LOS PUEBLOS INDÍGENAS ANTE LA PANDEMIA DEL COVID-19, UN CASO DE COLOMBIA • INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN THE FACE OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, A CASE FROM COLOMBIA
by Hortensia Azucena Picos Lee
In Latin America, the Indigenous population exceeds 45 million people, just under 10% of the region's total population, making it the area with the highest Indigenous population density on the planet. Eight hundred and twenty-six different Indigenous Peoples are registered, of which about 100 are cross-border, that is, they reside in at least two countries in the region. Regarding the distribution of peoples in the continent, in Brazil 305 Indigenous Peoples are registered, followed by Colombia (102), Peru (85) and Mexico (78); At the other extreme are Costa Rica and Panama, with 8 and 9 Indigenous Peoples each, El Salvador (3) and Uruguay (2). Many of these Peoples exhibit great fragility and are in danger of physical or cultural disappearance. It is estimated that some 462 towns currently have less than 3,000 inhabitants and around 200 of them are in voluntary isolation, all in extremely difficult situations. This multicultural reality is an enormous wealth of the continent, but at the same time it is marked by an undeniable fact: a large part of its inhabitants live in conditions of extreme vulnerability, which means, among other aspects, high rates of malnutrition, inaccessibility to health services. precarious infrastructure and, in general, the impossibility of exercising fundamental individual and collective rights.
The spread of COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated an already critical reality for many Indigenous peoples: a situation of deep inequalities and discrimination, a condition of systemic vulnerability aggravated not only by the presence of the virus, but also by conflicts and associated violence to scarcity and extreme need for resources, especially drinking water and food.
The preventive measures against the emergency of the COVID - 19 have begun with campaigns in which it is requested to stay at home and improve hygiene conditions by washing hands regularly, as a measure that allows avoiding contagion. These measures are difficult to fulfill if the household has limited access to basic services such as access to water.
The responses of Indigenous peoples
However, Indigenous peoples have responded creatively and committedly to the reality they face, with a clear awareness of the urgency and seriousness of their situation.
Based on their own organizational and institutional forms, a very important social line and their own health system, they have adopted various actions and strategies, showing the world a a glimpse of their organizational capacity, ancestral knowledge and resilience, together with a quick and assertive reaction to this new challenge. In this sense, they have taken specific actions to protect themselves and to avoid, based on information and awareness, the effects that the pandemic has brought or could bring to their communities.
These strategies have been:
Preventing the arrival of the virus in their communities, limiting access to outside visitors.
Undertaking tasks of collecting and disseminating information on public health.
Sending the basic health recommendations in the original languages.
Requesting state and federal authorities give direct and concrete intervention in health matters to prevent and treat COVID-19.
Guaranteeing food security that is essential in these circumstances.
Sensitizing people to the reality and Indigenous vision of the pandemic.
The case from Colombia
There are numerous examples of this type of action throughout Latin America, expressed in different ways according to the particular idiosyncrasies of each of the Indigenous communities.
In Colombia, the Colombian Indigenous Guards are organizations full of ancestral knowledge that are characterized by the self-determination of the peoples. They are not armed or violent groups, they defend the territory with their baton, which gives them the spiritual strength to defend life and guarantee peace.
They have long foiled kidnappings, rescued hostages and confronted armed groups. These warriors have been killed and threatened for fighting drug trafficking and projects that threaten the environment. For millennia they have been chosen to protect their sacred places and restore order in their communities. But they had never waged a battle in which their tin shields and wooden staffs cannot protect them. Today they are in the front row, in the rain and sun, cutting off the path of an invisible enemy, protecting their communities from Covid-19.
During the past two months, since the quarantine began, 63,000 Indigenous guards are guarding the entrances to their territories at 4,500 checkpoints across the country. Luis Acosta, coordinator of this guard at the national level, says that for the first time they changed their canes, the only weapon they have wielded, for alcohol sprays. "It is the only way to prevent an ethnocide," says from his safeguard place Huellas, in Caloto, Cauca.
They wash the hands of the Indigenous people who leave and enter the safe places with prior permission. They make sure that no outside person passes into their territories, especially tourists or officials of private companies. Given the shortage of alcohol and chlorine, they manufacture their own substances to disinfect cars and motorcycles. And although they could be with their families, because it is a voluntary job, they remain 24 hours a day, every week, at a checkpoint.
However, these Indigenous guards have had to face many problems and challenges. One of them has been the government's failure to provide them with personal protective equipment to prevent infections. Another has been the occasional resistance, sometimes violent, of strangers and members of their own communities to abide by their authority to regulate the exit and entry to their villages. This has caused some guards to decide to lift the controls due to lack of protection; however, the majority continue in their work of protection, although they request that the Government provide them with more than financial support, they need it to give them guarantees to ensure their survival.
And they are looking for some food security. The pandemic is likely to lead them to rethink their life plan, their way of managing seeds, their health and education, the means to recover and strengthen their own economy. Creating strategies that preserve, guide and improve the existence of communities that could become extinct.
Indigenous peoples are demonstrating that they have a lot to say, to contribute, to influence their communities, cities, and all of society by exercising their collective rights, their organizational forms, their cultures and languages, their ancestral knowledge, including Indigenous health systems.
The governments of the countries have the obligation to take care of their native peoples. Not only for the fact of being human beings, but also for being the heirs of a vast historical and cultural heritage, of a rich heritage of knowledge, artistic expressions, religious, cultural traditions and ways of relating to nature that have become in indissoluble part of the identity of the nations.
The Church has the mission to be a means for reconciling people to each other, but this will be more difficult if it is blind to the injustice, violence and racism that our Indigenous people face day by day, more overwhelming in the context of COVID-19. Let's take time to reflect on the need for us to be loyal to the Indigenous peoples and to pray for and help those who work to build peace in their communities.
“Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all." (Colossians 3: 9-11, NIV)
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