Amazon leaders demand distance from illegal gold diggers to protect indigenous peoples

By Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTÁ (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Indigenous leaders in the Amazon on Friday called on South American governments to ensure that illegal miners stay away from their lands as they fear outsiders may spread the coronavirus among vulnerable indigenous communities. .

At least 10 indigenous people from Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia died from Covid-19, according to the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (Coica).

Illegal mining has “intensified” as miners are encouraged by weaker controls and a lack of state presence in the forests where indigenous peoples live during the isolation caused by the coronavirus, according to Coica deputy director Tuntiak Katan.

“Illegal miners are taking advantage of quarantines to carry out their activities and are threatening our communities,” Katan said in a media webinar.

“Communities are more vulnerable because they are also confined and cannot act against them,” said Katan, who belongs to the Shuar indigenous people of Ecuador.

Coica has received reports of an increase in illegal gold mining in the Amazon region of Madre de Dios in Peru and in the Putumayo province in southern Colombia, he said.

Around a million indigenous people live in the nine South American countries that host the Amazon jungle.

Some indigenous communities are isolating themselves, closing their reserves, disrupting highways, and blocking waterways.

In Brazil, Kayapó’s indigenous leaders negotiated with more than 30 prospectors who agreed to discontinue operations, without an expected return date.

But in Peru, ships carrying passengers, crew and supplies for oil companies are defying isolation and traveling along rivers in the Amazon, said Tabea Casique, educational coordinator for the Cohen indigenous peoples of Peru Asheninka.

“They do what they want,” said Casique.

Health experts say that the coronavirus can spread rapidly among tribes that have little immunity to common diseases in the general population and that already have a weak immune system.