Epidemic: Bodies Remember What Was Done to Them

Posted on October 10, 2023 by emandowa

A black-and-white photograph from 1976 shows a female doctor leaning over the bed of a patient recovering from surgery. The image caption reads: “A doctor greets a woman who has undergone tubectomy operation at the AIWC-Family Planning Hospital at the Jamshedpur Blood Bank.” — In the early ’50s, India launched a family planning program in which the government would use various tactics to sterilize people — some voluntary, some for a monetary reward, some by force. In this 1976 photo published by Tata Steel in TISCO News, patients are recovering from a sterilization procedure. The image caption reads: “A doctor greets a woman who has undergone tubectomy operation at the AIWC – Family Planning Hospital at the Jameshedpur Blood Bank.” (TISCO News Volume 24: No. 1, June 1976, Page 73)

A black-and-white photograph from 1975 shows a health care worker sitting on the ground among a small crowd as he speaks to them. — In this photograph from 1975, an Indian health care worker speaks with families about ways to stop the spread of smallpox. Smallpox eradication workers say that violent and coercive tactics during India’s family planning campaign created distrust that was hard to overcome as they worked to vaccinate people against smallpox. Sitting down and speaking with community leaders directly helped rebuild trust. (J.D. Millar/CDC)

Global fears of overpopulation in the ’60s and ’70s helped fuel India’s campaign to slow population growth. Health workers tasked to encourage family planning were dispatched throughout the country and millions of people were sterilized — some voluntarily, some for a monetary reward, and some through force.

This violent and coercive campaign — and the distrust it created — was a backdrop for the smallpox eradication campaign happening simultaneously in India. When smallpox eradication worker Chandrakant Pandav entered a community hoping to persuade people to accept the smallpox vaccine, he said, he was often met with hesitancy and resistance.

“People’s bodies still remember what was done to them,” said medical historian Sanjoy Bhattacharya.

A woman carries a baby outside the family planning center in the village of Badlapur in 1954. India’s family planning campaign created an atmosphere of intimidation and harassment that was nearly impossible to escape, says “Epidemic” host Céline Gounder. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Episode 6 of “Eradicating Smallpox” shares Pandav’s approach to mending damaged relationships.

To gain informed consent, he sat with people, sang folk songs, and patiently answered questions, working both to rebuild broken trust and slow the spread of smallpox.

To conclude the episode, host Céline Gounder speaks with the director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations, Thomas Bollyky. He said public health resources might be better spent looking for ways to encourage cooperation in low-trust communities, rather than investing to rebuild trust.

The Host:

In Conversation With Céline Gounder:

Voices From the Episode:

Click to open the transcript Transcript: Bodies Remember What Was Done to Them

Podcast Transcript
Epidemic: “Eradicating Smallpox”
Season 2, Episode 6: Bodies Remember What Was Done to Them
Air date: Oct. 10, 2023

Editor’s note: If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio of “Epidemic,” which includes emotion and emphasis not found in the transcript. This transcript, generated using transcription software, has been edited for style and clarity. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.

Céline Gounder: In the early 1970s, all around the world, worries about overpopulation were mounting.

Politicians warned about the dangers.

Richard Nixon: Our cities are gonna be choked with people. They’re going to be choked with traffic. They’re gonna be choked with crime. … And they will be impossible places in which to live.

Céline Gounder: And news outlets repeated the claims. A 1970 news analysis from The New York Times described “two avenues” to deal with the problem of overpopulation.

Voice actor reading from NYT article: “… one is persuasion of people to limit family size voluntarily, by contraception, sterilization or abortion. The other is compulsory, through such means as large‐scale injection of at least temporary infertility drugs into food or water.”

Céline Gounder: Popular books like “The Population Bomb” suggested an impending, apocalyptic future. Pulpy paperbacks were passed around — capturing people’s imagination and stoking fears.

Two million copies of “The Population Bomb” were sold. And the author landed on late-night television, his dire predictions becoming entertainment for Americans sitting at home on their couches.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, India — with its growing population — was in the crosshairs of the world’s anxieties.

[Solemn music plays.]

Céline Gounder: In the early ’50s, India had launched a family planning program.

Narrator of Indian Family Planning Film: There are 5 million more mouths to feed every year. … If our population continues to grow unchecked at the present alarming rate, we cannot solve our problems of food and shelter.

Céline Gounder: And that state-sponsored campaign got political and financial backing from international organizations like the World Bank and American foundations like Ford and Rockefeller.

Health workers were dispatched across India to get people to have fewer children.

Sometimes voluntarily.

Sometimes for a monetary reward.

Sometimes using force.

Violence and coercion created distrust.

In this episode, we’ll explore how that distrust affected the public health campaign to stop smallpox.

And ask: What is the path to restoring trust?

I’m Dr. Céline Gounder and this is “Epidemic.”

[“Epidemic” theme music plays.]

Chandrakant Pandav: Ready? Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Chandrakant Pandav. This is a recording in my office at New Delhi.

