The cacique Aritana Yawalapiti, one of the great indigenous leaders of Brazil who has dedicated his life to defending the rights of his people and the Amazon, died Wednesday of the coronavirus.
“His death is confirmed,” Iano Yawalapiti, the cacique’s nephew, around 70 years old, told AFP by phone.
Aritana Yawalapiti, who suffered from hypertension, was admitted to an intensive care unit and placed on artificial respiration two weeks ago in a hospital in Goiania, the capital of the state of Goias (center-west).
He had been hospitalized due to respiratory distress linked to a severe form of the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
A fervent defender of indigenous rights and the preservation of the Amazon rainforest, the cacique was an important official in the region of Xingu National Park, in Mato Grosso, in the south of the Amazon, where the emblematic chief Raoni is also from. Metuktire at the famous labial plateau.
The cacique Aritana had to leave his village of Xingu to go to a first hospital, in the neighboring state of Mato Grosso, because of breathing difficulties.
His condition worsened, he had to endure a nine-hour journey with oxygen tanks to connect on July 22 the San Francisco de Assis hospital in the city of Goiania, better equipped.
According to his son, a brother and a niece of the cacique also died from an infection with the new coronavirus.
“A black day”
“He was a great advocate in the fight to preserve and perpetuate the culture of his people for future generations and a tireless campaigner against deforestation,” his family said in a statement.
Messages poured in on social networks after the announcement of the death of the cacique. “It’s a black day, a day of mourning for humanity,” French NGO Planète Amazone wrote on its Facebook account.
“A huge new figure in the indigenous struggle is dying out with the disappearance of the cacique Aritana (…) considered to be the highest authority in Haut-Xingu, where 16 indigenous peoples reside”, continued the NGO.
Before falling ill, Aritana had launched a fundraising campaign to facilitate access to healthcare for members of her community.
The coronavirus, whose toll will cross the 100,000 dead mark in Brazil in the coming days, has hit the natives hard, because of their weaker immunity and difficulty in accessing healthcare.
More than 22,000 of them have been infected with COVID-19 and 633 have died, according to APIB, the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil. This organization accused the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro of having done nothing to protect the natives from the pandemic.
Almost 6,000 indigenous people live in the protected region of the 26,000 km2 Xingu National Park in the Amazon rainforest. The indigenous peoples of Brazil are in constant struggle against the invasions of their land for gold miners, loggers or breeders.