This is a call for donations brought to our attention by our PhD candidate Satya Patchinelaam, who has conducted research in the Altamira region. People from the Amazon in resettlements need urgent support during this crisis. Read a translated message from their fundraiser below.
We, the peripheries of the most violent city in the Amazon, mostly black, survived with a lot of effort in normal times. We, riverside residents expelled by Belo Monte used to receive everything from the forest. Today we are confined to Collective Urban Resettlements (RUCs) on the outskirts of the city, threatened by hunger and disease, while we wait for a resettlement in the plant's reservoir that never happens. We, distraught indigenous people, pushed to the edge of the city by what you call "progress" and we call "death", have even less resistance to all the diseases that you have already brought to us.
We, poor people expelled from our homes near the city center, where we made a hard living but also with a chance, were thrown into the RUCs where we then spent weeks without even tap water. We, who still live around the Lagoon that, since the construction of Belo Monte, overflows in the rains invading our homes with up to meters of sewage and garbage, fight against all viruses and bacteria and also against the hunger that swallows us a little per day. Now, we are also threatened by a pandemic.
We are men and women who made a living with informal jobs and since the appearance of the new coronavirus we no longer have anyone to sell our pastries, tapioca and also our workforce, always rented at almost slave prices, because we can no longer walk in the streets. We are adults and we are children locked up in houses that are too tight, many without basic sanitation, in a heat of over 30 degrees and with food disappearing. We are the desperate of the new plague.
We, women and men, adults and children from Altamira, are currently facing an outbreak of dengue that further shakes our malnourished bodies. And we face all of this in a public health system that does not receive enough resources to face even the most basic diseases. We were already dying of the common cold.
We, the outskirts of Altamira and refugees from Belo Monte, live day after day in the catastrophe. Our normal is brutal. To this day, most of us have survived the silent genocide because, despite our bodies shattered by all the violence, we refuse to give up. This time, however, we won't be able to do it alone. We need your help to raise R$ 40,000 to deliver 200 basic food baskets + cleaning products to 200 hungry families. The mapping of families was carried out by Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Sempre, Movimento dos Atingidos Por Barragens, Coletivo de Mulheres Negras Maria Maria, Movimento de Mulheres Trabalhadoras do Campo e da Cidade e Centro de Formação do Negro e Negra da Transamazônica e Xingu.
Part of the food in this basket will be purchased together from family farmers and riverside dwellers in the Altamira region.
You can donate here: www.vakinha.com.br/vaquinha/ajude-os-povos-de-altamira
