By Eira González.
Social quarantine has worsened food shortages, and alimentary vulnerability in the communities of the municipality of Guajira, in Zulia state, a situation that generates malnutrition in children and the elderly, people told El Pitazo.
The inhabitants of the communities of Potrerito, Calle Larga, and Guarero report that children are dying every day due to a lack of food and drinking water in their sectors.
Mothers, members of these communities report that they have been forced to go out into the streets to beg for food for their children. Some have had to resort to making a soup of wheat flour for their babies or similar remedies because they have nothing in their homes. This situation affects more than 200 families who live in these sectors of the mountain axis of the Guajira parish.
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They told El Pitazo that they do not receive attention from the government in the areas of health and drinking water and that the CLAP food program that arrives monthly is only enough for four days.
Angela Gonzalez, a resident of Potrerito, reported that the pandemic has made hunger more acute in her community and has killed children.
“We traded our sheep for food, but now the animals are running out. Life is expensive because we have to buy water and food in Colombian pesos. We are malnourished, and children die every day in the sector because of malnutrition because of lack of food, and we have no one to feel sorry for us,” he said.
Gonzalez highlighted that the elderly have been vulnerable to this situation: “The old people are thin because don’t eat well, and the water we drink generates stomach infection because it is not suitable for human consumption.
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For her part, Elinoy Urdaneta said that the situation is difficult because of the coronavirus pandemic and the lack of social care from the government of Nicolas Maduro.
“There are days when we can’t eat because we don’t have a way to buy food, and there is a lot of malnutrition; at least I have a one-year-old baby, and she is underweight because I do not have any food. My heart wrinkles when my baby cries from hunger, and I have nothing to give her,” said Urdaneta.
People in different communities in La Guajira experience these situations every day. It is an uncomfortable truth, and even if you try to deny it, it’s the people themselves who tell it from their own experience.
