Indigenous peoples in Bolivia are facing the coronavirus pandemic by taking advantage of their geopolitical isolation, which limits their access to the public health system but gives them greater management autonomy to encapsulate and take care of themselves using ancestral knowledge such as nature. drug.
Although a comprehensive survey of incidence of covid-19 in the indigenous population of Bolivia is not known, preliminary records consulted for this report show that pandemic infections and deaths were significantly lower in the Andean region (with a majority of Quechua and Aymara). compared to those recorded in the Amazon and Chaco region (with a greater diversity of indigenous nations, with Chi-Quitana and Guarani being the largest).
This research focused its efforts on three indigenous populations in Bolivia: the municipality of Charazani, the capital of Kallawaya culture, in La Paz; Raqaypampa, an autonomous indigenous territory in the department of Cochabamba; and Charagua, an autonomous indigenous municipality of Chaco, in the department of Santa Cruz. However, it collected information from other indigenous peoples in the Amazon and the country’s tropical region, given their vulnerability to the pandemic.
The diagnosis varies depending on the regions investigated. While in indigenous peoples in mountainous (Andean) areas, such as Charazani and Raqaypampa, the impact of the pandemic has been and continues to be reduced due to the number of reported cases and deaths; In plain cities (Chaco and Amazonia), such as Charagua, the virus has been more aggressive, leaving more infections and deaths, which, in proportion to the minority population, are worrying.
According to the latest census of the population and housing in Bolivia, which dates from 2012, the population self-identified as indigenous in the country amounts to 2,806,592, the equivalent of 40.6% of those registered. The Bolivian constitution recognizes 36 indigenous nations. From a population point of view, the vast majority are Quechuas (45.6%) and Aymara (42.4%), also known as mountainous indigenous people, compared to less than 12% of the inhabitants of the lowlands.
Pandemic, forgetfulness and self-management. The pandemic reached two women in Europe in Bolivia on March 10, 2020. Its outbreak and expansion coincided with the transitional government of Jeanine Áñez, who succeeded the resigned Evo Morales in November 2019 and handed over power to elected Luis Arce at the polls a year later. What is known as the first wave of covid-19 spread to Bolivia from March to November 2020, so its attention was paid to the transition regime.
Áñez’s health policy focused on the application of rigid and flexible quarantines throughout the country, with strict control in the capitals of the nine departments and the highest population density. Due to its logistical and budgetary constraints, it was difficult to manage a large number of coronavirus tests. As of November 6, it has applied just under 338 thousand, with 142,343 positive cases, 1,305 suspects and 194,358 discards.
It is attributed to this limitation that the officially notified cases are smaller than the real ones, with an under-registration that hides the full extent of the pandemic in the country. If the underreporting was considerable in the urban municipalities with the highest population density, it was also in rural areas with indigenous populations, where coronavirus tests arrived in rare quantities or, in several cases, did not even arrive.
Another example of the transitional government’s inattention to the management of the pandemic in indigenous peoples was the elimination of the Deputy Minister of Traditional Medicine, dependent on the Ministry of Health, demoted for reasons of administrative rationalization to a direction that for a long time remained headless. Assuming that traditional natural medicine is a practice with deep roots in the country’s rural communities, the disappearance of the deputy minister has limited his actions in indigenous peoples living in rural areas.
The deputy minister’s demotion took place despite the validity of Law 459 on ancestral traditional medicine in Bolivia, enacted in late 2013, which established the recognition of traditional physicians, spiritual guides, natures and midwives, to register them first and then incorporate them. in the public health system, so that they are also correlated with medical practitioners.
The authorities of the three indigenous territories addressed in this survey agree that the budgetary planning for the pandemic was carried out by local governments (municipal mayors and indigenous administration). The role of departmental and national governments has been minor, if not nil, and in some cases has been reduced to the provision of food and some medical supplies (Charagua).
Community organizations and local governments were essential for residents to become aware of the pandemic and take action to combat it. However, in some places, skepticism about the existence and dangers of covid-19 could not be completely dispelled.
Traditional natural medicine has been the most consistent shield of indigenous peoples to prevent infection and, in confirmed cases, to alleviate the effects of disease symptoms.
In addition to the health effects, indigenous peoples regret that restrictive measures, including isolating and banning human encounters, have changed their social habits. They have reduced or suspended not only their collective meetings of political deliberation, but also festive activities that are essential to updating their social ties with Mother Nature and other spiritual deities.
Another chapter deserves the economic ravages that indigenous communities still suffer as a result of the paralysis of many productive activities and restrictions on moving outside their borders, a key dynamic for the generation of resources in their communities.
Given the imminence of the new pandemic wave, people are already taking steps to reduce the entry of the virus and minimize its impact in terms of health. But he hopes that the new government, led by Luis Arce, with whom they have a greater affinity than the transitional one, will generate additional policies to reactivate their productive, social and cultural life.
Mirror from Peru and Paraguay. Indigenous peoples are also facing chronic state neglect in Peru, a country with which Bolivia has a border (to the northwest), history and cultures. In a paper written exclusively for this report, the impotence it suffers is manifested in the lack of health coverage, but also in the absence of data on the impact on infections and deaths, especially in the Amazon region, most exposed to the pandemic. due to its proximity to Brazil, the third most affected country by covid-19 in the world. The natural medicine that lives in their forests is the only thing they have to resist the virus that threatens to extinguish them. Its leaders do not lose hope that the vaccine will reach them and give them more power to overcome the plague.
In Paraguay, which borders Bolivia to the south, coronavirus rates are lower than in neighboring countries, but even so, the evil has penetrated indigenous communities, leaving them in an even greater state of defenselessness. than they were already facing. Another piece produced exclusively for this report shows that ground evacuations, military intimidation, fires, droughts and floods are expressions of the extreme vulnerability in which Paraguayan indigenous people survive, to which the pandemic has added a new risk factor, and not just one, but one which aims to continue without visible signs of dissolution.
NOTE: This report was made possible by a research grant from the Pulitzer Center. Individual reports will be published each week in the journal Así.