BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazil’s indigenous people lost one of their pioneering leaders to COVID-19 yesterday with the death of Paulinho Payakan, a Kayapó chief who led protests against the Belo Monte hydro-electric dam in the 1980s.
Alongside Kayapó chief Raoni and musician Sting, Payakan helped bring international attention to the environmental and social cost of building the world’s third largest dam on the Xingu river in the Amazon rainforest.
Payakan, 66, died on Wednesday morning in the hospital of Redençao in southern Pará state, where the coronavirus epidemic has spread among indigenous communities and is killing tribal elders.
The crime badly hurt Payakan’s reputation, said Sydney Possuelo, Brazil’s best-known explorer of isolated Amazon tribes who was head of the government’s indigenous affairs agency Funai at the time.
Still, Possuelo praised Payakan for seeking the economic survival of his tribe while maintaining its indigenous identity.
