Alfredo Boada Mola
PELECHUCO, a remote region of
Bolivia close to the Peruvian border, has welcomed a
government delegation providing health care services,
telephone equipment and identity cards, as part of
an effort to better serve such neglected areas.
|
Pelechuco, a
remote area near the Peruvian
border, is benefiting from the new effort
undertaken by the Bolivian government. |
The aptly named Integration of the
Peoples of La Paz and Beni Solidarity Brigade will
remain for 35 days offering a variety of social
services to 36 remote communities, with the
participation of doctors, dentists, civil registry
and identification administrators,
telecommunications specialists and members of the
armed forces. Health care services being provided to
the scattered population include special assistance
in the areas of general medicine, pediatrics,
ophthalmology, gynecology and dentistry.
The program offers the processing of
identification cards and birth certificates free of
charge, as well as issuing Dignity Funds, economic
help for those over 60 years of age, and Juana
Azurduy Benefits, available to pregnant women and
mothers of children under two.
These brigades, organized by the
Bolivian cabinet through the Macro-regions and
Border Zone Development Agency, have traveled 25,000
miles over land and water to reach Bolivia’s most
remote communities, providing support to more than
141,000 citizens.
The director of the agency, Jerges
Mercado, emphasized the importance to national
sovereignty of state institutions’ presence in these
borderlands, as well as the need to address health
care, education, telephone service and confront
illegal activity, to support the development of
these communities.
This government entity implements
the nation’s policies in these borderlands and
creates connections between the dispersed population
and national government, as well as organizing
forums, fairs and agreements to support development
and the promotion of state enterprises, among other
productive initiatives.
The Evo Morales government,
committed to forging a new state policy for
harmonious, comprehensive and sustainable
development of border regions, created the special
Development Agency in June, 2010.
The institution was conceived to
meet three main objectives: preserving national
sovereignty in these remote areas, protecting
natural resources and supporting the development of
these peoples through social justice and economic
integration.
Since colonial times and before the
establishment of the Plurinational State, Bolivia’s
border regions have been practically abandoned. The
small populations were marginalized and isolated
from national life, in areas of little socioeconomic
development.
During this period, the country lost
over half of its territory to neighbors. Bolivia’s
initial 2,363,769 square kilometer area was reduced
to 1,098,581 km2, as a result of the
concentration of economic, social and political life
in the altiplano region, among other causes.
Bolivia was always more of an Andean
state, than one which included the diverse peoples
of the Chiquitano, Pantanal, Amazon or Chaqueño
regions.
As a whole, these designated
‘macro-regions’ (Amazonia, Chiquitanía-Pantanal and
Chaco) and border zones represent more than two
thirds of the country’s territory, with a population
of 1.8 million inhabitants in 70 municipalities,
located within 33 provinces, in eight of Bolivia’s
nine departments.
With the development of the
country’s new Constitution, the areas bordering five
other Latin American countries and the macro-regions
began to occupy an important position in the
comprehensive development of Bolivian society. The
Macro-regions and Border Zone Development Agency,
within the Ministry of Development Planning, is
implementing policies in conjunction with other
ministries, local governments, the armed forces and
police, among other entities, to promote the social
and economic development of the country’s most
remote regions. (PL)
