Opinion <https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion>
The Death of the Last Juma Elder in the Amazon
The coronavirus and Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, are
jeopardizing the survival of Indigenous peoples and the future of the
next human generation.
ByEliane Brum
Ms. Brum is a journalist and a documentary filmmaker who covers
environmental issues and lives in the Amazon rainforest.
NYT, April 2, 2021
Leer en español
<https://www.nytimes.com/es/2021/04/02/espanol/opinion/pueblo-juma-brasil-amazonia.html>Ler
em português
<https://www.nytimes.com/pt/2021/04/02/espanol/opinion/povo-juma-amazonia.html>
*
<https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=9869919170&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F04%2F02%2Fopinion%2Finternational-world%2Fjuma-people-brazil-amazon.html%3Fsmid%3Dfb-share&name=The%20Death%20of%20the%20Last%20Juma%20Elder%20in%20the%20Amazon&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F>
*
<https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=The%20Death%20of%20the%20Last%20Juma%20Elder%20in%20the%20Amazon%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F04%2F02%2Fopinion%2Finternational-world%2Fjuma-people-brazil-amazon.html%3Fsmid%3Dwa-share>
*
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F04%2F02%2Fopinion%2Finternational-world%2Fjuma-people-brazil-amazon.html%3Fsmid%3Dtw-share&text=The%20Death%20of%20the%20Last%20Juma%20Elder%20in%20the%20Amazon>
*
<mailto:?subject=NYTimes.com%3A%20The%20Death%20of%20the%20Last%20Juma%20Elder%20in%20the%20Amazon&body=From%20The%20New%20York%20Times%3A%0A%0AThe%20Death%20of%20the%20Last%20Juma%20Elder%20in%20the%20Amazon%0A%0AThe%20coronavirus%20and%20Brazil%E2%80%99s%20far-right%20president%2C%20Jair%20Bolsonaro%2C%20are%20jeopardizing%20the%20survival%20of%20Indigenous%20peoples%20and%20the%20future%20of%20the%20next%20human%20generation.%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F04%2F02%2Fopinion%2Finternational-world%2Fjuma-people-brazil-amazon.html%3Fsmid%3Dem-share>
*
*
Credit...Sarah Mazzetti
On Feb. 17, Aruká Juma, the last surviving man of the Juma people in the
Brazilian Amazon, died of Covid-19 in a hospital in Pôrto Velho, the
capital of Rondônia State, in northern Brazil. Mr. Juma, who wasborn in
the 1930s
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/obituaries/aruka-juma-coronavirus-dead.html>in
a jungle village on the Açuã River roughly 450 miles from the Amazonas
State capital, Manaus, represented his community and their world. He was
like the giant trees of the Amazon, and he fell.
The story of Mr. Juma is also the story of the world’s largest
rainforest. His ancestors and those of other Indigenous groups planted
many of the Amazon’s trees before the arrival of European colonists in
1500. As the colonizers harvested their forests for global trade, their
people were decimated. Like the Juma people, the Amazon is at risk of
extinction.
ImageAruká Juma
Aruká JumaCredit...Gabriel Uchida/Kaninde
The overwhelming majority of the Amazon’s Indigenous peopleswere wiped
out
<https://www.unicamp.br/unicamp_hoje/ju/abril2011/ju490_pag03.php>from
the 16th to 19th centuries by disease and massacres at the hands of
colonizers. In the first half of the 20th century, with the expansion of
the rubber trade, mining and agribusiness, dozens of Indigenous groups
became extinct.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opinion/international-world/juma-people-brazil-amazon.html#after-story-ad-1>
The Juma’s population was reduced from an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 in
the 18th century to about 100 in 1943. In the early 1960s, many of the
Juma weresystematically executed
<https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Juma#_blank>by land invaders.
Some killers made a game oftossing children into the air and impaling
them with machetes
<https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Juma#_blank>before they hit the
ground. A massacre in 1964 left justseven survivors
<https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Juma>.**None of those
responsible have been held accountable for their crimes.
* Refer someone to The Times.
They’ll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.
<https://www.nytimes.com/share?channel=ometered&areas=dock&campaign=corereferral>
In 1985, after 21 years of civilian-military dictatorship, Brazil
returned to democracy. Three years later, a new Constitution deemed that
ancestral lands would remain publicly owned but guaranteed Indigenous
peoples the exclusive right to their use. The Constitution also
established that Indigenous territories would be demarcated within five
years. However, because of pressure by various political and economic
actors interested in exploiting the Amazon’s riches, the deadline
passed, and dozens of peoples are still fighting for demarcation — which
is the main source of land conflict in Brazil. It was only in 2004 that
Juma land became protected territory.
