An article by Ximena Sokolic
Peru's social fabric is constructed by 54 indigenous people representing more than 30% of the population (INEI, 2018). Because of this rich diversity, in the last 15 years, the intercultural approach has been a fundamental part of Peru's policymaking process. This approach intends to highlight the importance of recognizing, including, and valuing the different cultural visions and conceptions of well-being and development (Ministry of Culture, 2015). However, behind this discourse that supposedly wants to vindicate indigenous peoples' rights, there is a discriminatory structure that positions western/scientific knowledge over non-western knowledge. Doing so also undermines the people and communities that hold that non-western knowledge. As Catherine Walsh states, after the installation of the colonies in Latin America, a system of race, gender, and nature classification is imposed as a civilizing and Eurocentric project (Walsh, 2016 p.3).
Picture 1: The Ucayali river (Sokolic, 2016)
The pandemic and its different impacts have shown how public institutions relate to indigenous people. There are two main things to consider when analyzing the extent to which Covid-19 has impacted these communities' lives. On the one hand, we find that indigenous people suffer from the most significant problems of health: malnutrition, stomachal, and respiratory diseases, maternal and child mortality, and have the most precarious infrastructure, lack of facilities, medicines, instruments, and qualified health personnel (Gushiken, 2014). So, by the time the pandemic hit the country, the infrastructure needed for an effective response was not in place. On the other hand, the scarce political and institutional willingness to participatory build a health service that recognizes Indigenous communities' needs, perceptions, knowledge, and practices (Portocarrero, 2014) clearly exemplifies the remoteness of the State in the face of cultural difference.
Expanding on the latter, the pandemic has made visible the differentiated and often specific needs of Peru's Indigenous peoples regarding culturally relevant health services, among other things. Most of the Indigenous Organizations have sought a way to reach the central Government, asking for their communities' health care and proper attention (Anonymous, 2021). Still, the Government concentrated all the resources in the larger cities and urban areas. Areas where the pandemic, supposedly, was going to hit harder (Supreme Decree N°008-2020-SA). Without acknowledging the already drastic situation of the indigenous communities. Following Ndlovu-Gatsheni, it is ironic how the impossibility of the Global North for learning from other regions translates into how Governments from the Global South, who have a long history and experiences grappling with epidemics and pandemics, are also reluctant to learn from their own experiences and local knowledges in the middle of a pandemic (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020 p.370).
During the rise of infections and deaths in the Peruvian Amazon region, a group of men and women from the Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous Peoples organized themselves in order to provide free treatment through their own medicine to those who are sick from Covid-19. This group is called Comando Matico (Comando in Spanish is a troop destined to make offensive incursions into enemy territories). This group is born as a response to the pandemic, and to the devastating inaction of the State towards indigenous communities, "[q]uoting Shipibo leader Lizardo Cauper of the Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest), Miryam [Yataco] points out that half a year into the pandemic, "there is not, has not been, and does not appear there is any intention of creating an intercultural health policy." (Cherofsky 2020). However, this group of people has treated more than 500 patients of COVID-19 based on Matico, a medicinal plant from the Amazon forest.
Picture 2: The team in charge of assisting the communities displaying the Matico plant. From: Comando Matico's Facebook page
"Vaporization with matico, mucura, kion, and sacha garlic, is like oxygen to us. It is natural oxygen that relieves you when you cannot breathe. I see each patient, according to his condition, and make a special preparation for him. For example, if the patient tells me: 'my chest hurts, I have a cough, I am agitated,' then I will prepare his grated onion, garlic, lemon, honey, and olive oil. I give him a drink every half hour until his agitation and cough stopped. [E]xplains Mery." (Self-translation from Belaunde, 2020)
The rich cultural heritage and broad traditional knowledge in aspects related to health care and prevention are expressed in the existence of practices that communities maintain in their health care, which, as in Comando Matico's case, contribute to improving health care for the population as a whole. However, there is an intrinsic and dichotomic construction of knowledge: indigenous wisdom and culture, on the one hand, and western science, on the other (Mignolo 2009). Moreover, this construction is part of a cultural and racial structure that, on the one hand, places the accepted practices and livelihoods, and on the other hand, marginalizes and dismisses those that Government does not recognize as "their own."
Examples as the Comando Matico, multiply in the "Global South," stories of local knowledge, non-western-knowledge, fighting Covid-19 not only without the recognition of their work but against the hegemonic culture and power structure that situates them as deprived of own possibilities and insights. Thinking about these examples brings us to a decolonial discussion, bring us to think about the ways and practices of knowing otherwise. Trying to escape the binary categorization of knowledge, and maybe reaching for a pluriversality, as de Sousa Santos suggested, where worlds, histories, epistemologies, and politics meaningfully co-exist through creative acts of renovation and creation (Murray 2017 p.14).
References:
Anonymous (2021, January). 2020: Cinco hitos del manejo de la pandemia en pueblos indígenas. Servindi: https://www.servindi.org/actualidad-noticias/01/01/2021/2020-5-hitos-del-manejo-de-la-pandemia-en-pueblos-indigenas
Belaunde, Luisa Elvira (2020, October) Comando Matico en Pucallpa desafía la interculturalidad inerte del Estado. La Mula: https://luisabelaunde.lamula.pe/2020/08/09/comando-matico-en-pucallpa-desafia-la-interculturalidad-inerte-del-estado/luisabelaunde/
Cherofsky, Jess (2020, September) Abandoned by Government, Peru’s Indigenous Peoples Lead Powerful COVID-19 Response. Cultural Survival: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/abandoned-government-perus-indigenous-peoples-lead-powerful-covid-19-response
INEI (2018). La autoidentificación étnica: población indígena y afroperuana. INEI, Lima.
Gushiken, Alfonso and Campos, Miguel Ángel (2015). Línea de base de brechas sociales por origen étnico en el Perú. Ministry of Culture of Peru, Lima.
Mignolo, Walter D. (2010, February) Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom. In: Theory, Culture & Society 2009 (SAGE, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore), Vol. 26(7–8): 159–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275
Ministry of Culture of Peru (2015). National Policy for the mainstreaming of the Intercultural Approach. Ministry of Culture, Lima.
Murrey, Amber (2018) ‘When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.’ Anti-racism, decolonial options and theories from the South. In: Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations. Routledge, London p. 59-75. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315624495
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2020, October) Geopolitics of Power and Knowledge in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Decolonial Reflections on a Global Crisis. In: SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne) Vol 36(4): 366–389. https://doi.org/10.1177/0169796X20963252
Portocarrero, Julio. (2014). El Estado Frente a la Salud de los Pueblos Indígenas. Intercambio. Intercambio. 26-28.
Supreme Decree N° 008-2020-SA (2020). Which declares the national health emergency, for a period of ninety (90) calendar days, due to the existence of the COVID-19. Peru, March 11, 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.gob.pe/institucion/minsa/normas-legales/483010-008-2020-sa
Walsh, Catherine (2016). ¿Interculturalidad y (de)colonialidad? Gritos, grietas y siembras desde Abya-Yala. 2017. In: Garcia Diniz, Alai., et. al. (ed.). Poéticas e políticas da linguagem em vias de descoloniazaçâo. Pedro & Joao Editores