People are Dying in the Streets: Interview With a Bolivian Socialist

[Judi Lynn]

Post on: June 18, 2020 Left Voice Juana Runa

Left Voice spoke with Juana Runa, a member of the Liga Obrera Revolucionaria – Cuarta Internacional (LOR-CI) and Bread and Roses in Bolivia, about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bolivia and the insufficient response by the current interim coup government.



(Image: Juan Karita/Associated Press)

The social, economic, and political situation in Bolivia is becoming increasingly dire. With a healthcare system overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases after years of cuts and privatization in the healthcare system, doctors are forced to turn patients away and are being infected at high rates. People are dying in the streets or at their homes without ever being tested or diagnosed. This public health crisis is exacerbated by the economic and political crises perpetrated by Jeanine Áñez’s right-wing coup government, which is using increasingly authoritarian measures to quell the social unrest that is steadily building in the country. Left Voice spoke with Juana Runa, a member of the Liga Obrera Revolucionaria – Cuarta Internacional (LOR-CI) and Bread and Roses in Bolivia, about the current situation and the insufficient response by both the interim coup government and its opposition.

What is the status of the Covid-19 health crisis in Bolivia right now? How prepared is Bolivia to handle a health crisis of this magnitude?

The coup government of Jeanine Áñez hasn’t tired of boasting that they quickly declared quarantine, always emphasizing that they reacted promptly by taking this step. Nowadays, however, the situation is becoming drastic three months after the government imposed a militarized quarantine, without having also implemented basic biosecurity measures, much less mass testing.

As is evident in a country where the vast majority of workers live on what they earn in a day to feed themselves and ensure their most basic needs, a strictly enforced quarantine that has been in place for two months is totally unsustainable. It is a time bomb. This became evident in the last few weeks as hunger strikes across the country have broken out, combined with the demand for emergency elections, in the face of the brutality and escalating repression with which the coup leaders have been managing the pandemic.

Infections in the country are dramatically increasing. It’s a complicated situation because thousands of families are driven by hunger to go out and work. Áñez and her government have begun to relax the quarantine at great cost; they are doing it in a totally irresponsible way because they have systematically refused to implement mass testing. This is criminal considering that we have one of the most precarious health systems in the region and today public health is beginning to collapse. In fact, quarantine has been the only “sanitary” measure imposed by the coup government.

More:
https://www.leftvoice.org/people-are-dying-in-the-streets-interview-with-a-bolivian-socialist

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