The world is being held hostage by a quasi-invisible being. The word on everyone’s lips and on every news outlet is COVID19, or the infamous Coronavirus that has caused a worldwide pandemic, infecting and killing thousands. While the death toll is alarming, the economic implications of a world put on hold is nothing short of apocalyptic. However, both these elements will have deeper effects in developing countries like Brazil.
As a Brazilian and a historian, I can’t help but think of what COVID19 will do to Brazil’s population, social relations, and economic structure. The country is still days, maybe even weeks, away from a full explosion of COVID cases, but when the peak hits, it will hit Brazil hard.
The country has a delicate social balance that dances around racial and class prejudice and clashes – dancing being too much of an euphemism. Currently, as the world calls for “social distancing” and Europeans play classical music from balconies, favelas in Brazil face the undeniable tragedy that gradually crouches towards them.
Favelas, or Brazilian “shantytowns” are housing settlements that contain millions of people living in unsanitary conditions and in very close contact with each other. Challenges for social distancing are many, and start with the fact that, due to economic necessity, you often have multiple generations living together in tight spaces. These are families with grandparents, elderly relatives, children, and productive adults all coexisting under one roof.
Living spaces are tight outside of favela houses as well, with “apartments” precariously stacked on top of, and glued to, each other. Entrances and exits tend to run through tight corridors and narrow stairways, which makes the “First World” rule of one-meter distancing between people seem like a really bad joke.
Furthermore, these families depend on any income they can get, and #stayathome will not feed them, clothe them, or pay their bills. These are families lead by cleaning ladies with per diem salaries and no protection under labor laws, and families that rely on bus drivers, janitors, secretaries, and countless other jobs that will suffer enormously with closures and the upcoming economic trials.
These are the ones that won’t be paid if they stay home, that don’t have any savings to fall back on, and that will, most likely, be heavily hit.
COVID19 will likely spread through Brazilian favelas like bushfire. It’s as simple as that.
Oh, but COVID19 is a democratic virus, it knows no social barriers, has no racial limitations. Believing this, Brazil’s middle and upper classes are starting to shut themselves off, rushing to supermarkets and drugstores and buying food, masks, and hand sanitizers in volumes that the lower classes can’t afford.
However, this pandemic isn’t as democratic as many would like to believe. Sadly, especially in countries like Brazil, the bulk of its victims will likely be made of non-whites and poor. It’s starting already. While upper classes lock themselves off, their maids, cleaning ladies, nannies, grocery-store cashiers, janitors, and countless others risk contamination in order to pay their bills, to buy basic supplies. Many families are sending their “helpers” home, some fully letting them go, while others promising to still pay their salaries.
Currently, countless upper-class households in Brazil still expect help and service from cleaners and nannies, caught in a twisted and cruel one-way social distancing act.
When it comes to household helpers, it is still common in Brazil to see maids wearing uniforms, an archaic reminder of a time when racial and social differences were embraced and openly paraded. Now, these maids are asked to bathe once they arrive at their workplace in order to prevent contamination. You could argue that it makes sanitary sense, but it also inevitably drives home the message that these are lives that are disposable and dangerous, worthy of greater distancing.
Eventually, In Brazil’s cruel social bubbles, when those workers fall sick they can either die in their homes in the outskirts of town, or go to public hospitals and try their luck. Either way, they will be physically separated from the upper classes, sparing them any financial and emotional burden.
Yes, COVID19 can hit anyone, and social distancing is a useful tool in fighting this pandemic. However, that doesn’t mean it will affect everyone equally.
Perhaps, for those of us blessed by confinement, we should research the work of people like Paul Farmer, and consider fighting structural violence and social and racial inequalities as the life-threatening pandemics that they truly are. Especially for countries like Brazil, Farmer’s reference to “staff, stuff, and systems” for all is key to tackling COVID19 as fast and as effectively as possible.
On a side note, many countries are either in or gearing up for political elections. Don’t take COVID19 as simply a health epidemic, but also consider it a mirror that reflects a country’s social structure and chasms.
And for those who say we shouldn’t politicize this emergency, honey… EVERYTHING is political, and if you don’t want another round of world-wide pandemic in the future, you better start thinking politically as well.