Céline Gounder: Chandrakant Pandav’s office is decorated with his academic degrees, lantern lights, and floral wallpaper. There are photos of Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and various Hindu deities framed in gold.

And on his desk is a small saffron-white-and-green flag.

Chandrakant Pandav: Most important, I have India’s flag always in front of me.

Céline Gounder: And what’s the reason for that?

Chandrakant Pandav: Patriotism, mera desh mahaan.

Céline Gounder: Mera desh mahaan — “My great Nation”— he says in Hindi. Chandrakant was so eager to share his pride that at one point he picked up the flag and waved it around a bit.

He could barely contain his love for his country — and its culture.

He even got up out of his chair, turned on a song, and started dancing.

[Video of Chandrakant dancing to upbeat music playing.]

Céline Gounder: A twist of the hand here, a little shimmy there; he did a few hand mudras with a look of delight on his face.

I couldn’t help but smile along with him.

[Dance video continues playing, Céline and Chandrakant laugh.]

Céline Gounder: But even with all that joy, when the music stopped and he shuffled back to his chair, you’re reminded that Chandrakant is in his 70s, with more than 50 years of experience in public health.

[Video of Chandrakant dance video fades out.]

Céline Gounder: He was one of thousands of people asked to take part in the smallpox eradication program in the early and mid-’70s. He didn’t hesitate when he got the call.

Chandrakant Pandav: I said, this is the time to serve my India. Because India has spent so much of money on my education and making me a doctor, so I came from this culture strong, strong ethical background that your life is not for yourself. Money is … doesn’t matter. Serve the society.

Céline Gounder: Chandrakant led a team of smallpox eradication workers. He says nearly every person he talked to about taking the smallpox vaccine seemed to have the same worry, the same questions.

Chandrakant Pandav: “What is this vaccine? What is this you’re doing us? Maybe it’s a population control measure.” So the strongest question they had: “This is the government of India’s new policy for sterilization?”

Céline Gounder: Sterilization. The government’s decades-long family planning campaign was very much top of mind.

Decades later, when Chandrakant thinks about the program — and the unethical tactics India used — the pride melts off his face.

Chandrakant Pandav: It was a very aggressive strategy, unfortunately. I don’t want to go into that period. It was very aggressive.

Céline Gounder: Chandrakant didn’t want to talk about it. But you can’t tell the story of smallpox eradication success without talking about the family planning policies that came first.

Without talking about the state-sponsored coercive tactics that were commonplace and accepted by many.

Without acknowledging the violence of forced sterilizations.

Public health doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

And India’s approach to family planning eroded trust in public health workers for years.

So — in this season all about smallpox — we’re going to spend some time this episode diving into the details of the family planning program.

Gyan Prakash: My name is Gyan Prash and I’m professor of history at Princeton University.

Céline Gounder: Gyan has spent years studying India’s family planning campaign and the various tactics the government used to sterilize millions of people.

The government would pay people to get sterilized, and after natural disasters, like a drought, when many were desperate, any amount of money could be a powerful motivator. Patients might receive fewer than 100 rupees as compensation — which translates to only a few days’ wages, according to a 1986 article published in the journal “Studies in Family Planning.”

Gyan Prakash: It was a very small amount, but it mattered; it mattered to the poor. It was coercive, because it was between going hungry and, and not going hungry.

Céline Gounder: And if you chose not to get sterilized, Gyan says, the government found other ways to twist the screw. Families would receive food rations for up to only three children — any child beyond that would not be allotted food.

Gyan Prakash: Which punishes families which have more than three children.

Céline Gounder: At one point, the government began to prioritize men for sterilization.

Vasectomies were sometimes pushed on men, according to a 1972 report from The Associated Press.

Céline Gounder: Gyan says India’s family planning campaign created an atmosphere of intimidation and harassment that was nearly impossible to escape.

Gyan Prakash: You know, sending district authorities, backed by police, to the countryside and hold sterilization camps. So, I mean, the entire state machinery was mobilized to get people to the sterilization table.

Céline Gounder: Some of the harshest treatment during the sterilization campaign was aimed at Muslims and Indigenous populations like Adivasi tribes living in remote and rural parts of the country. I spoke to Sanjoy Bhattacharya about this.

Sanjoy Bhattacharya: I’m a historian of medicine with a deep interest in health policy, national, international, and global. And I’m the head of the School of History at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom.

Céline Gounder: Sanjoy says marginalized communities were often scapegoated.

Sanjoy Bhattacharya: That global narrative of overpopulation took the shape of, oh, Muslims have more children than Hindus, therefore Muslims are the problem behind Indian overpopulation. So we need to control the Muslim birthrate. What sterilization did was to violently sterilize men from a certain community who were blamed for a population problem that was a general population problem.

Céline Gounder: Sanjoy says many Adivasi and Muslim communities, in particular, lost trust in the government. This distrust lingered and simmered for years.

Imagine for a moment that for decades government trucks have descended on your village unannounced. Tents were set up. Equipment was unloaded. Workers fanned out to talk to village leaders.

