Coping with COVID-19 in Rural Mexico.

• Position: WORLDVIEW

On the outskirts of some small Indigenous communities in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, a few volunteer guards keep watch along roads blocked by makeshift barricades of chains, stones, and wood. The invader they are trying to stop is COVID-19.

For many of Mexico's Indigenous people, poor and ignored by state and federal governments, the fight against the coronavirus pandemic is one that rests primarily with themselves, explains Jeffrey Cohen, a professor of anthropology at Ohio State University, Columbus.

That means they must take steps like limiting access to their villages. "Most of these communities only have one road in and out. So, these guards, called topiles, block that road so that outsiders with the virus won't get in--and residents won't go to a nearby city and potentially bring the virus back."

The Mexican government estimates that nearly 70% of the nation's Indigenous population lives in poverty. Most of the Indigenous communities in Oaxaca are small and isolated, which has kept them comparatively less exposed to the coronavirus than the rest of Mexico.

About two-thirds of the approximately 500 Indigenous and rural communities in Oaxaca had no cases of COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic. Now, about one-third still have no cases, but as the virus has seeped into their villages, the Indigenous people are finding ways to cope with the pandemic. One is through setting territorial boundaries like the roadblocks.

Also...