GRANMA
March 15, 2007
Report from the Venezuelan Great Savannah
Ronald Suarez and Alberto Borrego Avila (photo)
Granma Special Correspondents
"Where is everyone going," the Cuban doctor asked. "Don't you worry doc,
we'll take care of you and continue preparing the food you like. You won't
lack anything while you are with us," replied some of the residents.
THE CUBAN DOCTORS WERE THE FIRST EVER TO WORK IN THE VILLAGES
OF THE PEMON INDIGENOUS, IN VENEZUELA'S GREAT SAVANNAH.
Dr. Lester Montoya had to run to catch up to the members of the village and
prevent them from blocking the roads of the Southern Great Savannah. They
were committed to stop anybody from entering or leaving their territory, not
even the National Guard or the Army, because the Venezuelan Constitution
provides autonomy to indigenous communities.
The same thing was happening in other communities. The reason of the
protests: Trying to stop the transfers of Cuban doctors.
"It took a lot of work to finally convince them," Montoya recalls. The
Council of elders met first, followed by a town assembly. After long
debates, they finally acquiesced to trust once again the Cuban doctor, the
first to cut across the jungle to take care of them.
Place of Honor
The story had begun some six months earlier, when the beating on pots and
pans woke up the Cuban doctors. What a way to start a day, they thought.
The sound came from locals worried about the presence of the Cubans. "They
are military people sent by Fidel Castro, and they have already unloaded
their weapons to launch an attack on the village," one local radio station
had reported.
The previous day, a truck from the National Guard had arrived with several
boxes of medical supplies. One by one, they opened all the boxes in front of
the inhabitants of Santa Elena de Uarien, one of the towns mentioned in
Alejo Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos (The lost steps).
The 27 Cuban doctors had arrived after a tiring road trip of more than 2,000
kilometers, following the same route taken by Carpentier a half century
before in search of the origins of American humankind and its music.
They came with the mission of offering free healthcare for the people of
Santa Elena and the rest of the communities in the Great Savannah, comprised
of some 48,800 people, scattered in a territory half the size of Cuba.
In Ikabaru, Betania, Maurak, located in the depths of the jungle, they set
up their camps, after the Council of the Elderly, the supreme authority of
the tribe, approved the arrival to each of the villages.
Afterwards, in an assembly meeting, there was a discussion on what to feed
the guests, since they were not used to eating the moriche worm, or the
roasted bachaco (a kind of ant) or tripe soup.
The remoteness, harsh conditions and lack of communication, led the
organizers to consider the Great Savannah as a place of honor. And the
performance of the Cuban doctors, every day, validates that description.
In Ikabaru, Dr. Ibis used her own anti-poison serum to neutralize the venom
of a patient that had been bit by a snake. In Santa Elena, Dr. Tejada
donated his blood to save the life of a miner who was haemorrhaging. But the
most important achievement has been changing the people's hygienic
practices, and convincing entire populations who had never seen a doctor in
their lives, to get check ups.
The land of The Lost Steps
The Great Savannah is a beautiful jungle landscape separated for centuries
from modern life. The jungle rises to an altitude of 1,500 meters above sea
level, with steep drop-offs and rivers descending in torrents that generate
the majority of electricity in Venezuela.
Scientists believe that these were the first lands to emerge, but they are
also the last to be explored. It was pure greed that first pushed colonizers
into this area in search of El Dorado, the mystical golden city.
Now the Cuban doctors have come, not following a legend but to come and live
and work among the Pemon indigenous, people who use to live and die, without
ever seeing a doctor.
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