INTERSPEED TERRITORY HIGH TERRITORY GUAMA, Brazil (AP) – An organization of Tembé men armed with bows and shotguns arrived on motorcycles at the wooden gate blocking their villages in the Brazilian Amazon; one of them got rid of the lock and took the chain away from him. The door.
“You’re invited,” Regis Tufo Moreira Tembé, 33, told a visitor. “What we do is for our own good. “
The door has rarely opened since March, which is helping the Tembé stay six months without a bachelor showing a coronavirus infection. To celebrate this vital milestone, they were preparing a festival and invited an Associated Press photographer to practice it.
The Tembé are the western branch of the Tenetehara ethnic group, in the indigenous territory of the Upper Guama River at the western end of the state of Pará. The virus has infiltrated the lands of dozens of indigenous teams after reaching neighboring villages to trade, buy basic food and seek emergency social assistance from the government.
Hundreds of Tembé from the villages of Cajueiro, Tekohaw and Canindé closed their doors and allowed others to leave only in an emergency, while restricting access to the federal Aboriginal physical care provider, SESAI. Now, after the number of daily cases and deaths of COVID-19 in Pará despite the fact that everything fell, the Tembé began to emerge unscathed from the pandemic.
“We don’t go to the city, we don’t move on to other villages. We’re quarantined. We have succeeded, we are still happening,” said Sérgio Muxi Tembé, the leader of the village of Tekohow. “We’re doing a little commemoration, ” that’s why we’re glad we don’t have any case. “
On the last afternoon of September 9, the women of Tekohow gathered in the communal kitchen to prepare a dinner with giant pots of cassava and rice, as well as roasted tucunare wrapped in banana leaves. the women of the 3 villages formed councils and visited the citizens of their planks and tablets to inform them of the danger of COVID-19 and how it is transmitted.
“We created the organization to give more direction to families because, even with the speech of fitness technicians, other people kept dating,” said Sandra Tembé, a 48-year-old local language teacher, in an interview. First it was very complicated for us because there were families who came here to the consultant who didn’t need to agree and said, “Why do you say this?Why stay isolated?” This moment was very critical. “
She is grateful that she has been heard and that her other people have not suffered like other ethnicities. The count through the indigenous apib organization, which includes figures from the Ministry of Health and data from local leaders, shows that there were 31306 coronavirus contagions. and 793 deaths among other indigenous people. He infided members of 158 ethnic groups, 60% of those discovered in Brazil, according to the Socio-Environmental Institute, an indigenous advocacy group.
According to Paulo Sergio Tembé, 50, Tembé also relied on a classic herbal infusion for the fitness of the weak and the elderly, according to Paulo Sergio Tembé, 50. Inside his house, he got rid of the ingredients for concocenge in a home. made basket and showed them one by one.
When the sun went down, Tekohaw’s boss, Sérgio Muxi, sang with an old man near two bonfires in front of the thatched-roof meeting house; They applauded Tembé’s resistance to COVID-19 and thanked him in the local language, Sérgio Muxi later explained. Eventually, other members of the village joined the song, others danced. A line of young men paraded with their hands on their shoulders.
The next morning, other people woke up and began to play classic feather headdresses and portray their bodies. Two teams of protesters converged at the stake site last night, where they danced to the rhythm of the classic maracas played by the village leader and The birthday party continued for two hours before even though everything calmed down and the villagers returned home, to their fields and to the forest to resume their daily lives.