“If the contagions continue, we would come to an ethnocide”: bishops of the Amazon and Orinoquía

From the south of the country they warn of the serious situation that they live on account of the coronavirus and the precariousness of the hospital network. Between Amazonas and Caquetá there are 114 cases, while in the Villavicencio prison there are more than 420 infected.

The concern of the inhabitants of the Amazon region and Colombian Orinoquía is unquestionable. In Amazonas there are 105 cases of the new coronavirus and in Caquetá nine. The hospital network is precarious, just as health personnel are not prepared or equipped to attend to the clinical symptoms of patients hospitalized by COVID-19.

The bishops of the south of the country are not oblivious to the reality they are experiencing and it is not only because of the health crisis, but what it has accentuated throughout the country, especially in the most marginalized and peripheral areas: hunger, poverty and the differential conditions experienced by indigenous, Afro and peasant communities.

“Although the entire country is threatened by this pandemic, we are not all in the same conditions to respond to it. Visible social inequalities leave the weakest and most vulnerable unprotected. We are particularly concerned about the situation of the people in the Villavicencio prison (more than 420 infected) and the inhabitants of Puerto Leticia, ”a statement said.

And that concern is confirmed by the Amazon leaders. Leticia’s mayor, Jorge Luis Mendoza, told Semana that they only have a second-level hospital, there are no ICU units and they only have the capacity to provide intermediate care.

It may interest you: “If they don’t help us, there will be a catastrophe in the Amazon.”

The alarm grows in the department due to its proximity to the Brazilian Amazon where more than 350 deaths are recorded and to the Peruvian one where deaths amount to 81.

“The growth of the coronavirus curve is very large. We are next to Brazil. That is the reason why the infected have grown, “Jesús Galindo, governor of the department, told the same newspaper.

There are more than five deaths in the Amazon from the coronavirus, including that of the indigenous actor and cultural manager, Antonio Bolívar, protagonist of the film “Embrace of the Serpent”.

For this reason, the bishops sentenced that, if “the numbers of infected and dead continue to grow, we would be on the brink of an indigenous ethnocide caused by the pandemic.” And they asked the Government “for an immediate response to face this crisis” and “to rethink the health system of these territories on the Colombian periphery.”

Also: “The capacity to face the coronavirus in the Colombian Amazon is minimal.”

The bishops also joined the call of the Organization of Indigenous People of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC) for the creation of a dialogue table between the National, regional, local government and communities in which an urgent action plan is proposed to mitigate and contain the spread of COVID-19 in that area of ​​the country.

“This should take into account cultural diversity and indigenous knowledge (…) to implement a strategy that ensures food and hygiene and cleaning products, in order to better cope with the pandemic and quarantine during the following months.”

Likewise, the prelates asked for respect for life and the cessation of any violent activity. He also called on the Government to implement the Peace Agreement “that would give the country and, in general, communities so badly affected by violence, a break and hope.”

In the same order, they rejected the murder of social leaders and clamored for their protection, as well as the cessation of deforestation in the Amazon, which, they say, worsened in this time of preventive isolation.

“The Church is still alive and her charity does not rest. That is why we are making our physical spaces available to the health authorities. From the vicarial and parochial social ministries we continue offering our human and economic resources to alleviate this crisis, “concluded the bishops.

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