Brazil Indigenous group celebrates 6 months without COVID-19
A group of Tembé men armed with bows and shotguns arrived on motorcycles at the wooden gate blocking access to their villages in Brazil’s Amazon. One of them removed the padlock and slipped the chain off the gate.
“You are invited,” 33-year-old Regis Tufo Moreira Tembé said to a visitor. “What we are doing is for everyone, and for our good.”
The gate has seldom swung open since March, which helps to explain why the Tembé have gone six months without a single confirmed coronavirus infection. To celebrate that milestone, they were preparing a festival and invited an Associated Press photographer to observe.
The Tembé are the western branch of the Tenetehara ethnicity, located in the Alto Rio Guama Indigenous territory on the western edge of Para state. The virus has infiltrated the lands of dozens of Indigenous groups after they came to nearby cities to trade, buy staples and collect emergency welfare payments from the government.
The hundreds of Tembé people of the Cajueiro,...