This is what it looks like when Indian health workers showed up to sterilize you and your people.

And then, in the early 1970s, more government trucks arrived, maybe with familiar faces at the wheel. Maybe it’s some of the same public health workers.

They unload similar sharp-edged tools and set up their tents, but this time they promise it’s not for sterilization, it’s for a smallpox eradication program. You’d have a hard time trusting them.

Sanjoy Bhattacharya: And there are tales of how villages would empty when rumors would spread that these teams were coming ostensibly to vaccinate, but maybe really to sterilize. I mean, people’s bodies still remember what was done to them.

Chandrakant Pandav: They were treated like animals. Coercion, coercion, coercion.

Céline Gounder: That’s community medicine physician and longtime public health leader Chandrakant Pandav again. He says when he arrived in the northern region of the state of Bihar, he knew these communities had every reason to doubt his team.

So first he worked to earn people’s trust.

Chandrakant Pandav: So when you sit with the leader of the village, along with the batch of people there, you talk to them, you explain to them.

Céline Gounder: And Chandrakant says it’s helpful to think of yourself more as a guest than a guest of honor.

Chandrakant Pandav: You don’t sit on a chair. Céline, I didn’t sit on a chair. I sat next to them to make them feel that I’m part of that community.

Céline Gounder: It sounds like convincing the village leader was enough to convince the villagers.

Chandrakant Pandav: It is the first step.

Céline Gounder: Another important step, he says, was to learn the local traditions around smallpox. Locals in Bihar faced the disease for many years, and they’d developed their own ways of dealing with it.

They would tie the leaves of a neem tree outside the homes of infected people.

The neem tree is said to have medicinal properties. Displaying its leaves outside homes where an active infection was present alerted others to stay away — a strategy designed to slow disease spread.

It didn’t stop the virus — it wasn’t effective in the same way as vials of vaccine or the bifurcated needle — but the traditions needed to be honored.

So Chandrakant and the other public health workers adopted some of the local strategies.

Chandrakant Pandav: So it was a very good combination of ancient medicine, ancient practice, with modern approach. Very good combination.

Céline Gounder: Another tradition his team tapped into was folk songs. They frequently used drums, songs, and the public address systems to communicate with people about smallpox.

Music was an especially good match for Chandrakant’s lively personality.

Remember all that joy for India I witnessed in his office in New Delhi — the flag? The dancing? Imagine that harnessed on behalf of his mission to wipe out smallpox.

In fact, he still remembers some of those folk songs nearly half a century later.

Chandrakant Pandav: Because it’s part of me, every atom, every molecule residing [sings folk song in Hindi]. So, it became an important method of communication. I come back again and again, Céline, to the same point: Establish a rapport and instill a sense of faith, anything is possible.

Céline Gounder: Chandrakant was able to pave the way for acceptance of the smallpox vaccine and rebuild trust in public health. But he was one charismatic man. His approach, his compassion were admirable — and it worked, where he was, with the people in front of him.

But the Indian government broke trust with tens of millions of its citizens during the family planning campaign. It makes me wonder about what it might look like to repair trust at that level, across the public health system, across an entire country.

Maybe that would mean an apology. Maybe that would be some kind of reparation to victims for the damage done to their bodies.

My friend and colleague Tom Bollyky says there’s no single silver bullet for rebuilding trust.

Tom Bollyky: That is too big of a mission for public health. We have enough challenges as it is. Instead of planning for how do we rebuild trust, we should be planning for dysfunction.

Céline Gounder: That’s after the break.

[Music fades out.]

Céline Gounder: Distrust and mistrust in the government became something of a defining feature of the response to the covid pandemic here in the United States. And while that might have taken many Americans by surprise, it was totally predictable to Tom Bollyky. He’s the director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Bollyky says trust in the U.S. has been deteriorating since Watergate, and that decline accelerated around the 2008 financial crisis. Mistrust here divides along racial lines. It’s lower among African Americans, for example. And most notably, mistrust tends to be partisan. But it didn’t start that way during the covid pandemic.

Tom Bollyky: I think we all forget that there was, for a period of time, a surprising level of political consensus. Almost all states imposed protective policy mandates and most states imposed them at the same time. But as the fall stretched out, you saw some of those mandates and responses become more politicized.

And the moment I regret is, I think there was a moment, when the Biden administration came in and there was an attempt to reset and I … myself and many others really again focused on this message of following the science. But I do feel like perhaps we missed a opportunity to try to pull in some people across partisan lines at that moment.

Céline Gounder: So, as I’m hearing you describe this, restoring trust seems like a really massive undertaking.

I wonder whether you think that’s even the right framework that we should be using to think about this challenge.

Tom Bollyky: Such a great question. No, I think it isn’t. I think if we set an agenda for public health to rebuild the cohesiveness of our societies, to make us have a better relationship with our government, with each other, we will fail.

That is too big of a mission for public health. We have enough challenges as it is. Instead of planning for how do we rebuild trust, we should be planning for dysfunction. That’s really what preparedness is about.

