Homes made up of packed dirt floors and flimsy metal walls, without heating, electricity, or hot water... In the middle of Westernized civilization, this pre-modern life still remains today, causing its Gypsy inhabitants to suffer “unnecessary, avoidable, and unjust” illnesses.
By Kelly Snodgrass
At 9 a.m. Tuesday, November 2, a 3 year old boy, Sebastián, was patiently sitting in his stroller at the daycare center of El Vacie, waiting for the day to begin. Too young to fully comprehend the situation unfolding around him, Sebastián sat wide-eyed watching Pili, the daycare’s supervisor, comfort Maria, the woman in charge of caring for the youngest children (6 months to 1 year). The scene became more complex as other mothers began to arrive, dropping off their kids for the day, inquiring as to what had occurred to make her so upset.
Amidst all the commotion, Maria took refuge crying in the room where one of her kids would be forever missing.
Over Halloween weekend 2009, Sebastián’s brother, Antonio, merely 8 months old, suddenly and unexpectedly died of bronchitis. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is an annual average of 8 deaths per 100,000 due to bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma in Spain. But this death rate does not justify Antonio’s death or Maria’s suffering.
This shantytown of El Vacie is located just minutes outside of Seville, the fourth largest city in Spain. The magnitude of its difference from modernized life is highlighted by the presence of a morgue, a busy hospital, and a four star hotel literally steps away from El Vacie’s door. Modern paved roadways abruptly change to a rudimentary path comprised of dirt and clay, decorated with a peppering of sun-dried weeds and garbage fermenting under the Andalusian sun.
The oldest shantytown in Europe, El Vacie currently houses 930 inhabitants according to the most recent census. This is a 20 percent growth in the past four years. The majority of the population is from Andalusia, but there is also a minority of Portuguese descent. Almost all are gypsies. With this many residents in 90 homes and 50 shacks as well as a lack of heating and clean water, healthcare accessibility in El Vacie is of dire importance.
The challenge to keep all inhabitants of El Vacie as healthy as the rest of Seville’s citizens has persisted for decades. According to the Gipsy Bureau Foundation, the dramatic marginality of El Vacie’s residents results in a life expectancy 10 years less than that of the average citizen in Seville. With allegedly the same access to public healthcare as Spanish citizens, the City Council of Seville has been coordinating with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to balance this statistic.
This lack of income in El Vacie accounts for the prevalence of illnesses that are “unnecessary, avoidable, and unjust,” as denounced to the Autonomous Parliament by the Office of the AndalusianOmbudsman in its Special Report about Shantytowns issued in 2005. “Better income equals better health,” asserts Dr. Javier Conde, who works in the Internal Medicine Departement of the Virgen Macarena Hospital in Seville. Located a mere half a mile away from El Vacie, this public hospital is the usual recipient of the shantytown inhabitants whose health has reached a critical condition.
In an attempt to fix this problem, the NGOs Fundación Gota de Leche and Aliento have devoted much time providing basic needs to El Vacie. Fundación Gota de Leche, founded in 1892 in Paris to better quality of life, create healthy hygiene habits, and improve access to socio-hygienic resources in the most deprived sectors of the population, works in El Vacie providing breakfast and lunch, as well as clothes and shoes to children enrolled in public schools.
Aliento focuses on the upkeep of the daycare center for children of El Vacie aged 6 months to 3 years. Their daily schedule starts with breakfast of warm milk and cookies, a bath with a change of clean clothes, pre-school time to learn things like numbers or animal sounds, and ends with lunch. One goal of the daycare is to get the children to be potty-trained and to be able to feed themselves. These are requirements to continue on to grammar school.
Yet with all this help, there are still occurrences of “unnecessary, avoidable, and unjust” deaths, like Antonio’s.
Dolores Galindo, a social worker at Pino Montano B, the public health center mandated to residents of El Vacie, states that many of the patients from El Vacie are infants, young children, and pregnant women. They come for a number of reasons, ranging from insect bites, to respiratory infections, or chronic illnesses.
Agreeing that the population of El Vacie endures more health problems, Galindo asserts this partly stems from the fact that “they don’t understand prevention.” According to an article on Spanish Gypsies from October 1, 2009 in the newspaper El Mundo, only 47 percent of women have had a pap smear and a mere 30 percent have gotten a mammogram.
The environment of El Vacie is another factor to consider. “They may be more susceptible, with more vulnerability to contract an illness,” Galindo continues. According to a report of the Gypsy NGO Union Romaní, “rats stroll along the streets as if they were dogs.” In the 21st century, the inhabitants of El Vacie, such as Antonio and his family, still lack heating, air conditioning and clean water.
However, for the Gypsy community, family is everything, including an extraordinary medicine. With care and attention from her daughter and grandchildren, the woman known as “the grandmother of El Vacie,” María Díaz Cortés, managed to live a relatively healthy life in a house made of tin walls and a dirt floor. When she died there in 2008, María was thought to be the oldest woman in Europe, having just celebrated her 117th birthday in the shantytown she had called home for more than 40 years.
This is a really interesting article, I am living in the Macarena and have been researching the El Vacie neighbourhood since hearing about it from a friend. Sounds like a different world to the rest of Seville.
ResponderEliminar