Wixárika Communication Regarding COVID-19

COMMUNICATION REGARDING CORONAVIRUS COVID-19

The communities that make up the Wixárika Regional Council for the defense of Wirikuta express our great concern about the global pandemic caused by COVID-19. The foregoing, mainly because historically we have not been guaranteed adequate access to healthcare.

Over the years, throughout the state and federal governments, the Wixárika communities have constantly denounced the lack of access to adequate health facilities, specialized doctors, medicines, and basic supplies without getting a favorable response,. Let us remember the context of remoteness that exists between our communities in relation to the nearby municipal seats.

Hence, we call on the governments of Jalisco, Durango and Nayarit to provide priority and specialized care and to guarantee the right to healthcare for the indigenous communities and to implement efficient strategies of communication regarding preventative measures for the Covid-19 Coronavirus and also in the event of complications.

Therefore, considering that we are a vulnerable population, we demand that our Human Rights be respected and that we have access to quality care just like our fellow human beings. Likewise, we exhort these authorities to promote dialogue and respect between the parties with our representatives to attend, in a coordinated manner, to the contingency.

1. We ask the Society in General, considering the health threat that exists, to abstain from visiting the communities or, as the case may be, take the prevention and containment measures in force in the country. 

2. To the Wixaritari who return to their communities, we recommend extreme precautions of prevention and as far as is possible to try to stay at home or reduce their mobility during the healthy distance journey, valid until April 20 of the year in course in Mexico.

3. To the Wixaritari we request that we be responsible, humane and in solidarity in the first place with our greatest possessors of the ancestral cultural wisdom of our people, of children, pregnant women, people with a disease so that we all avoid exposing ourselves to contagion.

Our life and that of our grandparents is at stake.

For your attention, thank you very much.

Sincerely 

As of March 26, 2020

Wixárika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta