Oct 5, 2021
On Episode 396 of the Colombia Calling podcast, we get to
discuss the disease of leishmaniasis in the context of the
Colombian armed conflict and post conflict period with post
doctoral fellow Lina Beatriz Pinto-Garcia.
Pinto Garcia's ethnographic monograph explores how the Colombian
armed conflict and a vector-borne disease called cutaneous
leishmaniasis are inextricably connected and mutually
constitutive.
The stigmatization of the illness as “the guerrilla disease” or the
"subversive disease," is reinforced by the state’s restriction on
access to antileishmanial medicines, a measure that is commonly
interpreted as a warfare strategy to affect insurgent groups.
Situated at the intersection between STS (Science and Technology
Studies) and critical medical anthropology, her work draws on
multi-sited field research conducted during the peace
implementation period after the agreement reached by the Colombian
government and FARC, the oldest and largest guerrilla organization
in Latin America.
It engages not only with the stigmatization of leishmaniasis
patients as guerrilla members and the exclusionary access to
antileishmanial drugs but also with other closely related aspects
that constitute the war-shaped experience of leishmaniasis in
Colombia.
This work illuminates how leishmaniasis has been socially,
discursively, and materially constructed as a disease of the war,
and how the armed conflict is entangled with the realm of public
health, medicine, and especially pharmaceutical drugs.
The problems associated with coca cultivation and leishmaniasis
cannot be dissociated from cross-border events such as forced
disappearance and the massive migration of Venezuelans who arrive
in Colombia looking for survival alternatives, including coca
production.
Tune in and hear about the Diseased Landscapes project
https://www.insis.ox.ac.uk/diseased-l...