Critical geography: needs, limits, and possibilities

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze the geographic effects of the pandemic on the territories of Indigenous peoples in Brazil. The methodology combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The pandemic imposes for the territorial protection of Indigenous peoples this game between closure/opening and containment/sanitary barrier of lands in the most diverse spatial scales. We can affirm that the concepts of territorial containment, body-territory, and transterritoriality are fundamental for the geographical analysis of the pandemic from the Indigenous/Latin American point of view. These notions have become tools for critical geography committed to social struggles. In this context, critical geography can promote an intercultural debate for the defense of territory and the existence of other forms of life, as well as maintain an open dialogue with the peoples, their spaces, and their struggles. Recognizing native ontologies that are linked to the experiences, struggles, and r-existences (existing to resist) of Indigenous peoples and territories -victims of the colonial process- but without renouncing critical thinking that helps us in the task of decolonization (from minorities, from below), of power and knowledge. On a sick planet, rather than retaking or creating new canons -decolonial libraries- it is essential to bring to light and echo the multiplicity of memories, voices, practices, and ancestral struggles for justice and social emancipation.