The indigenous peoples of Bolivia support the coronavirus pandemic by taking advantage of their geopolitical isolation, which limits their access to the public health system, but grants them greater management autonomy to encapsulate and care for them by appealing to ancestral knowledge such as natural medicine.
Although a comprehensive survey of the incidence of covid-19 in the indigenous population of Bolivia is not known, preliminary records consulted by this report reveal that the contagions and deaths caused by the pandemic have been significantly lower than the Andean region (of majority Quechua and Aymara) against the regis-trats in the Amazon region and Chaco (with a greater diversity of indigenous nations, being the chi-quitana and the guaraní the greatest ones).
This research has focused its efforts on three indigenous populations in Bolivia: the municipality of Charazani, capital of Kallawaya culture, in La Paz; Raqaypampa, autonomous indigenous territory in the department of Cochabamba; and Charagua, independent indigenous municipality of the Chaco, in the department of Santa Cruz. However, it has also collected information from other indigenous peoples in the Amazon and tropical region of the country, in view of their vulnerability to the pandemic.
The diagnosis varies depending on the regions investigated. While in the highland (Andean) indigenous peoples, such as Charazani and Raqaypampa, the impact of the pandemic has been and continues to be reduced, by the number of cases and deaths reported; in lowland villages (Chaco and Amazon), such as Charagua, the virus has been more aggressive, leaving more infections and deaths, which in proportion to their already minority populations are worrisome.
According to the latest Population and Housing Census in Bolivia, which dates from 2012, the population self-identified as indigenous in the country amounts to 2,806,592, equivalent to 40.6% of those registered. The Bolivian Constitution recognizes 36 indigenous nations. Population-wise, the vast majority are Quechua (45.6%) and Aymara (42.4%), also known as highland indigenous peoples, compared to less than 12% of lowlanders.
Pandemic, oblivion and self-management. The pandemic hit Bolivia on March 10, 2020, in two women from Europe. Its outbreak and expansion coincided with the transitional government of | Áñez, who succeeded the resigned Evo Morales in November 2019 and handed over power to the 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 drawn to the transitional regime.
Áñez’s health policy focused on applying rigid and flexible quarantines throughout the country, with strict control in the capital cities of the nine departments and with higher population density. Due to its logistical and budgetary constraints, it was difficult for it to manage a large number of coronavirus tests. As of November 6, just under 338,000 had been applied, with 142,343 positive cases, 1,305 suspicious and 194,358 ruled out.
This limitation is attributed to the fact that the officially notified cases are lower than the real ones, with a sub-record that hides the total magnitude of the pandemic in the country. While subregulation has been considerable in densely populated urban municipalities, it has also been so in rural areas with indigenous populations, where coronavirus testing has reached small numbers or, in more than one case, has not.
Another example of the neglect of the Transitional Government towards the management of the pandemic in indigenous populations was the elimination of the Vice-Ministry of Traditional Medicine, dependent on the Ministry of Health, degraded for reasons of administrative rationalization to a Directorate that for much time remained headless. Assuming that traditional natural medicine is a practice deeply rooted in the country’s rural communities, the demise of Vice-Ministry limited its actions in the indigenous populations living in the countryside.
The degradation of the Vice-Ministry took place despite the entry into force of Law 459 of Traditional Ancestral Medicine of Bolivia, enacted in late 2013, which established the recognition of traditional doctors, spiritual guides, naturists and midwives and midwives, in order to first register- and then incorporate them into the public health system, so that they also interrelate with medical medicine.
The authorities of the three indigenous territories addressed in this investigation agree that the budgetary planning for the care of the pandemic was the responsibility of the local governments (municipal mayors and indigenous administration). The role of departmental governments and national government was minor, if not nil, and in some cases was reduced to the provision of food and some medical supplies (Charagua).
Communal organizations and local leaders were instrumental in making residents aware of the pandemic and taking steps to address it. However, in some places, skepticism about the existence and dangers of covid-19 has not been able to be completely banished.
Traditional natural medicine has been the most consistent shield of indigenous peoples to prevent contagion and, in confirmed cases, to mitigate the effects of disease symptoms.
Apart from the health effects, indigenous peoples regret that restrictive measures, including the isolation and prohibition of gatherings of people, have altered their social habits. Not only did they reduce or suspend their collective meetings of political deliberation, but also the festive activities that are essential to updating their social ties and with Mother Nature and other spiritual deities.
Another chapter deserves the economic damage that indigenous communities still suffer as a result of the paralysis of many productive activities and the restrictions to move outside their borders, an essential dynamic for the generation of resources in their communities.
Faced with the imminence of the new wave of the pandemic, peoples are already taking steps to curb the entry of viruses and minimize their impact in health terms. But they hope 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.
The mirror in Peru and Paraguay. Indigenous peoples are also facing chronic state abandonment in Peru, a country with which Bolivia shares a border (in the northwest), history and cultures. In a piece made exclusively for this report, the helplessness they suffer is manifested in the deficit of health coverage, but also in the absence of data on the impact in terms of infections and deaths, especially in the Amazon region, the most exposed to the pandemic due to its proximity to Brazil, the third country most affected by covid-19 in the world. The natural medicine that inhabits their forests is the only one they have to resist the virus that threatens to extinguish them. Their leaders do not lose hope that the vaccine will reach them and give them more strength to beat the plague.
In Paraguay, which borders Bolivia to the south, coronavirus rates are lower than in neighboring countries, but the disease has still penetrated indigenous communities, leaving them in a state of helplessness even greater than they were already facing. Another piece made exclusively for this report shows that the evictions of land, armed fear, fires, droughts and floods are expressions of the extreme vulnerability in which the Paraguayan indigenous people survive, in which the pandemic has added a new risk factor, and not just any, but one that aims to prolong with no dissolution aspects in sight.
NOTE: This report was made possible by a research grant from the Pulitzer Center. The individual reports will be published weekly in the magazine Así.