The voice of my art professor asking if anyone else has any more work to share interrupts the stroke of my colored pencil. The pixelated image of my professor’s expectant face looks back at me, with his voice carrying across the unstable internet connection of the hand-me-down computer I had been using for the past couple of weeks. A handful of canceled flights and more than 24 hours in commute, my 6-month study abroad experience in Brazil ended abruptly after a shortened two moth stay in the tropical city of Rio de Janeiro.
Instead, by mid-March of 2020, I was dragging my two heavy suitcases across the vacant Philadelphia airport with my glasses fogging up at every exhale taken under the N95 mask tightly secured to my face. When I left, Brazilian news outlets had only confirmed 3 cases of COVID-19. Considering this, leaving so abruptly felt like a purely financial decision made by my private college, especially as the United States had more than a thousand confirmed cases. This initial contrast between the two countries would soon give way to three weeks of denial, underreporting and insufficient testing by the Bolsonaro regime. In a short span of time, Brazil had become a major hotspot of the deadly virus’ spread– with states like Manaus in the Amazon burying more than a hundred corpses a day.
These terrifying numbers reverberated through my mind as I stayed with a family friend for the mandatory two-week quarantine, which would later become three as a close friend of mine was confirmed positive. While in Rio, I thought my anxiety would have set in the minute I received the email informing me of the program’s suspension, and yet, after talking with friends who had been in harder-hit areas like Italy, I felt more mentally prepared for the end. Only when my belongings were carelessly strewn across this new room and when I received somewhat reassuring messages from my relatives in Sao Paulo, did my fast-churning mind come to a grimacing halt. The numbers in Brazil, however, did not.
Instead, as my world transitioned from the excitement of my first two weeks of classes to the stagnation of quarantine, Brazil’s confirmed cases continued to increase– by the end of April, the number had ballooned to roughly 87,000 with just over 6,000 deaths, the highest in all of Latin America. Self-isolation, however, is a complicated endeavor– certainly not to be excused by a careless statement like “some people will die, they will die, it is part of life,” stated by President Bolsonaro in a television interview. Unlike the president’s callsl, a rising death toll due to political inaction should not to be naively accepted as the inevitable future for all living in Brazil.
In dense communities like favelas, of which in Rio alone make up more than a quarter of its residents, total physical separation is at many times neither feasible nor practical. And as a member of Rocinha Resiste, a grass-roots mobilization rooted in the Rocinha favela, stated, class and racial survival ultimately boil down to “Nós Por Nós” — “For us by us.”
Favelas across Brazil have been doing exactly that, with initiatives like Mare Vive broadcasting announcements on proper hygiene, and collectives using #Covid19NasFavelas to garner donations for basic resources. While the valorization of and financial support for these initiatives is critical, the clear disregard for these lives at such a critical moment is representative of a much longer history of maltreatment and dehumanization of people from the peripheries by Brazilian society. While Jair Bolsonaro has been accused of genocide before with his attack on Indigenous land, his regime’s “Brazil Must Not Stop” campaign demonstrates another clear crime against humanity– that is if Brazil is ready to finally value poor, Black, and Indigeneous people as full human beings.
Inspecting my slightly slanted drawing, my mind takes me to my family: the ones living more than an hour’s drive to the nearest hospital, those who have to take care of older family membersand who all live in houses built on one another– a sense of security at one point now turned potential disaster. I think about the Black, Brown and Indigenous communities hit exceptionally hard in both the United States and Brazil, two countries burdened by insufficient health systems, economic inequality, and chronic racism. My eyes make their way to the view outside, the bright sun illuminating the Philadelphia room thousands of miles away. I think about the people I care about, those who are both close and far. I take a sigh of relief for the American passport tucked away beside its Brazilian counterpart in my luggage– an shaky sense of safety in the midst of so much violent uncertainty.
I look around once more and try to accept the things I can no longer change. And I silently hope that all this will end in a blissful return to normalcy. But until then, I’ll try to support the causes I care about as much as I can, and maybe draw some straighter lines. When my professor asks one more time if anyone has a drawing, I hesitatingly respond, “Sim, eu tenho, posso mostrar?”
Where in the world 
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