Céline Gounder: So what are some of the ways that public health officials can reach skeptical communities?

Tom Bollyky: Through kinship networks and, uh, local leaders has been important. In some other public health crises, like HIV, people have used soap operas.

Céline Gounder: I remember being in South Africa in the early 2000s. There was a soap opera called “Soul City.” We pulled a clip of it, and there’s this one scene where a husband comes home to find his wife has placed a romantic gift by their bedside. He opens it up and sees condoms.

[Music]

“Soul City” clip: Woman: So that we can have safe sex. Man: Safe sex. Woman: I can’t have sex with you while I’m anxious about getting sick. Or, would you prefer I use condoms maybe? Man: We don’t need condoms. Woman: I do.

Tom Bollyky: I was in South Africa and the country was riveted. People really talked about it. It took, it took hold. Uh, they did a nice job of making it interesting, like weaving in the themes you wanted to weave in about people getting tested and talking to their partners and loved ones about their circumstances.

I know, Céline, you were very involved in the Ebola response, in 2013 through 2016. You know, there is high levels of mistrust in government in those post-conflict settings that were most affected in that epidemic.

Céline Gounder: People there don’t trust government, they think that people who serve in government do so to enrich themselves and their family and friends.

When I was in Guinea during the Ebola epidemic, they said Ebola was a hoax, that it was just a way for government officials and international organizations to enrich themselves. And yet, we were able to make some inroads convincing people to comply with Ebola control measures, so hand-washing, testing, safe burials.

Much of that was done through imams and other religious and community leaders.

Tom Bollyky: Those are the types of strategies we should be deploying when the next health crisis emerges, but not simply waiting until that happens. We need to start to build the infrastructure, the relationships. Again, even if it isn’t around fundamentally transforming, you know, communities, relationships with the government, or even how community members feel about, uh, one another, because interpersonal trust, social trust is a big part of this, too.

It’s about building the connections, the networks, about starting to engage individuals in these programs or through those institutions so that when the crisis emerges, you’re not building that from scratch.

Céline Gounder: Well, and to your point, as we prepare for the next pandemic, do you think we’ve learned those lessons about trust or are there things we’re still getting wrong?

Tom Bollyky: I think there is a greater appreciation for trust as an important issue. You hear that messaging. What I worry about is we’re not seeing it reflected yet in where the money is going. Where the money is going by and large is to developing vaccines faster, better vaccines in the future. But if really the lessons we’re drawing from this crisis are that developing a vaccine instead of in 326 days in 250 days … if we really think that would have made a difference in this pandemic, we haven’t been paying attention.

Céline Gounder: Next time on “Epidemic” …

Daniel Tarantola: They did not consider smallpox as the major issues among the many issues they were confronting. … No. 1 priority is food and food and food. And the second priority is food and food and food.

CREDITS

Céline Gounder: “Eradicating Smallpox,” our latest season of “Epidemic,” is a co-production of KFF Health News and Just Human Productions.

Additional support provided by the Sloan Foundation.

This episode was produced by Taylor Cook, Zach Dyer, Bram Sable-Smith, and me.

Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. was scriptwriter for the episode.

Swagata Yadavar was our translator and local reporting partner in India.

Our managing editor is Taunya English.

Oona Tempest is our graphics and photo editor.

The show was engineered by Justin Gerrish.

We had extra editing help from Simone Popperl.

Music in this episode is from the Blue Dot Sessions and Soundstripe.

This episode featured clips from National Education & Information Films Limited

We’re powered and distributed by Simplecast.

If you enjoyed the show, please tell a friend. And leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show.

Follow KFF Health News on X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok.

And find me on X @celinegounder. On our socials, there’s more about the ideas we’re exploring on our podcasts.

And subscribe to our newsletters at kffhealthnews.org so you’ll never miss what’s new and important in American health care, health policy, and public health news.

I’m Dr. Céline Gounder. Thanks for listening to “Epidemic.”

[“Epidemic” theme fades out.]

Additional Newsroom Support

Lydia Zuraw, digital producer
Tarena Lofton, audience engagement producer
Hannah Norman, visual producer and visual reporter
Simone Popperl, broadcast editor
Chaseedaw Giles, social media manager
Mary Agnes Carey, partnerships editor
Damon Darlin, executive editor
Terry Byrne, copy chief
Gabe Brison-Trezise, deputy copy chief
Chris Lee, senior communications officer

Additional Reporting Support

Swagata Yadavar, translator and local reporting partner in India
Redwan Ahmed, translator and local reporting partner in Bangladesh

“Epidemic” is a co-production of KFF Health News and Just Human Productions.

