‘Rio Negro, We care’. Indigenous women, cosmopolitics and public health in the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to understand the ‘Rio Negro, We Care’ campaign in its cosmopolitical implications for discussions of global health and human rights. This article is part of a collaborative process centred on the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira and the Alto Rio Negro region of Brazil. This campaign was developed by the Department of Women of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (DMIRN/FOIRN) at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It had significant effects on the pandemic experience in the region during 2020. The Brazilian responses to the COVID-19 pandemic highlight complex, intersectional and neocolonial processes, associated with what has been understood as the necropolitics led by the Brazilian federal government. At the same time, such responses shed light on the limitations of the biopolitical orientation of public and global health for the management of the pandemic. We seek to narrate a cosmopolitical intervention located ‘in culture’ as a counterpoint to this process. Our analysis highlights questions in the field of global and planetary health milestones, such as the conditions of legitimacy for cosmological knowledge and care technologies, or the ontological implications of the persistent biopolitical bias of mainstream public health interventions.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The Lowy Institute is periodically ranking the performance of countries in managing the Covid-19 pandemic. For January 2021, Brazil was the worst country ranked in the world, and for March 2021, was excluded of the ranking because of the critical lack of data.

2 Ver Retrieved March 27, 2021, from https://www.correiobraziliense.com.br/brasil/2021/03/4914286-covid-19-sp-bate-novo-recorde-de-mortes-diarias-com-1-193-obitos.html.

3 The problems that income transfer policies have created for a large part of indigenous Amazonian groups, including cross-border ones, has drawn the attention of several researchers (Marques, 2015; Meira, 2018; Melo, 2018, 2020).

4 Retrieved March 27, 2021, from http://www.fvs.am.gov.br/indicadorSalaSituacao_view/63/2.

5 Retrieved March 27, 2021, from https://coiab.org.br/covid.

6 We follow Foucault’ ideas and analysis about biopolitics in relation with knowledge/power and the formation of modern, liberal world; health sciences and public health included (Foucault, 2008).

7 For more information see Retrieved November 11, 2020, from https://foirn.org.br/.

8 ‘Social control’, in its current meaning in Brazil, refers to a series of councils, institutions, and procedures that brings civil society, in many forms (including indigenous organizations), into public policy making bodies.

9 Translator’s note: ‘rede’, in Portuguese, means network, net, and hammock – the traditional indigenous form of bedding. ‘Women and their hammocks’ and ‘women in networks’ thus become the same thing. In the same way, the articles overriding metaphor of transforming networks into parachutes should also be read as transforming hammocks into parachutes.

10 The DSEI is a decentralized unit of the National Subsystem for Indigenous Healthcare, which locally manages healthcare assistance for indigenous peoples. The Brazilian subsystem is composed by 34 DSEIs, designed according to their own territorial criteria and they are not restricted to Brazilian states and geographical limits. Source: Glossary of the PARI-c project – Platform for Anthropology and Indigenous Responses to Covid-19. Retrieved April 30, 2021, from http://www.pari-c.org/artigo/7.

11 See: Retrieved April 30, 2021, from https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/equilibrioesaude/2021/02/dez-processos-do-mpf-apuram-atos-de-pazuello-desde-falhas-na-vacinacao-ate-entrega-de-cloroquina.shtml.

12 Emergency aid was created during the Covid19 pandemic (Law No. 13982/2020) as an ‘exceptional social protection measure’ with an initial duration of three months, restricted to self-employed workers and single mothers registered in the Federal Government’s Unified Registry of Social Programs (CADUNICO). The aid amounted to six months of 600 real (one hundred euros) per capita per month transfers. As of October 2020 this value has been reduced by half.

13 On August 20th, in a live produced by ISA, Elizângela drew attention to the idea of ‘resguardo’ (in Portuguese). According to her, this is the term most commonly used in many indigenous contexts to refer to different types and situations of bodily restrictions and household isolation. Subsequently, Janete explained to us that ‘resguardo’ is also something done by a person who catches a disease and needs to stay at home following the instructions of a health professional or a ‘blesser’. Luisa Belaunde (2015) has worked on the idea of ‘resguardo’ (bodily restrictions) in the contexts of gender and sexuality, linked to social and bodily processes of care and the production of relationships in indigenous Amazonian contexts.

14 Retrieved October 18, 2020, from https://boavistaja.com/local/2020/07/01/campanha-arrecada-alimentos-e-kits-de-higiene-para-mulheres-em-vulnerabilidade-social/.

15 Retrieved November 15, 2020, fromhttps://www.socioambiental.org/pt-br/noticias-socioambientais/covid-19-mulheres-indigenas-do-rio-negro-lancam-campanha-de-arrecadacao.

16 These measures were made public through Decrees 019 of May 5th (Municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, 2020b), which dealt with the suspension of taxi service in the city, and Decree 021 of May 11th (Municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, 2020c), which prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages for a period of eight days as a complementary measure to the ‘lockdown’ created by decree n° 021.

17 See Retrieved from November 15, 2020, from https://noscuidamos.foirn.org.br/.

18 During fieldwork and in conversations between 2018 and 2019, the idea of ‘drinking culture’ had already been put forth by women in the search for better solutions to domestic violence. ‘Breathing in culture’ implies using knowledge and forms of relationships that are well-known to these women: sewing, fabric, conversation, teas, traditional medicines, and blessings.

