Indigenous leaders warn that missionaries convert Amazon villages to vaccines

BRAZIL (Reuters) – Medical teams working to immunize the remote indigenous villages in Brazil against the coronavirus have met with fierce resistance in some communities, where evangelical missionaries fear the vaccine, say tribal leaders and lawyers.

At the São Francisco discussion in the state of Amazonas, residents of Jamamadi sent health workers with bows and arrows when they visited by helicopter this month, said Claudemir da Silva, an Apurinã leader representing indigenous communities on the Purus River. a tributary of the Xingú. .

“It does not happen in all villages, only in those who have missionaries or evangelical chapels where pastors convince the people not to receive the vaccine, that they will become an alligator and other crazy ideas,” he said by telephone.

This added to the fear that COVID-19 could roar through Brazil’s more than 800,000 indigenous peoples, whose common living and often precarious health care makes them a priority in the national vaccination program.

Tribal leaders blame Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and some of his zealous supporters in the evangelical community for causing skepticism about coronavirus vaccines, despite a national death toll leaving only the United States behind.

“Religious fundamentalists and evangelical missionaries preach against the vaccine,” said Dinamam Tuxá, a leader of APIB, the largest indigenous organization in Brazil.

The Association of Brazilian Anthropologists denounced unspecified religious groups in a statement on Tuesday for spreading false conspiracy theories to “sabotage” the vaccination of indigenous peoples.

Many pastors of the urban evangelical mega-churches in Brazil call on followers to be vaccinated, but they say that missionaries in remote areas have not received the message.

“Unfortunately, some ministers who do not have wisdom spread false information to our indigenous brethren,” said Pastor Mario Jorge Conceição of the Assembly of God Traditional Church in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas.

The government’s indigenous health agency, Sesai, said in a statement to Reuters that it was working to increase the importance of coronavirus vaccination.

Bolsonaro reduced the severity of the virus and refused to take a vaccine himself. He made special mockery of the country’s widest shot, made by the Chinese Sinovac Biotech, referring to doubts about its “origin”.

At an event in December, the president mocked vaccine maker Pfizer for saying the company would not accept responsibility for the collateral effects in talks with its government.

‘If you take the vaccine and become a crocodile, that’s your problem. “If you change into Superman or if women grow beards, I have nothing to do with it,” Bolsonaro said sarcastically.

Pfizer said it was proposing standard contract guarantees to the Brazilian government that other countries would accept before using the vaccine.

Access to social media, even in remote corners of Brazil, has sparked false rumors about the coronavirus vaccines.

For example, 56-year-old tribal chief Fernando Katukina, of the Nôke Kôi people near the border with Peru, died on February 1 of cardiac arrest associated with diabetes and congestive heart failure. It quickly became known on social media and radio that the COVID-19 vaccine he had received in January had caused his death.

The biomedical center of Butantan, which manufactures and distributes the Sinovac vaccine, scrambled to convince indigenous people that this was not the case.

“The messages on social media saying that Fernando Katukina died after taking a COVID-19 vaccine are fake news,” Butantan wrote in a tweet.

According to APIB, COVID-19 killed at least 957 indigenous people, out of approximately 48,071 confirmed infections among half of the 300 indigenous ethnic groups in Brazil. The numbers could be much higher because the health agency Sesai only monitors indigenous people who live on bookings.