Vítimas da Covid-19: a ressignificação e a politização do luto no contexto da pandemia

Abstract

The research work carried out examines the experiences of people victimized by the Covid19 pandemic in Brazil. Focusing on the mourning that took hold of several Brazilians from the year 2020 onwards, this dissertation addresses the politicization of the suffering of people who survived the Covid-19 pandemic and the mobilization of victims, who transformed mourning into a political and social struggle, from work at the Association of Victims and Families of Victims of Covid-19 (AVICO). The text addresses the emergence of the first narratives of suffering from family members of Covid-19 victims on social media and explores how such narratives of suffering became politicized, transforming into a platform for political struggle. The research reveals that, although many victims of Covid-19 felt harmed by the government during the pandemic, Bolsonaro still had strong support, which demonstrates that the politicization of grief did not occur homogeneously among those bereaved by the pandemic. AVICO played a fundamental role in articulating these narratives of suffering into a platform of political struggle, using the term “necropolitics” to describe Bolsonaro’s government during the pandemic. The text discusses some categories of victims, including deceased, survivors with sequelae, widows/widowers, orphans, and parents who lost their children. Each group faces specific challenges in the context of the pandemic, from the grief and sadness caused by the loss of a family member, to financial issues and the search for justice and accountability from the Federative Union of Brazil. The study also highlights that the mourning of victims of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil has turned into a persistent fight for rights and justice. The story of the Covid-19 pandemic told by the victims left behind by the coronavirus and by the necropolitics of managers in the Brazilian state (2020/2022) is a narrative that is far from having a defined end. In Brazil, the mourning of Covid-19 victims evolved from a private experience to a collective and political struggle, which is characterized as a new meaning of death and mourning post-Covid-19 pandemic.