To hear other KFF Health News podcasts, click here. Subscribe to “Epidemic” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Pocket Casts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Open Migration Flows and Closed-Up Houses in Venezuela

Posted on October 4, 2023 by admin

Civil Society, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Financial Crisis, Headlines, Human Rights, Humanitarian Emergencies, Latin America & the Caribbean, Migration & Refugees, Population, Poverty & SDGs, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

Migration & Refugees

A view of Caracas from the south side of the narrow valley where it sits, dotted with houses and residential buildings where full occupancy was the norm until a few years ago. As a result of the massive migration of young people and adults, more and more homes are left unoccupied or inhabited only by the elderly and young children. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

CARACAS, Oct 4 2023 (IPS) – Gladys swore she would not cry in front of her small children, but she still had to wipe away a couple of tears when she turned her head and looked, perhaps for the last time, at her dream house on Margarita Island in Venezuela, from where she migrated, driven by a lack of income and by fear.

“It hurts to leave your own home, the most precious material asset for a family like ours (she works in administration, her husband is a mechanic, and they have two boys), but we lost our jobs and were robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. That led us to decide to emigrate,” she told IPS from Miami, Florida in the U.S.

Due to the economic, social and political crisis, which gave rise to a complex humanitarian emergency, 7.7 million Venezuelans, according to United Nations agencies, have migrated from this country, the vast majority in the last decade, and the flow is not slowing down, especially to other countries in the region.

“It hurts to leave your own home, the most precious material asset for a family like ours, but we lost our jobs and were robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. That led us to decide to emigrate.” — Gladys

The family of Gladys, who like other people who talked to IPS preferred not to give her last name, tried their luck in Colombia, Panama and Spain, before finally settling in the United States, “and the worry about the house followed us like a shadow, but fortunately we made a deal with an enterprising young man who takes care of it, improves it and pays a modest rent.”

There are thousands like her. Migrants try not to leave their homes empty and abandoned, because they could lose them. For this reason, since most migrants are adults in their most productive age and young people, relatives of other ages remain in the homes, giving Venezuela the appearance of being a country of elderly people and children.

“I have to close up my home,” said Juan Manuel Flores, from San Antonio de Los Altos, a satellite city of Caracas with many middle class houses. “The neighbors will take care of it. It took us more than five years to build it and it cost between 150,000 and 200,000 dollars. Now I can’t get more than 60,000 dollars for it. We are not just going to give it away for that price.”

Flores, a teacher at a school where he earns less than 200 dollars a month, is preparing to travel to Spain, where his wife and adult daughters have gone ahead of him. “I will return to Venezuela when the country and its economy improve, and housing prices will rise again,” he told IPS, although without much conviction.

Solitude eats away at houses and buildings even in sought-after areas of the residential and commercial municipality of Chacao, in eastern Caracas. The real estate and construction market is suffering in Venezuela from the general economic crisis and in particular from the oversupply of housing created by those leaving the country. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Why not rent out their house? “Because the laws and the authorities always favor the tenant, and if they have children it is impossible to get them out when the lease is up, whether they pay the rent or not, and they end up staying in the house for years,” said Nancy, a pastry chef, also from San Antonio, who left a niece in charge of her apartment when she moved to Brazil last year.

A survey of migrants in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, released in October 2022 by the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants in Venezuela (R4V), led by United Nations agencies, showed that only 23 percent considered the homes they left behind in their country to be safe.

Selling is also not an option in most cases, because the magnitude of the exodus over the last decade has so depressed demand that the most that can be obtained for a property is 15 or 20 percent of the value it had 15 years ago, if you are lucky. So selling a home even if you want to is a long, difficult process that provides meager results.

Those who have no other choice say that they are not selling their home but “giving it away” for whatever they can get, with great regret, mostly to internal migrants from other parts of the country, who “take refuge” in Caracas because outside the capital there are recurrent power outages, and scarcity of water and fuel, in addition to other shortages.

“Real estate deteriorates, ceases to serve those who need it and remains an important asset that produces nothing for the owner, for example a migrant who needs to pay rent as soon as they arrive in another country,” Roberto Orta, president of the Venezuelan Real Estate Chamber, told IPS.

The businessman said “this is an issue that, we have proposed, should be addressed with political will in order to reform the laws that constrain the real estate market, to benefit both landlords and tenants. Up to 250,000 homes could be freed up in five years.”

A view of the working-class neighborhood of 23 de Enero on the west side of Caracas. In low-income barrios, closed, empty houses are almost non-existent, as those who decide to emigrate look for relatives to move in, to avoid the risk of the homes being invaded or robbed. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

A trade is born

In the residential buildings located in Caracas and other cities, closing up an apartment and moving outside the country is not the same as leaving a house abandoned to solitude and neglect, because the neighbors, for their own safety and in order to pay the common expenses, keep watch and take care to prevent strangers from occupying the empty apartments.

But houses, especially middle-class homes, are an attractive and easy target for crime and even for people who want to occupy them by de facto means. That is why a new profession has appeared: the home caretaker.

“I have taken care of three houses in housing developments in the southeast (of Caracas), it’s the way I make ends meet,” said Daniel, who also works as a self-employed gardener. “I would go to one house twice a week, three times a week to another, and every day to another.”

He explains that in the last house “the owners were Portuguese business owners who went away and left three dogs. I would go to a pet food store to pick up the food, feed the dogs, check around the house and that was it.”