Editors’ Picks
The Latest Issue in Divorces: Who Gets the Embryos?
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/health/IVF-frozen-embryo-disputes.html?action=click&algo=identity&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=554944404&impression_id=fa336900-94a5-11eb-80e0-530c6eb14bb9&index=0&pgtype=Article&pool=editors-picks-ls®ion=ccolumn&req_id=151555950&surface=home-featured&variant=0_identity&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
Four Studies of Black Healing
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/style/four-studies-of-black-healing.html?action=click&algo=identity&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=223993580&impression_id=fa336901-94a5-11eb-80e0-530c6eb14bb9&index=1&pgtype=Article&pool=editors-picks-ls®ion=ccolumn&req_id=151555950&surface=home-featured&variant=0_identity&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
Sorry, Sometimes You Do Have to Be Uncomfortable
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/business/roxane-gay-work-friend-diversity-inclusion.html?action=click&algo=identity&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=625934367&impression_id=fa339010-94a5-11eb-80e0-530c6eb14bb9&index=2&pgtype=Article&pool=editors-picks-ls®ion=ccolumn&req_id=151555950&surface=home-featured&variant=0_identity&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opinion/international-world/juma-people-brazil-amazon.html?action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending#after-pp_edpick>
Image
Boatuto, an Indigenous man, in an area deforested by invaders at the
Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous Reservation in 2019.
Boatuto, an Indigenous man, in an area deforested by invaders at the
Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous Reservation in 2019. Credit...Ueslei
Marcelino/Reuters
In 1998 the National Indian Foundation, or Funai, the government agency
responsible for Indigenous affairs, moved Mr. Juma, his daughters and an
older couple off their more than 38,000 hectares of land in the
municipality of Canutama in Amazonas and took them to the larger
territory of the Uru Eu Wau Wau, a people who speak a similar language
and live in neighboring Rondônia.
The ostensible reason for the relocation was to protect the Juma people
from extinction, but the move was not without controversy. Under the
Brazilian Constitution, Indigenous people can be removed from their
lands only in case of life-threatening disaster or pandemic, and they
have the right to return after any risk has passed. Soon after being
relocated, the couple struggled to adapt and died, according to the
anthropologist Edmundo Antonio Peggion, who researched the Juma at the
end of the century. By then, Mr. Juma was the last surviving man of his
people.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opinion/international-world/juma-people-brazil-amazon.html#after-story-ad-2>
For 14 years, Mr. Jumafought
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/obituaries/aruka-juma-coronavirus-dead.html>a
legal battle to be sent back to his ancestral land. His daughters
married Uru Eu Wau Wau men and had children. In 2012 he and several
family members returned to Juma territory. One of his daughters, Mandeí
Juma, assumed the post of chief — reflecting a wider trend of Indigenous
women leading the fight for the Amazon’s survival.
When Mr. Juma died, a significant piece of the Amazon died along with
him. His four daughters and 14 grandchildren are trying to preserve Juma
traditions. Some of them have included the Juma name before Uru Eu Wau
Wau in their surname — an uncommon practice in Juma’s patrilineal
culture. “The government didn’t take care of it, and now we have to
ensure my grandfather’s legacy,” one of his grandchildren,Bitaté
Uru-eu-wau-wau <https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-56132019>, 20,
told the BBC. “He’s still with us. He lives with us. He represents our
people through his grandchildren and his future grandchildren who will
come.” Mr. Uru-eu-wau-wau has created a patrol group to help protect
Indigenous land from land invaders.
Mr. Juma’s death from Covid-19 is a reminder of how Brazil’s far-right
president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his government have allowed the
coronavirus to spread in Indigenous communities and used the national
focus on surviving the pandemic to intensify its assault on the Amazon
rainforest — and further weaken environmental protections.
During his 2018 presidential campaign, Mr. Bolsonaro, whose base
includesminers, loggers
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/feeling-betrayed-brazils-wildcat-miners-call-on-bolsonaro-to-end-environmental-crackdown-in-amazon/2019/09/10/01a6a5f8-d3d2-11e9-8924-1db7dac797fb_story.html>and
others willing to destroy the Amazon for profit, promised to open up the
Amazon to soybean production, cattle ranching, mining and the
construction of railways and highways. He also promised not to
demarcate“one centimeter”
<https://www.survivalbrasil.org/artigos/3543-Bolsonaro>more of
Indigenous land.
According to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research,
from August 2019 to July 2020, 4,280 square miles of the Amazon were
deforested —an area slightly smaller than Connecticut
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/world/americas/brazil-amazon-rainforest-deforestation.html>.
