Amoim Aruká died of coronavirus, the last survivor …

Indian warrior Amoim Aruká, the last surviving man from the exterminated Brazilian indigenous town Juma, died on Wednesday at age 86 from a covid-19, as reported by indigenous sources.

Aruká died in a hospital in Porto Velho, the capital of the Amazonian state of Rondonia, where he has been hospitalized since February 2 due to complications from the new coronavirus, according to the Kanindé Ethno-Environmental Defense Association.

The 80-year-old native was taken with respiratory problems to the regional hospital in Huamaitá, in the state of Amazonas, and from there, due to his serious condition, he was sent to Porto Velho. Aruká’s corpse will be taken to Humaitá, where it will be buried.

The extermination of Juma

Five decades ago, the Juma people numbered 15,000 members, but a series of killings at the hands of invading miners and herders, coupled with animal attacks and deadly diseases, has dramatically reduced the population to only four people.

With no men in their virtually exterminated community, the three daughters of Aruká married members of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people. This is why his grandchildren no longer have the pure Juma line.

The Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) cited in a statement that although its population has been decimated since the end of the 20th century, Aruká in 2004 carried out the demarcation of indigenous lands.

Juma’s reservation was one of the land protected by sanitary barriers protection of indigenous communities in the midst of pandemic, but the blockade of their protection has not been fully implemented, leaving them vulnerable to the virus.

Brazil, or nearly ten million confirmed cases, surpassed 242,000 deaths from the new coronavirus on Wednesday, records 42,881 infections and 567 deaths caused by Covid-19 among its indigenous peoples, according to official figures.