazon is the most contaminated and the indigenous populations Xavante, Kokama and Terena are the most affected by Covid19. The death of these people causes great pain in their loved ones, but also takes away, forever, a significant part of the collective memory of the population, especially when the native deceased is an elder, an “old trunk”, someone who was conserving a lot of knowledge on the history of its people, its language, its customs, its spirituality, its medicinal practices, its relationship with the forest and its culture in the broad sense of the term.

A little encouragement in the relationship between the indigenous populations and the Covid19 confrontation could be felt with the decision of the Supreme Court of Brazil (Direct action of unconstitutionality 6341 of April 15, 2020), which unanimously recognized the shared competence between the Federation, the States, the Municipalities and the Federal District, to take normative and administrative decisions on important health and hospital measures to face the pandemic. However, the lack of national coordination, especially from the Ministry of Health, has limited and hampered the adoption of important measures in this area, given that the country counts, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), 26 states, 5,570 municipalities and one federal district. In fact, the measures can be very different depending on the local governance model. Unfortunately, Brazil elected as president an individual lacking in public spirit, ignorant of the basics of organizational management, the various national issues and problems and, above all, totally lacking empathy for human life in every sense of the word, especially with regard to the indigenous populations of Brazil. Jair Messias Bolsonaro has proven himself to be a denier, opposer of science, advocate and promoter of crowds of people, of the non-use of masks, of non-vaccination and, surprisingly, of the so-called “herd immunity.” I hope that all those who aspire to a socially just world, with economic development respecting the environment and human life, understand that Bolsonaro is an example not to be followed, for the good of Brazil and of humanity.

[i] A quilombola or a quilombo is, today, a territory populated by descendants of Afro-Brazilian maroon slaves (having escaped from the plantations).

[ii] Indigenous reserve located in the northeast of the Brazilian state of Roraima on the border with Venezuela.

[iii] Means “farmer”. These are owners of large agricultural estates in Brazil.