Eliézer Puruborá, one of the last people to grow up speaking the Puruborá language, died of COVID-19 in Brazil earlier this year. His death at the age of 92 weakened the fragile hold his people have on their language. Indigenous languages in Brazil have been threatened since the Europeans arrived. Only 181 or so of […]
Read more "Losing elders to COVID-19 endangers Indigenous languages"Dourados, Brazil — The warm wind of summer whipped across the high plains of the Brazilian city of Dourados on the February day in 2015 when Élida de Oliveira’s newborn was taken away. Oliveira, a member of the Kaiowá Indigenous group, had given birth to her son alone, in the makeshift house where she lived. […]
Read more "In Brazil, Indigenous people are fighting to keep their children"Jaguapiru village, Dourados Indigenous Reserve, MS, Brazil — The cracks in the walls of Floriza de Souza Silva’s home ran deep the day the prayer house came down. They spread like tree roots, splitting the clay-like mud held in place by bamboo framing as the ground shook from the explosion across the rust-dirt road. The […]
Read more "The prayer house: A fight for Indigenous rights in Brazil"SÃO PAULO — “I feel like I’m going to die.” It was just after midnight on April 16, and Vanessa Pereira was chatting with one of her best friends, Jaci Diniz, on WhatsApp. Three days earlier, a doctor had told the 27-year-old psychology student that her exhaustion and shortness of breath were symptoms of COVID-19. […]
Read more "The Brutality of Brazil’s Pandemic Call Centers"SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Every Monday morning for the past month, Maria Raimunda Ribeiro de Almeida waits for her ride outside the McDonald’s on the main street next to Paraisópolis, the favela where she lives. Before quarantine went into effect on March 24, Almeida took the bus each day to the luxury apartment building where […]
Read more "Brazil’s vulnerable domestic workers cannot afford to get sick"SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Sandra Benites’s work is all about finding common ground. As Brazil’s first Indigenous art curator, the 45-year-old educator, who grew up with the Guaraní Ñandeva people in the village of Porto Lindo, wants to use art to bridge the gap between Indigenous Brazilians and those from other backgrounds. Read the rest […]
Read more "Brazil’s First Indigenous Curator: ‘We’re Not Afraid Anymore’"SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Tatiana Bernardo de Nascimento, 27, holds out her hands so the young couple delivering meals at her door can spray them with sanitizing alcohol. There’s no soap and the taps often run dry in her home in Paraisópolis, a working-class community of more than 100,000 residents that constitutes one of the […]
Read more "São Paulo’s favelas are running out of food. These women are stepping in."SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Tucked away on a bottom shelf in Sonia Gomes’s studio here is a small cardboard box. Inside, two scarves — one woven in mustard-colored cashmere and the other in a printed silk — are carefully folded. A handwritten letter sits on top. “The thought that a small part of me could […]
Read more "Fabrics With Powerful Stories to Tell"NÍSIA FLORESTA, Brazil — It was late afternoon, and visiting hours at Alcaçuz Federal Penitentiary had just come to an end. Cecilia* was at home when her phone started buzzing nonstop. It wasn’t her day to visit Junior*, her boyfriend of eight years. He was serving time at Alcaçuz, the maximum-security prison in Brazil’s Rio Grande […]
Read more "After a prison riot threatened their partners’ lives, these two Brazilian women relied on each other for support"SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Luis Baena shares a room with 127 other men. During the day he looks for work or sings on the streets of downtown Sao Paulo for a few reals. When he sits down for a meal, he feels pangs of guilt, wondering whether his wife and children back in Venezuela even […]
Read more "Escaping Venezuela: They pour into Brazil by the thousands looking for work"