In the face of the coronavirus advance, indigenous people from northern La Paz ask not to abandon them and give them health care

According to this Spanish-language article published in ERBOL: In view of the COVID threat in their territories, the Amazonian indigenous peoples of the north of the department of La Paz urgently demand humanitarian health care from government authorities and ask civil society and intermediate populations not to abandon them in the face of the scourge of the pandemic, reported journalist Ana María Oblitas for the ERBOL network 

According to the report, in a nearby sector, in the municipality of San Buenaventura, at least thirteen people, including the Mayor, were confirmed with coronavirus. It is vulnerable due to its sanitary conditions and its remoteness from large urban centers.

Thus, indigenous communities and park rangers are strengthening control and surveillance in the El Suse (or Susi) Strait, on the Beni River in order to contain the advance of COVID-19, at the same time as stopping hunting and fishing. illegal in their ancestral territories and the Madidi and Pilón Lajas protected areas.

The leader Miriam Pariamo, representative of the indigenous women of the northern Amazon, denounced that to date they have not received any kind of benefits such as solidarity bonds and no help has come to indigenous peoples who are far from the headquarters of their municipalities. 

One of those territories where state bonds did not arrive is the Community Land of Origin (TCO) of San José de Uchupiamonas, according to the report. The inhabitants of said TCO must also go out and expose themselves in the urban centers where they go, hoping to receive some help from the authorities. 

The report states that the authorities have so far not heeded the pleas for help.

For this reason the indigenous people ask the sister populations to show solidarity with them since they have ended with the self-consumption of their own agricultural products and to date “they do not have even a kilo of rice” to satisfy the food needs of their families.