B
renda gutiérrez, a 50yearold shellfish gatherer, knew she was a Chango for as long as she can remember. When she was growing up in a fishing village in northern Chile, her parents always called her Changuita (little Chango girl). Her schoolmates, alas, called her “smelly” and
“dirty” because of her indigenous roots.
Such discrimination turned her into an activist. She lobbied for the Chilean state to recognise her people, an indigenous group whose culture is supposedly extinct. “We exist and are alive,” she says. In October last year, the Changos won recognition.
And an election next month for a conven
tion to change Chile’s old constitution could boost them further.
The Chango—a colonialera term which has stuck—are descended from nomads who inhabited South America’s west coast over 10,000 years ago. Despite their culture having supposedly vanished, 4,725 Chi
leans defined themselves as Chango in a 2017 census, in the “other” category. Many still work as hardscrabble nautical types, as their ancestors did (they were known for sealion skin rafts). Some still use ancient tools such as the chinguillo, a net fibre bag to carry fish, and the chope, an iron file to scrape molluscs off rocks.
One reason why people mistakenly thought they no longer existed is that the Chango people, who are thought to have come from a number of different tribes in coastal areas of northern Chile, tended to assimilate. (By, for example, abandoning
S A N T I A G O
A new constitution could give indigenous folk more say
Flying the flag of recognition
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43
The Economist March 6th 2021 The Americas
E
ach daythis week some 100,000 Chileans aged 60 to 64 turned up to get their inoculation against covid19.Having vaccinated nearly 20% of its adults, the sixthbest performance in the world, Chile is on track to meet its target of covering 80% of its 19m people by June 30th. After starting with health workers, the jabs are being applied in strict de
scending order of age, a different year each day, and to teachers, too.
This swift and orderly programme contrasts with the rest of Latin America.
In vaccination as in other matters, the region displays its divisions, inequalities and problems of governance. In this case, sadly, they will cost lives. Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and several smaller countries have barely started jabbing.
Mexico, with 2% of its people vaccinated on March 1st, is below the world average of 3.5%. In Brazil (4%) vaccination trails behind the new p.1 variant of the virus, which spreads faster than the original and seems to disregard prior natural immunity. This week the health secretar
ies of Brazil’s 27 state governments de
clared that the country is suffering “the worst moment” of the pandemic.
The slow rollout is largely because of the worldwide shortage of vaccines, especially from Western drug firms whose supplies have gone mainly to their home markets. Argentina, Brazil and Mexico plan to make vaccines but have found it hard to source the active ingredients and vials. Part of the problem is government fumbling. Whereas the African Union made bulk prepurchases, Latin America’s lack of regional coordi
nation meant that countries raced against each other, points out Ernesto Ortiz of the Global Health Institute at Duke University. In that race, Chile did two things right: in mid2020 it agreed
with several pharma companies to host vaccine trials to encourage early delivery;
and its immunisation programme has an uptodate digital database. Many other governments have struggled with complex procurement negotiations.
The result is “patchiness”, according to Clare Wenham, a health expert at the London School of Economics. Different vaccines, different priority groups and different distribution plans could compli
cate opening up the region’s economies, she thinks. This patchiness owes much to political manipulation. Vaccine distribu
tion in Brazil has been particularly hap
hazard, because the federal government of Jair Bolsonaro, a populist who denies the seriousness of the virus, has absented itself from the job.
In Mexico, another federal country, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador seized control of the vaccination programme from the states. With an im
portant election due in June, it decided that 333 “highly marginalised” municipal
ities should get the vaccine first. Many are rural and less hit by the pandemic than the
cities. Teachers have been jabbed before nurses, who are at higher risk.
This is queuejumping on behalf of a political clientele. Elsewhere it is the powerful who have jumped queues. In Peru the health and foreign ministers resigned last month after it emerged that they were among 487 insiders who se
cretly benefited from sample doses provided by Sinopharm, a Chinese com
pany, as a sweetener; another was Martín Vizcarra, who was ousted as president in November. Health ministers in Argenti
na and Ecuador left after similar scan
dals. These affairs have done no good for the credibility of democracy in their countries. They also “play against trust in vaccination programmes”, says Dr Ortiz. Polls suggest vaccine hesitancy has risen in Peru since last August.
Those vaccines currently available in the region come mainly from China and Russia, which have been quicker to deliver than their Western rivals. China trades a lot with and invests a lot in several Latin American countries. Vac
cine diplomacy may give it soft power for the first time. As for Russia, it had almost disappeared from Latin America since the end of the cold war. Now it is back, and in a benign guise.
Vaccination is a marathon, not a sprint. By February 27th Latin American countries had ordered 550m doses of Western vaccines, compared with 213m from China and 72m from Russia, ac
cording to Duke University. Later this year, the Western doses should arrive in force. Eventually, both the scandals and the source of the early vaccines may be forgotten if the region acquires immuni
ty and new variants are kept at bay. But it is more likely that the botched vaccina
tion effort will have lasting political and diplomatic consequences.
Vaccination is woefully politicised in most of Latin America
Bello A gap between Chile and the rest
their native languages for Spanish.) And unlike other groups, such as the Diaguitas (recognised in 2006), most of them did not see any need to be officially acknowledged.
According to Luis Campos, an anthropolo
gist, many were politicised only after a fishing law in 1991 and its amendments in the 2000s limited fishing to certain areas.
Chileans are growing more aware of their indigenous compatriots. Over the past two decades more have appeared in official statistics. Some 13% of Chileans are now recorded as indigenous, up from around 5% in the census of 2002.
In October last year the Chango were added to the list of peoples entitled to ben
efits under the Indigenous Peoples Law of 1993. This law offers scholarships and eco
nomic development grants. It also pro
vides a chance to reclaim ancestral land.
More recognition is coming, too. Elections for the body to draft a new constitution will take place on April 11th.
The constitutional convention will have 155 members. Seventeen seats have been reserved for indigenous groups. Their votes could be crucial to achieve the two
thirds majority required to approve each
clause of the new constitution, thinks An
tonia Rivas of the Centre for Intercultural and Indigenous Research.
For activists such as Ms Gutiérrez, who is standing as a potential candidate at the convention, such influence could trans
form Chile. The country is still recovering from huge protests against inequality in late 2019. The various indigenous groups (such as the Mapuche, who are 10% of in
digenous people in the country) were not mentioned in Chile’s constitution, drawn up in 1980. Now they will have a seat at the table to draft the new one.n
44 The Economist March 6th 2021
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