In February, as the pandemic continued to rage, Mr. Bolsonaro presented
a draft bill in Congress to legalize mining on protected land. If
passed, the law would unleash destruction.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Image
Alana Castro, an Indigenous woman, at the burial of her father in
Manaus, Brazil, in January. He died from Covid-19.
Alana Castro, an Indigenous woman, at the burial of her father in
Manaus, Brazil, in January. He died from Covid-19.Credit...Bruno
Kelly/Reuters
Indigenous organizations haveaccused
<https://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/cidadania/2020/07/indigenas-recorrem-ao-stf-contra-genocidio-institucionalizado-pelo-governo/>Mr.
Bolsonaro of using the pandemic to push their communities toward
extinction. At the outset of the public health emergency, hedid not
adopt measures
<https://english.elpais.com/americas/2021-01-29/study-finds-that-brazils-jair-bolsonaro-carried-out-an-institutional-strategy-to-spread-the-coronavirus.html>to
protect Indigenous peoples from the coronavirus until the Supreme Court
ordered him to.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opinion/international-world/juma-people-brazil-amazon.html#after-story-ad-3>
In July 2020, Mr. Bolsonaro even vetoed provisions of a law to guarantee
Indigenous people emergency health care and other basic tools to cope
with the pandemic, such as drinking water and access to information. In
August, Congress overturned his veto. Just recently, the Supreme Court
approved some measures in his emergency health plan for Indigenous
communities. His previous three proposals were rejected for not being
comprehensive enough.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration has also donelittle or nothing
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/29/illegal-goldminers-brazil-indigenous-communities-garimpeiros-aoe>to
remove what is believed to be a primarycarrier of infection in the
Amazon
<https://assets.survivalinternational.org/documents/1984/coy-ingles-r03-2020117.pdf>:
tens of thousands of illegal miners. At least20,000 miners
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/29/illegal-goldminers-brazil-indigenous-communities-garimpeiros-aoe>are
estimated to occupy Yanomami territory, in Amazonas and nearby Roraima
State.
In apublic letter
<https://coiab.org.br/conteudo/a-devastadora-e-irrepar%C3%A1vel-morte-de-aruk%C3%A1-juma--1613590804505x760394878447255600>,
Indigenous organizations have denounced the Bolsonaro administration for
failing to build asanitary barrier to protect the highly vulnerable Juma
<https://coiab.org.br/conteudo/a-devastadora-e-irrepar%C3%A1vel-morte-de-aruk%C3%A1-juma--1613590804505x760394878447255600>people
from exposure, as the Supreme Court ordered. If a sanitary barrier had
been in place, we might not have lost Mr. Juma. In February, the
investigative news agencyAmazônia Real reported
<https://amazoniareal.com.br/morre-de-covid-19-o-guerreiro-aruka-juma/>that
Mr. Juma was treated with azithromycin, ivermectin//and other
medications that, while widely distributed by the Bolsonaro government,
theWorld Health Organization says are ineffective in treating Covid-19
<https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/336729/WHO-2019-nCov-remdesivir-2020.1-eng.pdf>.
Image
Credit...Gabriel Uchida/Kaninde
Unless the international community acts fast, the broader politics
responsible for the conditions of Mr. Juma’s death could portend the
demise of the Amazon rainforest.
The destruction of the forest not only jeopardizes thefight against the
climate emergency
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment>;
it also compromises efforts to bring the pandemic under control. The
Amazon is an important global repository of carbon and airborne viruses,
and if it continues to be destroyed, the planet could see a higher
concentration of carbon in the atmosphere and more pandemics.Studies
have shown
<https://climainfo.org.br/2020/04/19/o-repositorio-de-virus-na-amazonia/>pathogens
are more likely to jump from animal hosts to humans in deforested areas
and then spread to urban settlements than they are in healthy,
biodiverse forests, which act asa natural barrier for diseases
<https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.661063/full>.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opinion/international-world/juma-people-brazil-amazon.html#after-story-ad-4>
Brazil has had one of the world’s deadliest outbreaks, and Mr. Bolsonaro
is turning one of the planet’s largest carbon sinks into a source of
emissions. In a world suffering from disease and climate chaos, it is
not just the future of the Juma people that is at stake, but the future
of the next human generation.
Eliane Brum (@brumelianebrum <https://twitter.com/brumelianebrum>) is a
journalist, a writer and a documentary filmmaker who lives in the Amazon
rainforest. She is the author of “The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field
Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections
<https://www.amazon.com/-/pt/dp/B07XM26HGQ/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_pt_BR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=eliane+brum&qid=1614502536&sr=8-1>.”
This essay was translated by Diane Grosklaus-Whitty from the Portuguese.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#7724): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7724
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/81829646/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
