Mission World - January/February 2021

The pandemic and the Amazon

During a recent on-line meeting of the Peru Support Group in Britain, Columban Fr Peter Hughes spoke on the theme, “The Pandemic and its impact on indigenous people”.

Fr Peter was part of a panel highlighting the particular vulnerability of indigenous populations, their exclusion from decision-making processes, and their lack of access to public services, including access to health care and food provision. 

He reported that when COVID arrived in March the first reaction of the Government was the opposite to what indigenous people wanted to do, which was to close the frontiers to indigenous lands from outsiders. Instead, the Peruvian Government opened the frontiers of indigenous areas to extractive industries and militarised them to protect mining companies. This was to the detriment of the people in the Peruvian Amazon, as people living in small communities in the forests and along the riverbanks were not protected, many have died over the last six months.

Fr Peter said he was proud of the practical role the Catholic Church played last year with the Synod on the Amazon in Rome. The Catholic Church doesn’t have a good history of listening but we did at the Synod, he reflected. Around 97,000 people contributed to the gathering, and the Church listened even if the authorities in Amazon countries did not. He spoke of Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si’ which, went far beyond the frontiers of the Church to call for protection of our common home, and stated that indigenous peoples’ rights and environmental rights go together. The Guarani people at the Synod said; “Mother Earth is bleeding because of extractive industries, and this must stop.”

According to Fr Peter, comings and goings by strangers into the Amazon region have increased, COVID infections have rocketed. Despite Government inaction to protect indigenous people, they themselves have cared for each other, using traditional medicines to alleviate COVID symptoms, and even sending food, such as plantain, from the rainforest to the nearest cities by canoe. The Catholic Church in the city of Iquitos crowdfunded an oxygen facility to help COVID victims struggling to breathe. 

Fellow panellist and indigenous leader, Lizardo Cauper, spoke of the implications of being excluded from the state’s health system. “I have lost neighbours and elders in this pandemic, but it has highlighted to the world the plight of indigenous peoples”. He reported that conflicts linked to extractive industries have worsened during the pandemic and there have been reports of killings. “Our rights are denied in Peru and beyond Peru,” he said. Carlos Soria, an environmental lawyer and panellist, stated, “local health centres in the Amazon often have no doctors and are low on medicines, and some health technicians abandoned their posts, since they had no protection and no clue how to handle the pandemic.”

View detailed summary of the webinar at https://perusupportgroup.org.uk/summary-of-webinar-2-26-september-2020 OR visit the Columban Centre for Advocacy and Outreach at https://columbancenter.org

Ellen Teague is the Media Coordinator for the Columban Justice, Peace & Integrity of Creation (JPIC) team in London, England.

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Mission Intention for January

May the Lord give us the grace to live in full fellowship with our brothers and sisters of other religions, praying for one another, open to all.

Mission Intention for February

We pray for women who are victims of violence, that they may be protected by society and have their sufferings considered and heeded.

We ask your prayers:

The prayers of our readers are requested for the repose of the souls of friends and benefactors of the Missionary Society of St Columban who died recently and for the spiritual and the temporal welfare of all our readers, their families and friends.

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