Family friends of the owners have now taken charge of the dogs and Daniel no longer receives payment for taking care of them. “I don’t have an account in dollars, I was paid through a restaurant friend of the owners, who does have an offshore account,” he said.

To pay for caretakers from abroad, intermediaries are indispensable, since in Venezuela, whose currency has been made nearly worthless by the economic crisis, there is a de facto dollarization, without agreement from the U.S. authorities, who also use sanctions to block the transactions of government bodies.

Daniel is saving up to join one of the groups forming in Antímano, the working-class neighborhood where he lives in the southwest of the capital, to migrate as well. He said that “I didn’t leave a few weeks ago because I hadn’t sold my motorcycle yet, otherwise right now I would be in the Darien,” the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama that thousands of migrants cross every day.

A more successful caretaker is Arturo, who is in charge of two houses with large living rooms, corridors, yards, a swimming pool and parking area. He is paid a modest fee to care for and maintain the homes, but is authorized to rent them out for social gatherings and parties.

“In both cases the owners are people with good incomes, they left with their children to study abroad and plan to return in a few years if conditions in the country change. They would like to find their homes as they left them,” he said.

When he rents out the property for a day or a night, guests can use the yards, swimming pool and even awnings, tables and chairs. But Arturo closes off access to the more private parts of the house and hires assistants to watch out for damages or disturbances. “I live well, I keep up the houses and each one brings me about 3,000 dollars in profits per month,” Arturo said.

President Nicolás Maduro delivers a batch of houses in the northwestern state of Falcón, which form part of the 4.6 million homes that the government claims to have built and provided to Venezuelan families since 2013. The figure is questioned by organizations dedicated to monitoring economic and social rights. CREDIT: Minhvi

No empty houses in the shantytowns

In the shantytowns of the cities and towns of this country – which has a population of 33.7 million according to government figures and 28 million according to university studies – the situation is different and there are hardly any empty or unoccupied houses.

“In the shantytowns, no house is left empty. The very next day someone can invade it, occupy it, or take what is left inside by those who left, furniture or household goods. Someone stays in charge, the grandfather or in-laws, a trusted neighbor, or a relative is brought from the interior of the country,” explained Alejandra, from the Gramoven area.

She lives in a shantytown of informally constructed dwellings in the northwest of Caracas, similar to the ones that cover most of the many hills and hollows occupied by the capital’s most disadvantaged inhabitants.

“Many people leave, the young people emigrate, my children want to leave through the Darien jungle. But nobody leaves their house empty. If you do, you lose it,” Alejandra said.

In Santa Bárbara del Zulia, on the hot plains south of western Lake Maracaibo, “the situation is the same,” Julio, a bricklayer who migrated to Colombia for four years and has returned to care for his elderly parents, told IPS.

“You can’t leave your house alone in these towns,” said Julio. “When my parents went to Maracaibo and Caracas for medical treatment, they went and came back quickly, because the Community Council warned them not to leave their house empty for too long, because they would not be able to ward off people who wanted to occupy it.”

The Community Councils are committees set up by the government to represent and manage community affairs – such as the distribution of bags of subsidized food to poor families – and they channel decisions by the government.

“But people are leaving anyway. It’s something that won’t stop as long as people here earn only a pittance and can’t even eat properly (the minimum wage and official pensions in Venezuela are equivalent to four dollars a month). People care about their houses, but food has to come first,” said Julio.

View of a row of houses practically abandoned by most of their inhabitants in a town in eastern Venezuela. Migration from the countryside and small towns to large cities and oil producing areas marked the 20th century in Venezuela. And today, migration from this country mainly to other Latin American nations has become a regional crisis. CREDIT: VV

A matter for the government and the business community

While the plight of people leaving their homes continues to drag on, the government of President Nicolás Maduro announces more or less twice a year the construction of hundreds of thousands of new homes, in a program initiated by his late predecessor Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), called “Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission”.

According to official figures, since 2011, 4.6 million homes have been built and delivered by the Mission, mostly residential complexes to which the president goes to personally hand over the keys of one or more houses to their new inhabitants.

In accordance with the Mission, the occupants are tenants, not owners, so they cannot sell the homes. If they leave, the home can be reassigned to new tenants. To avoid this, those who choose to move to another city or country first look for relatives who can move into the house, and thus keep it.

However, the official figures on the number of homes built is not borne out by anecdotal evidence, to judge by the myriad of informal self-built houses still occupied in the slums, and by reports from business and civil society organizations.

The Chamber of Construction reports that the sector has decreased 96 percent in the last 10 years, and that its members employ 20,000 workers, down from 1.2 million in better times, while cement companies are working at 10 percent of their capacity and the steel industry at seven percent.

The civil society organization Provea, which specializes in the study of economic, social and cultural rights, has compared and contrasted the figures of the Housing Mission – which have not been audited, according to Provea – with independent studies, and reached the conclusion that the government has built and delivered only 130,856 housing units in 10 years.

