JOCHI SAN FRANCISCO, Peru (AP) – Maribel Vilca did not attend a meeting in her indigenous community near Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world and the mythical cradle of the Incas, where her neighbors first heard information about immunization against the coronavirus that has been applied for eight months in Peru.
“What happens if I die from the vaccine? I have small children, ”said Vilca, who claims to have no immunization in her body at 38 years old and has painful memories of the treatment she received in the state health services during the pre-eclampsia complications of her two pregnancies.
Despite the fact that Peru has vaccinated more than 53% of its target population against COVID-19 even with massive immunizations that are widely received in urban areas, the figures show that progress in areas with indigenous populations is slow, around 25%, according to official data.
“I am miraculously alive,” added the woman who lives in the Jochi San Francisco indigenous community, where everyone speaks the Quechua language. Vilca said that his compadre Víctor Ávila, 70 years old and who was infected with the virus, recently placed the two doses and became almost deaf.
Rumors about vaccines have been spread by word of mouth, through social networks or radios in native languages and have flooded the indigenous villages of the Andes or the Amazon, where more than six million live, almost a fifth of Peruvians, according to the government.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the new coronavirus has caused more than 200,000 deaths in Peru and more than two million infected, according to the latest record of the John Hopkins University site.
To make matters worse, in several rural areas there is still remembered a sterilization plan carried out by doctors and nurses on 273,000 indigenous women promoted 25 years ago by the government of then-President Alberto Fujimori, who is imprisoned for other crimes, but accused of his alleged mediated responsibility. in the deaths of five women and in the serious injuries of another 1,300.
Julio Mendigure, director of indigenous peoples at the Ministry of Health, told The Associated Press that the most common rumors about vaccines are those that they are “putting a chip in them to handle them, which could be a way to sterilize women. , that men could have poor sexual performance, that they could die in a short time or that it is divine punishment ”.
Rural nurse Marina Checalla added that others believe that the vaccine can provoke a magnetism capable of attracting spoons or coins and improving the telephone and internet signal.
After encountering difficulties to immunize in indigenous villages, Peru asked for help from the Red Cross movement, with a good reputation in rural areas, and since August expeditions of state nurses and volunteers have visited 64 communities where they have answered questions in native languages. After the intercultural talks with a total of 1,777 citizens, 70% have been immunized, according to data provided by Paul Acosta, health coordinator of the Peruvian Red Cross.
The government has noticed the advances in vaccinations before an informative talk and the director of indigenous peoples indicated that with a next budget of 6 million dollars they will promote immunizations in the Amazon by hiring members of the communities who will facilitate the approach to explain in their own language the benefits of the vaccine.
Tarcila Rivera, from the indigenous organization Chirapaq, said that Peru must gain the trust of the communities with information in the native language and encourage the participation of community health promoters. “The State must take the trouble to talk with the indigenous population, coordinate with their traditional authorities and propose intercultural strategies.”
The challenge is constant because in several health centers located in indigenous villages the nurses do not even have enough money to buy fuel and go in search of the citizens of their jurisdiction and in other cases they do not know the native language of their patients.
The Associated Press toured several communities in the Puno region last week, where vaccination rates have one of the lowest rates in Peru and the Quechua and Aymara languages are spoken.
In Santa Cruz de Mijani, in another intercultural communal dialogue with the assistance of the Red Cross, Josefa Espinoza, 54, told the immunizers “I prefer to die without getting vaccinated”, because she had heard of the existence of “good vaccines” and other that “caused death.”
Espinoza, who tunes to a radio newscast in Quechua at dawn while feeding his cattle, added that the coronavirus had been created in a laboratory by “rich countries” and that a new, more powerful strain was going to arrive soon through bites of lice, bees and snakes.
“Those animals can produce rich countries … the rich, they will handle us and that is why I am concerned,” said Espinoza, 54, who lives with her only 11-year-old grandson.
Alicia Chura, from San Antonio de Putina, said that she heard her neighbors comment that the goal of vaccines is to kill the elderly in order to reduce Peru’s population, which totals 32 million.
“We are already filling up with many people and that (the vaccine) is to die, because we no longer need people and that is why they are starting with the oldest,” said the 36-year-old woman, who like her octogenarian parents, did not has been vaccinated.
Fear is also present in the islands of the Uros, which are located six kilometers from the shores of Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world and the mythical cradle of the Incas.
The Uros are an indigenous people considered older than the Incas and live on 80 small islands. In one of them lives Joel Huilca, who drives a boat where he transports tourists.
Huilca said that he had not been immunized because he was observing how his neighbors who had been vaccinated reacted. “They say it leaves you like a zombie, they are going to put a chip on you and they are going to know where you go and what you do,” said the 38-year-old man who has been afraid of vaccines since he was a child when they applied one against him. measles that caused him pain for several months.
Rumors against vaccines are not new. In 19th century colonial Peru, the first smallpox vaccination mission experienced welcomes and rejections. In the Lambayeque region, no one wanted to house them and on the outskirts of Lima they had to beg in the streets to get immunized.
More than 70 attended the recent intercultural meeting in Jochi San Francisco, but only 30 were vaccinated. “These are the myths that hurt and do not allow us to reach the populations,” said nurse Marina Checalla.
But not everyone believes the rumors.
After the community talk ended, Celso Quispe, 82, said that he decided to receive his second vaccination despite the fact that his wife and three children over 50 have none.
“There are comments, but I did not believe,” he commented. “What do people know?” He said.
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