Abstract

Covid-19 is dramatically affecting the Amazonian regions of Peru. Facing an overwhelming challenge, indigenous peoples’ organizations have deployed a networked response and a very agile reaction to the pandemic. They have self-organized crafting adapted logistics, developing crowd-sourced maps, putting together food chains among river communities, and recovering traditional knowledge on endemic plants with therapeutic value. They have isolated healthy communities and cared for convalescent persons when the local health system collapsed. We can observe that although there is a disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on indigenous communities, their self-organization has proven essential as public subnational health systems and social services were completely overwhelmed by the pandemic. This research focuses on the region of Ucayali, which has been severely hit by the pandemic. It asks: What are the particularities of the Amazonian indigenous organizations’ response to the urgent and longer-term effects of the pandemic? It aims at analyzing and making explicit the potential that contemporary indigenous networks have to build resilience in the face of complex global health challenges.

Principal Investigator

Deborah Delgado

Assistant Professor, Social Sciences Department, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru

Bio

Deborah Delgado Pugley is an assistant professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. She holds a PhD in development studies and sociology by the Catholic University of Louvain and the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences of Paris. She is a sociologist with theoretical and applied experience in environmental issues going from multilateral politics to the community level, including extensive fieldwork in the Amazon basin. She has been a Peruvian national delegate to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings from 2012. Her current research focuses on indigenous social movements, human and environmental rights, climate change policies, global health, gender, and development.