In 1955 the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva (1908-1985) published his famous novel “Casas Muertas” (Dead Houses), describing the decline of Ortiz, a town in the central plains, caused by the loss of its population due to malaria and emigration to the big cities and oil production centers.

The flow of Venezuelan emigration in this century has not been enough to turn this into a country of dead houses. But its many closed doors bear witness to a collapse that has pushed millions of its inhabitants abroad, as do the small number of lights that are lit at night in the buildings of Caracas and other cities.

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Innovative Family Farm in Cuba Uses Mix of Clean Energies

Posted on October 2, 2023 by admin

Active Citizens, Civil Society, Climate Action, Development & Aid, Editors’ Choice, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Headlines, Innovation, Integration and Development Brazilian-style, Latin America & the Caribbean, Projects, Regional Categories, Water & Sanitation

Energy

Artist and farmer Chavely Casimiro and her daughter Leah Amanda Díaz feed one of the biodigesters at Finca del Medio, a farm in central Cuba. The biodigester produces about seven meters of biogas per day, enough energy for cooking, baking and dehydrating food. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

TAGUASCO, Cuba, Oct 2 2023 (IPS) – Combining technologies and innovations to take advantage of solar, wind, hydro and biomass potential has made the Finca del Medio farm an example in Cuba in the use of clean energies, which are the basis of its agroecological and environmental sanitation practices.

Renewable energy sources are used in many everyday processes such as electricity generation, lighting, water supply, irrigation and water heating, as well as in cooking, dehydrating, drying, baking and refrigeration of foodstuffs.

“We started out with windmills on artesian wells and hydraulic rams to pump water. That gave us an awareness of the amount of energy we needed and of how to expand its use,” said farmer José Antonio Casimiro, 65, owner of this agroecological family farm located in the center of this long Caribbean island nation.

“More incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life.” — José Antonio Casimiro

The farmer expressed his appreciation of the help of his son, 41, also named Antonio Casimiro, in the installation of the two mills at Finca del Medio, during the days in which IPS visited the farm and shared in activities with the family.

“There was no one to assemble or repair them. We both had to study a great deal, and we learned to do a lot of construction things as we went along and perfected the techniques,” said Casimiro junior, referring to the equipment that is now inactive, but is capable of extracting some 4,000 liters of water daily from the water table.

When rainfall is abundant and the volume of the 55,000-cubic-meter-capacity reservoir rises, the hydraulic ram comes to life. The device diverts about 20,000 liters of water to a 45,000-liter tank, 400 meters away and 18 meters above the level of the reservoir.

“The only energy the rams use is the water pressure itself. Placing it on the highest part of the land makes it easier to use the slope for gravity irrigation, or to fill the animals’ water troughs,” explained Chavely Casimiro, 28, the youngest daughter of José Antonio and Mileidy Rodríguez, also 65.

An artist who also inherited the family’s “farming gene”, Chavely highlighted some twenty innovations made by her father to the hydraulic ram, in order to optimize water collection.

Other inventions speed up the assembly and disassembly of the windmills for maintenance, or in the event of tropical cyclones.

“We have been replacing the water supply with solar panels, which are more efficient. They can be removed faster (than the windmill blades) if a hurricane is coming. You can incorporate batteries and store the energy,” said Casimiro.

“Let’s say a windmill costs about 2,000 dollars. With that amount you can buy four 350-watt panels. That would be more than a kilowatt hour (kWh) of power. You buy a couple of batteries for 250 dollars each, and with that amount of kWh you can pump the equivalent of the water of about 10 windmills,” he said.

But the farmer said the windmills are more important than the energy they generate. “It would be nice if every farm had at least one windmill. For me it is very symbolic to see them pumping up water,” he said.

Lorenzo Díaz, the husband of Chavely Casimiro, uses a solar oven to cook food. In the background can be seen a windmill and a solar heater, other technologies that take advantage of the potential for renewable energies on the Finca del Medio farm in central Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Innovations

Located in the municipality of Taguasco, in the central province of Sancti Spíritus, some 350 kilometers east of Havana, Finca del Medio follows a family farm model including permaculture, agroecology and agricultural production based on the use of clean energy.

In 1993, Casimiro and Rodríguez with their children Leidy and José Antonio – a year later, Chavely was born – decided to settle on the 13-hectare farm of their paternal grandparents, with the aim of reversing its deterioration and soil erosion and installing perimeter fences.

The erosion of the land was due to the fact that in the past the farm was dedicated to the cultivation of tobacco, which depleted the soil, and later it had fallen into abandonment, as well as the house.

The older daughter is the only one who does not live and work on the farm, although she does spend time there, and a total of ten family members live there, including four grandchildren. All the adults either work on the farm or help out with different tasks.

With the help of technological innovations adapted to the local ecosystem, and empirical and scientific knowledge, the family has become self-sufficient in rice, beans, tubers, vegetables, milk, eggs, honey, meat, fish and more than 30 varieties of fruit. The only basic foodstuffs not produced on the farm are sugar and salt.