19 Retrieved October 18, 2020, from https://acervo.socioambiental.org/.

20 It is worth mentioning that this type of effort was seen in Manaus and throughout Brazil, undertaken by different groups, but often by women. The pandemic and the cognitive dispute inscribed in these initiatives work to reveal what is at stake – and at risk – in the ‘landscapes of life’ (Grupo de Pesquisa Cidade e Trabalho, 2020, p. 9).

21 See, for example, GEIA (2020). Retrieved October 21, 2020, from https://www.salsa-tipiti.org/covid-19/iniciativas-solidarias-para-enfrentar-o-covid-19-na-amazonia-experiencias-de-colombia-e-brasil-5-27-20/.

22 On September 26th, SEMSA released a note on Instagram clarifying that the epidemiological situation of the township was not similar to that of the state capital or other areas of the Amazonian backlands. The note highlighted the stable number of confirmed cases and reported deaths, however, reinforcing instructions on the use of masks, hand hygiene, and how to find medical assistance in case of suspected disease. On 1 November 2020, there were 4520 confirmed cases and 58 deaths related to Covid19 in SGC.

23 See Buchillet (2002) regarding the importance of the conceptual elaboration of exogenous diseases (measles, smallpox, flu, and malaria) by Rio Negro indigenous groups and the experimental ways indigenous groups deal with these. See also the report by Justino Rezende, a Tuyuka and doctoral candidate in anthropology at PPGAS/UFAM (Universidade Federal do Amazonas) on 14 Apirl 2020, available at https://clyp.it/jv5ldurn.

24 Between May 27th and June 26th, DMIRN led three river-borne trips through the region’s backwaters, distributing basic rations, informational pamphlets, masks, and alcohol gel to community health agents. The trips were carried out by FOIRN and DSEI-ARN employees. Around 6500 basic food rations were distributed to hundreds of families throughout the region. These were distributed using boats of various types, but also via air with the help of the Brazilian Army. Partnerships with ISA, FUNAI, FEI-AM, Greenpeace, Living Amazon, Forest People Union, Climate Alliance, finally, Nia Tero and the Norwegian Embassy aided in this endeavor (FOIRN, 2020).

25 We can see how even contemporary versions of public health, such as Planetary Health (Horton et al., 2014; Whitmee et al., 2015), are centered on the ontological logic of the ‘human’ (with all its implied speciesism) and on a ‘civilization’ which is understood as ‘ours’ (which? Whose?) that must be protected. These visions are also based on an instrumental relationship with the ‘planet’ that must receive better care from ‘us’ (exchanging ‘domination’ for a certain desperate notion of ‘attention’ and care). For a more recent and less trusting perspective on ‘civilization’ and the modern control of the planet, one which is more sensitive to relations and interconnections, see Pongsiri et al. (2019).

26 De la Cadena (2010, 2018) uses this theoretical resource to understand and describe the complexity of the ontological conflict between indigenous peoples and the ‘State’. Her analysis is based on the interlinked use of the notions of disagreement and equivocation. The notion of disagreement comes from Rancière’s analyzes of political philosophy. It is related to historical inequality, the capacity for enunciation, and political processes in search of social equivalence. The notion of equivocation, on the other hand, comes from the anthropology (and philosophy) of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. With regards to the conceptual system of perspectivism and multinaturalism, it concerns itself not the meanings of the things stated, but the misunderstandings produced (in perspective) by cross-ontological Otherness. See also Kelly’s (2009) analysis of ‘equivocations’ in the ‘Meeting of Knowledge’ between indigenous health equipment and Yanomai indigenous peoples in Venezuela.

27 There’s a large bibliography surrounding women and gender in the northwestern Amazon (Chernela, 1984; Overing, 1986; Jackson, 1988; Gregor & Tuzin, 2001). Rossi (2016) has undertaken a careful review of this material. Chernela (2014, 2015) has also looked at indigenous feminine existence in relations to urban life and violence.

28 In the Rio Negro region, as well as in other indigenous contexts in Brazil, “Whites” makes reference to all non-indigenous people.

29 At the end of a public performance by indigenous women on 8 March 2020 in SGC, a Baniwa woman took a handful of sand and, placing it in a cactus pot, said: ‘the cactus is a very strong plant, that manages to be born among stones, with penetrating roots, and so you are’. From Dulce Morais’ fieldwork diary.

30 For a discussion on care in this sense, see Tronto (1993). Also see Mol (2008) and de la Bellacasa (2012) for understandings of care as relational modes of producing possible worlds or of worlding (Haraway, 2016).

31 Retrieved November 15, 2020, fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5LDAQOaNAw&t=2s.

32 Native ideas about the presence of colonizing biotechnological devices in medicines and vaccination supplies are not uncommon. However, a subject that still needs to be addressed is the pharmacopolitical effect, in terms of Preciado (2018), that the pandemic and the effective (vaccine) and perverse (e.g., chloroquine) forms of biomedicalization may have in neocolonial processes in the Brazilian Amazon.

33 For richer and better elaborations of this, please see Elizângela’s (Costa, 2021) and Francineia’s (Fontes, 2021) texts in the Platform for Anthropology and Indigenous Responses to COVID-19 (PARI-c).

34 ‘Amazonas na Pandemia: olhares cruzados desde a antropologia’ Webinar. Retrieved October 27, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc5jd7tbuhY&t=80s.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CAPES [grant number: Finance Code 001]; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo [grant number: 2019/01714-3].