Indigenous struggles for an own and intercultural fundamental right to health in Colombia

Abstract

This article provides an approximation to the struggles of indigenous peoples in Colombia for the materialization of the fundamental right to health. The study emphasizes the case of the Regional Indigenous Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (CRIC). It reviews four historical periods between 1971 and 2019. While doing so, the paper presents the characteristics of the political dispute between CRIC and the State, the contentious transformation of the indigenous health policy, and the indigenous health policy expressed in approaches, norms, and institutions in a context of violence, discrimination, and racism. It highlights the permanent tension between a general system of social security—embodying the logic of a market and economic profitability—and an indigenous health system—integrating own and intercultural-SISPI of collective and public nature—that challenges the asymmetries of power and knowledge among the hegemonic model of development, western medicine, and restricted democracy. In contrast to this latter, the indigenous health system is one oriented towards the good living, the ancestral wisdom, and the collective political action based on the law of origin, the greater right and the own right of the indigenous peoples.