Faculty Research Charles Briggs & Clara Mantini-Briggs "Research on Mission Barrio Adentro: An ethnography of popular participation in Venezuela’s revolutionary healthcare program"

Also available en español

Project

Researchers

Research

Findings

Quotes

QUOTATIONS FROM THE ACTORS THEMSELVES:

Miguel Bolívar, community worker from the Libertador municipality (in Caracas) described the arrival of the first Cuban doctors:

I remember that when the first 63 doctors came from Caracas, the communities called me… “Let’s allocate them,” we had to allocate the doctors to the health committees that were already organized. Can you imagine? “Where are the cars?” “There are no cars!” “There’s my car and two more cars.” And we had to allocate the 63 doctors, it was 5:00am in the morning, the doctors hadn’t had breakfast, or dinner the previous night, there was no water, there was nothing, there was no money. [The doctors said] “Well, it’s ok, let’s go!” And the communities, when we arrived, they said, “this doctors is going to stay in x house,” we got to x house and they had already made, with their own hands, welcome signs: “welcome the Cuban doctor.” So when the doctors saw that, they were happy.

They didn’t even know the doctor’s name, nothing, but they were waiting for the doctor in their houses because when that happened there were no doctor offices, there was nothing, it was that suddenly a house would become a doctor’s office as soon as the doctor arrived. So we did that, not very successfully because of lack of logistics. But the success came the next week when everyone was already installed and we [the community] and the doctors were happy... So these kind of experiences are what tell you… what really means the Mission, I mean how it is that the people in the communities are the ones who achieved this, because this started with no institutionally support…Well, so they started going to the neighborhoods, to involve people, with the message that a doctor was coming, that we had to take care of him/her, because the doctor arrived with those instructions, I mean the doctor cannot go out by him/herself, the Health Committee has to go with him/her wherever they go, the Health Committee has to provide security to the doctors because there was no one else to protect them… They arrived here, they arrived with no money, or they used to come with no money, so what did the people do? “look I have a doctor in my house, give me some rice, some spaghetti, give me some oil,” so they started collecting food.

More from Miguel Bolívar:

The Mayor says “right, it is true, we have to make possible to have health at the peak of the hill, there, inside the neighborhood”… “First time that a state policy reaches out where it has to reach out, and gets to even the last hill,” … “we are going to reach the last house, we knock and we introduce ourselves, ‘nice to meet you, how are you?’”

Nancy López offered her house spontaneously to two of the first Cuban doctors for an 18 month period. Without having made any preparation and with very limited economic resources, she told us how she solved the problem with one of the doctors who also gives consultation at her house:

And so the doctor tells me “I need a stretcher.” And I told him, “and where am I going o find a stretcher? I can find you a piece of wood from a table,” so we put some beer boxes together, and we made the stretcher, we put a long cushion to that stretcher, and then a sheet, and that’s where we saw the patients… The doctor received a television, he received a television, and he sat down to watch the television and talk to us… he was sharing with us in the living room, we were making jokes…

José Romero reproduced the interaction between the doctor that is treating him and his family:

I can go now to the clinic, I’m very welcome: “come here, what is it that you have?” “Look, I feel this way.” “Ok, sit down, let me see.” They check me up and, “we are going to make some x-rays, look, if we need to take you to a hospital, there is the ambulance,” the ambulance takes you, with all your medical history, everything like it should be, like we should be treated, because we are, let me say it again, we are human beings… Now, we get the attention that we should get, you want to go to the modules.