Workers Denounce Governmental Stinginess and Abandonment in Clinic at Siltepec, Chiapas

** Only 8 doctors remain out of 20; there were 30 nurses, but currently half remain

** They lack specialists, therefore pregnant women and sick children have to go to Huixtla or Motozintla

** Emergency room employees go to the Other Campaign‘s civil resistance to denounce the situation

By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Envoy

Siltepec, Chiapas, January 18, 2012

The Health Clinic with Expanded Services, which at some moment functioned as a field hospital, accuses governmental stinginess and abandonment. Emergency room workers have gone to the Other Campaign‘s civil resistance to denounce the situation: from the 20 doctors that came, 8 remain; of the 30 nurses, half remain.

The resistance movement Luz y Fuerza del Pueblo (People’s Light and Power) denounced to La Jornada that, faced with the lack of gynecology, pediatric, anesthesiology and radiology services (specialties that the Secretary of Health’s Health Center with Expanded Services allegedly offers), pregnant women and sick children must go either to Huixtla or Motozintla, in the low Sierra, to find adequate medical attention.

By conduct of Peoples’ Light and Power, the dissident health workers say that there is not equipment, and when there is, as in the case of ultra-sound, they lack a technician to operate it. “The budget that is supposed to be assigned is not seen. Medications that the Secretary of Health distributes arrive, and the paychecks are paid” for a decreasing labor force. Nothing more. Of the two ambulances, “in bad condition and without maintenance,” only one has a driver.

And they add: “An official letter was sent to Dr. Neftalí Rojas Pérez, from the health jurisdiction, explaining the situation to him. We continue hoping that he respond with Deeds.”

The Siltepecans in resistance point out that the phenomenon of “lost” financial resources is not exclusive to the clinic. “This year there was to be a Technological University here that the government announced. They say that the money arrived, but it is not known where it is now. It was supposed to be 18 million pesos, later it went down to 11 million and finally 5 million. The land is there, but no public work.”

It is suspected that those resources were just delivered to officialist (pro-government) social organizations, “because of a political commitment by the municipal president,” Bellaner Pérez Anzueto, who “gives away chickens, but doesn’t convince.”

For example, the roads are in very bad condition, but only the principal highway receives any maintenance and a new paved road is being constructed to the Honduras ejido (apparently of high attractiveness for the mining companies), in the direction of the county seat of Ángel Albino Corzo and to the rural city under construction in Jaltenango. As if they were pointing to the exit door.

Although this will be an election year, full of big promises and little gifts, the Siltepec communities in resistance, as announced last January 12, have decided to organize “independent of the government and the parties, because there are already many years of deceit and lying.”

With the projects “they have the town asleep, but many people live by the day.” They maintain that: “the eight municipalities of the Sierra are in complete abandonment of health, housing and roads, but the cantinas and whore houses here are permitted to be full, and people get drunk, which now is the principal health problem ya es el principal.”

Alcoholism is a big concern. As an ejido member that participates in civil resistance concludes, “a majority of the deaths are because of alcohol. People go around drunk and don’t see the future of the town. The families disintegrate. It seems that what they want if for us to get out. Because of that the people are rising up.”