Coronavirus Threatens Indigenous Venezuelans Seeking Safety in Brazil

Yesmari Zapata, a Warao woman from Venezuela’s north-eastern Orinoco delta region who had been living with her family in a crowded shelter in the Amazonian city of Manaus, stressed just how hard it was to take the basic hygiene measures that physicians say are the best ways of preventing contagion.

“We were all sleeping in a small room, and there was not enough water” to allow for frequent handwashing, she said.

The family has since been moved to another shelter, supported by UNHCR and municipal authorities, where Yesmari says it is proving easier to maintain social distancing.

“I think that staying here in this shelter is the best thing we could do at the moment,” she said. “Here, we have a lot of space and it’s well ventilated and safe for the children.

“It also helps that here they provide lunch and dinner, because that way many of us don’t have to go out to try to scrape together money to buy food,” she said, alluding to the economic hardship that social distancing and stay-at-home orders have meant for many indigenous Venezuelans in Brazil.

“I think that staying here in this shelter is the best thing we could do at the moment.”

Orlando and his family make their living by selling handicrafts made from the fronds of buriti palm. But once they were no longer able to go outside to sell their handicrafts, the family was unable to afford the rental house in the Amazonian city of Belém where they had been holed up for several months.

“We weren’t able to pay rent and we got kicked out,” he recalled.

The whole group of more than 120 people were expelled, in the midst of a pandemic. Fortunately, they were swiftly relocated to a local shelter.

• See also: Indigenous people from Venezuela seek safety across the border in Brazil

As the Coronavirus pandemic spreads through Latin America, UNHCR  is warning that many displaced indigenous communities are now dangerously exposed and at risk.

The UN Refugee Agency is working with municipal governments throughout the region to give indigenous refugees and asylum-seekers access to shelters with better basic sanitation infrastructure and has provided indigenous shelters with hundreds of hygiene kits.

It has also become the main source of information about COVID-19 for some indigenous communities living in Brazil’s remote northern border region, thanks to the distribution of pamphlets on prevention in the indigenous Warao and Eñepá languages, as well as other initiatives.

Still, Brazil’s indigenous refugee community is gripped by fear over their future.

“We are scared,” said Manuel José Borges Mata, a 29-year-old Warao man from Venezuela’s northeastern Amacuro delta region who was living with his wife and three children in a shelter in Manaus. “We’re scared of dying and scared of losing loved ones.”

*SOURCE: UNHCR. Go to ORIGINAL.