While agricultural day laborers denounce a lack of support in Guerrero, a child under the age of five, the son of day laborers, died after not receiving adequate medical attention to treat a parasitic disease.
Text: José Miguel Sánchez / Poppy
Foto: Tlachinollan
CHILPANCINGO, WARRIOR. – The Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center denounced that a child under the age of five died in the community of Calpanapa, municipality of Cochoapa el Grande, due to lack of medical care in the area.
The minor, whose name was omitted to protect his identity, died of parasitosis “due to not having adequate, prompt and timely medical care” while being transferred to the municipal seat of Cochoapa el Grande, one of the most marginalized municipalities in the state.
The minor’s story was told during the Tlachinollan radio program, broadcast on XZV La Voz de la Montaña on Thursdays of each week.
The minor is the son of a couple that every year migrates to the agricultural fields of the north of the country, and due to the difficulty that the move represents for a whole family, the parents decided that he would stay in his native Calpanapa, under the care of his grandmother, who was also a day laborer but due to age she no longer continued in the trade.
The history
On April 10, the under-five-year-old began to present vomiting, diarrhea and a temperature, but in his community they do not have a health center, much less doctors or medicines.
Due to the lack of transportation, the minor was transferred until the next day to the nearest clinic, in Dos Ríos, 20 minutes away.
Upon arriving at the basic hospital in Dos Ríos, the family realized that there were no doctors, so the nurses decided not to treat him and recommended that he be transferred to Cochoapa el Grande so that they could send him to the General Hospital in the city of Tlapa.
By the way, in this hospital located in Tlapa, its 200 workers, including doctors, nurses and administrative staff, have been on strike for almost two months to demand the dismissal of two officials, the repair of the operating room, the laundry and the shipment of medicines.
Most of the roads in the Mountain are unpaved, where trucks cannot travel at more than 30 kilometers per hour. The minor died during the transfer to the city of Tlapa; a transfer that the family itself made with its own means and resources.
Faced with this situation, Tlachinollan called on the authorities to pay attention to the marginalization that exists in the area.
“This situation highlights all the deficiencies that the health sector has in the Mountain, especially the most remote communities and it is the poor families who continue to suffer total abandonment by state and federal authorities where a simple diarrhea can lead to death,” Salvador Cisneros Silva, a spokesman for Tlachinollan, said during the organization’s radio program.
Another issue that Tlachinollan denounced was the one that pregnant women face when giving birth because there are no doctors or trained personnel.
Agricultural laborers accuse the Guerrero government of canceling support
On the other hand, farm laborers from the Montaña region denounced that for more than a year the government of the Morenista Evelyn Salgado Pineda canceled the budget they allocated to purchase the food they were given when they traveled to the northern states. the country to work in the agricultural fields.
The day laborer Miguel Martínez said that in the government of Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo there was a budget of 300,000 pesos for the purchase of supplies, in the government of Ángel Aguirre Rivero it dropped to 250,000 pesos, and in that of Héctor Astudillo to 50,000; in this government it only disappeared.
“With that money we buy sacks of rice, beans and other products that are used as a pantry that we take with us to cook during the first three days of our stay in the agricultural fields,” said the day laborer.
During a press conference at the facilities of the Comprehensive Services Unit (USI) in Tlapa, which was broadcast live on Facebook, the day laborers, together with the head of the Migration Area of the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center, Paulino Rodríguez Reyes, asked the government to install an inter-institutional commission to ensure that companies that hire day laborers do not violate their human rights in terms of health, labor and education.
“The government tells us that it does not have the money to return that support, but it is good that there is a budget for Senator Félix Salgado Macedonio (father Evelyn Salgado) to have three parties in a single day for his birthday; one in Iguala, another in Chilpancingo and in Acapulco,” commented Miguel Martínez Peralta.
“The government knows that there in the agricultural fields where we are hired, they viciously exploit us, but even we women are the ones who suffer the most, because apart from the fact that we work, cook, wash and feed our family,” said day laborer Hermelinda Santiago Rios.
He denounced that in the agricultural fields the companies that hire them do not accommodate them in decent housing, they lack health care and their children do not have access to education.
“We are vilely exploited and the Guerrero government knows it, but it does nothing to help us; We are going to work under these conditions because here in the Montaña region the government does nothing to create sources of employment,” added the day laborer.
According to Tlachinollan, every year some 15,000 day laborers from the municipalities of La Montaña migrate.
“There in the places where we go to work, many of us suffer sexual harassment and even sexual assaults,” said Martina Ramírez Domínguez.
The day laborers mentioned that in 2018, when Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the presidency of the Republic, they thought that the conditions of the Mountain were going to change for the better of its inhabitants, many of whom live in highly marginalized conditions.
“But nothing has happened because we continue moving to the north of the country so that the companies exploit us,” said Martina.
The day laborer Miguel Martínez said that this also gave way when Morena was left with the governorship in Guerrero, “but it turned out worse, because they already took away the budget for the endowment of beans, rice and other products for our pantries that we took with us on the trip to agricultural fields.”
Lawyer Paulino Rodríguez Reyes denounced that last February two minors from the community of Tonayán, municipality of Tlapa, died of malnutrition in some galleys in an agricultural field in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, where their parents worked.
In 2022, he also reported, six agricultural laborers from various communities in the Mountain were shot to death in different places and in the states of Baja California and Sinaloa.
This text was originally published in AMAPOLA, which is part of the Media Alliance of the Red de Periodistas de a Pie Check the original post here.
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