Pandemic and territorial autonomy: the Guarani and Kaiowá face the spread of Covid-19 in the Tekoha

Abstract

This article analyses the Guarani and Kaiowá territorial organization against the Covid-19 pandemic in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, on the border of Brazil with Paraguay. The aim is to highlight the autonomous actions of these indigenous peoples to contain the new coronavirus in their territories. The first cases of indigenous contagion occurred in slaughterhouses and sugar-alcohol plants. These activities in urban and agro-industrial areas did not paralyze their activities of production and exploitation of indigenous workers during the pandemic. These large agribusiness enterprises are historically responsible for the deterritorialization of habitats that create conflicts between human and non-human beings, and during the pandemic they became Covid-19 transmission sites for indigenous workers. It is possible to affirm that the pandemic has reaffirmed, on the one hand, the permanence of the coloniality of the racist power matrix by the accentuation of the territorial vulnerability of the Guarani and Kaiowá, and, on the other hand, it highlights the decolonization of practices on health and disease, highlighting the autonomous movement of confronting the spread of Covid-19 in the villages by the articulation of actions on multiple spatial scales.