Semana - Judicial inspection in Vaupés for health care problems

Review Chamber of the Constitutional Court will go to the region to determine the degree of threat due to lack of attention. The Ombudsman's Office asks for more health centers and extramural medical commissions that can go out to attend to emergencies.

Accidents as common as snake bites ending in amputations, increasing suicide rates or difficulties in the attention of mental health problems, are some of the alerts that the Ombudsman's Office raised to the Constitutional Court due to the latent threat that the population lives in Vaupés.

This department of 42,000 inhabitants, 60% of whom are indigenous, is under the magnifying glass of the human rights authority due to the lack of protection represented by a health system which, according to the entity, is insufficient and non-existent. The situation is aggravated taking into account that there is a high geographical dispersion and a late communication with the hospital located in Mitú.

For this reason, a Review Chamber of the Constitutional Court made up of magistrates Gloria Ortiz, Jorge Iván Palacio and Aquiles Arrieta will carry out a judicial inspection in the region. The inspection will take place on Monday and Tuesday in the community of San Miguel, in the Pirá Paraná area, and in Mitú, capital of Vaupés.

The departmental ombudsman, Carlos Javier Bojacá Galvis, asks the Court to order the national and regional authorities to take administrative, financial and budgetary measures to guarantee the right to health; to expand the service delivery network in the department of Vaupés with at least five additional health centers, in areas such as high and low Apaporis, Pira Paraná area, high and low Vaupés, and to ensure at least three extra-mural commissions in geographically dispersed areas.

It also requests that 10 existing health centers in the department be reactivated and that, if necessary, copies be sent to the control bodies to initiate investigations into the situation in the region.

Prior to the visit, the Constitutional Court asked several entities for their opinion on the health of the indigenous people in the area. Some of them were the Legal Clinic of Environment and Public Health of the Universidad de los Andes. The non-governmental organization Sinergias, headed by its director, physician Pablo Montoya, recently sent the high court a 27-page document in which it provided a serious analysis for the judicial inspection and in which it highlights the lack of availability and access to health services by most of the department's population.

According to information gathered by the high court, there are 27 communities in the area, some of which are in the process of physical and cultural extinction, including the Cubeo, Desano, Tukano, Bará, Barasana, Curripaco, Guanano, Jupda, Jujup, Kakua, Makuna, Piratapuyo, Pisamira, Siriano, Taiwano, Tatuyo, Tuyuca, Yurutí, Tanimuka, and Tariano peoples.

Each group has a particular language and cultural characteristics, although most of the indigenous population identifies with the Eastern Tukano language. Their social organization is patrilineal (offspring are transmitted through the paternal line), virilocal (when there is a union between a woman and a man, the woman moves in with the man's family) and dradivic (traditionally marriage is between cross-cousins). This organization gives rise to extended families organized in lineages or clans that result in groups with particular ethnic belonging and cultural identity.

The traditional power figures are represented by the shamans, payés, singers or storytellers who are founding grandparents of the lineage and who are in charge of making decisions of utmost importance in relation to rituals. Those who relate to state entities and exercise administrative functions with the “white world” are called captains, governors or secretaries. However, their position depends on the community (in few cases the elders occupy the administrative positions).

The 1991 Constitution granted autonomy to ethnic communities to organize themselves administratively in accordance with their customs and worldview.

Although in practice they lack the tools to exercise this autonomy, the Traditional Indigenous Authorities have been characterized by their emergence in areas with cultural, geographic and kinship relations. Currently, there are 18 such authorities and two additional ones - Regional Indigenous Council of Vaupés or CRIVA and the Major Council of Self-Government of the Great Indigenous Resguardo of Vaupés - that have assumed the representative role of the department's communities.

In general, and for multiple reasons, the communities are suffering an accelerated acculturation process, which is leading to the loss of traditional knowledge and the weakening of their cultural identity.

The process originated several decades ago with the colonization processes; the entry of missionaries into the area; the large traders of rubber, balata, syringa, skins and recently of coca and mining. The elders vividly remember the abuses suffered and their chronology.

The Constitutional Court's historic visit to Mitú and its surroundings will set a precedent to vindicate the rights of the indigenous population and the urgent need to implement comprehensive solutions that are planned and executed under a differential approach and built together with the communities and local authorities.

“We have courts that can solve complex problems,” observed Johnattan García, from the Universidad de los Andes, “The visit (of the Court to) Vaupés is a wake-up call for the State and Colombians, an opportunity to take ownership of our territory,” he stressed.

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