La salud de los pueblos indígenas entre el hacer vivir y el dejar vivir: Reflexiones desde la pandemia de COVID-19

Abstract

Within the framework of the call for proposals, this article reflects on the tensions that thepandemic exacerbated between health as a universal right, the particular rights of indigenous peoples,and the regional health practices of these peoples. From there, it seek to analyze the way in whichthrough the regulations and protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19, sanctioned by the ArgentineState, forms of government were administered in Foucauldian terms to make people live (and theircounterpart of letting die) that came into tension and excluded other ways of living belonging toindigenous peoples (and the respective normative frameworks that guarantee the right to their ways oflife). To problematize these exclusions, we will focus mainly on the claims made by the indigenousmovement and, in particular, by Mapuche communities and organizations, which were articulating arequest for them to let them live. Letting live implied a complaint regarding the implementation of healthmeasures which, as they were being managed, did not guarantee access to health for these peopleswithin the biomedical system, nor the continuity of their own health practices and systems.