They sell all surplus production, including cow’s milk, for which they have specific contracts, and they are also promoting agrotourism, for which they are making further improvements to the facilities.

At Finca del Medio, a system of channels and ditches allows the infiltration of rainwater, reduces erosion of the topsoil and conserves as much water as possible for subsequent irrigation.

These innovations also benefit neighboring communities by mitigating flooding and replenishing the water table, which has brought water back to formerly dry wells.

The construction of the house is also an offshoot of technological solutions to the scarcity of resources such as steel, which led to the design of dome-shaped roofs made of mud bricks and cement.

The design aids in rainwater harvesting, improves hurricane protection, and boosts ventilation, creating cooler spaces, which reduces the need for air conditioning equipment and bolsters savings.

Along with food production, the new generations and members of the Casimiro-Rodriguez family engage in educational activities to raise awareness about good agricultural and environmental practices.

Students from nearby schools come to the farm to learn about these practices, as well as specialists in agroecology and people from different parts of the world, interested in sharing the experience. Meanwhile, several members of the family have traveled abroad to give workshops on agroecology and permaculture.

Farmers José Antonio Casimiro and his son of the same name talk in the mechanical workshop at their Finca del Medio farm. Both have come up with innovations for the use of windmills, the hydraulic ram and biodigesters, as well as agricultural tools. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Farmers José Antonio Casimiro (R) and his son of the same name talk in the mechanical workshop at their Finca del Medio farm. Both have come up with innovations for the use of windmills, the hydraulic ram and biodigesters, as well as agricultural tools. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Solar and biogas potential

On one of the side roofs of the house are 28 photovoltaic panels that provide about eight kWh, connected to batteries. The stored energy covers the household’s needs during power outages that affect the island due to fuel shortages and breakdowns and problems in maintenance of its aging thermoelectric plants.

In addition, the household has three solar water heaters with a capacity of 380 liters.

Next to the kitchen, two fixed-dome biodigesters produce another renewable fuel, biogas, composed mainly of methane and carbon dioxide from the anaerobic decomposition of animal manure, crop waste and “even sewage from the house, which we channel so that the waste does not contaminate the environment,” said Casimiro.

Due to the current shortage of manure as the number of cows has been reduced, only one of the biodigesters is now operational, producing about seven meters of biogas per day, sufficient for cooking, baking and dehydration of foodstuffs.

The innovative family devised a mechanism to extract – without emptying the pond of water or stopping biogas production – from the bottom the solids used as biofertilizers, as well as hundreds of liters of effluent for fertigation (a combination of organic fertilizers and water) of the crops, by gravity.

The installation of the biodigesters, the solar panels and one of the solar heaters was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Cosude) and the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station of Pastures and Forages through its Biomass-Cuba project, Casimiro said.

He also expressed gratitude for the link with other scientific institutions such as the Integrated Center for Appropriate Technologies, based in the central province of Camagüey, which is focused on offering solutions to the needs of water supply and environmental sanitation, and played an essential role in the installation of the hydraulic ram.

The farmer said the farm produces the equivalent of about 20 kWh from the combination of renewable energies, and if only conventional electricity were used, the cost would be around 83 dollars a month.

Lorenzo Díaz feeds firewood into an innovative stove that allows the Finca del Medio farm to efficiently cook food, dehydrate or dry fruits and spices, heat water and preserve meat, among other functions. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Efficient stove

In the large, functional kitchen, the stove covered with white tiles and a chimney has been remodeled 16 times to make it more efficient and turn it into another source of pride at the farm.

Fueled by firewood, coconut shells and other waste, “the stove makes it possible to cook food, dehydrate fruits and spices, heat water and preserve meat, among other tasks,” Rodríguez told IPS as she listed some of the advantages of this other offshoot of the family’s ingenuity that helps her as a skilled cook and pastry chef.

She pointed out that by extracting all the smoke, “the design makes better use of the heat, which will be used in a sauna” being built next to the kitchen, for the enjoyment of the family and potential tourists.

Casimiro is in favor of incorporating clean energy into agricultural processes, but he said that “more incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life.”

Since 2014, Cuba has had a policy for the development of renewable energy sources and their efficient use.

A substantial modification of the national energy mix, which is highly dependent on the import of fossil fuels and hit by cyclical energy deficits, is a matter of national security

However, regulations with certain customs exemptions and other incentives to increase the production of solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric energies in this Caribbean island nation still seem insufficient in view of the high prices of these technologies, the domestic economic crisis and the meager purchasing power of most Cuban families.

Clean sources account for only five percent of the island’s electricity generation, a scenario that the government wants to radically transform, with an ambitious goal of a 37 percent proportion by 2030, which is increasingly difficult to achieve.

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Malawi Diaspora

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The Host:

In Conversation With Céline Gounder:

Voices From the Episode:

Open Migration Flows and Closed-Up Houses in Venezuela

Innovative Family Farm in Cuba Uses Mix of Clean Energies

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In Conversation With Céline Gounder:

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