For Juan Carlos Díaz, it is almost impossible to call his family doctor in California, where he currently lives, because he does not speak Spanish or English. The man speaks Mixtec.
For the most part, Diaz has skipped routine appointments out of embarrassment because she knows her doctor doesn’t understand her. Even filling out the form with her information is difficult because her language isn’t listed in the options.
Mixtec is the language of the indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico who live in the region known as La Mixteca in Oaxaca and Puebla, as well as in the Montañosa and Costa Chica regions of the state of Guerrero.
But this language has crossed borders. There are more than 20,000 speakers of various indigenous languages in the United States, with the largest population living in California. Unfortunately, civil rights advocates say, government systems do not currently collect specific data on this demographic.
“But this (lack of advice) is not just happening to me, it is happening to many people who cannot even get other types of related services,” Diaz said while a translator assisted him.
However, SB 1016 If signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, it could change the course of the sector for years to come. On September 18, several activists and indigenous people from the Southern California community came out to ask the governor to make changes with their support.
This bill would require departments to anonymously collect race, ethnicity, and language-specific data to share health information for California’s Latino and Native American communities and begin working on targeted strategies to assist them.
Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) introduced the Reducing Disparities in Latino and Indigenous Communities Act in February “as a goal to address health disparities and other related needs.”
After introducing the bill, Gonzalez said Latinos make up 40% of California’s population. They are among the most culturally, linguistically and racially diverse populations in the United States and have diverse health outcomes. However, Sen. Lena Gonzalez, District 33, said “the state treats this population as a monolith and ignores the different health and life outcomes of Latino subgroups based on their ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences.”
“SB 1016 takes an important and necessary first step toward uncovering the trends and potential disparities that are often hidden in the overall numbers of Latinos and Mesoamericans in California.”
The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that by 2060, more than 1 in 4 Americans is likely to be Latino.
With this information, local activists made a last-ditch effort to convince the governor to sign, even giving him a Guatemalan indigenous cloak in wine, yellow, and blue, a cultural symbol, decorated with postcards and messages of support for SB 1016.
The nearly six-foot table features photographs of the Native American community and reminds the governor that there are people in need of service who live in California and contribute to the local economy.
Dr. Sesia Aquino, Executive Director Latino Coalition for a Healthy California (LCHC), He said that what made the city of Los Angeles beautiful, for example, was its people and its diversity, but they had to be counted.
The doctor said that California “is home to one of the largest indigenous Mesoamerican communities in the country… but they are not counted.”
“Having access to unclassified data helps states, governments and decision-makers develop policies that are deliberate and effective. Above all, they help us save lives,” Aquino said, citing the large number of Spanish patients who have been sickened and died from COVID-19 and are still suffering health and economic consequences. “There is data available to help them. There is not.”
A similar effort passed the Legislature unanimously last year but was vetoed by Gov. Newsom, placing the onus on the federal government to update racial and ethnic standards and blocking California’s own ability to create more transparent data standards.
Odilia Romero, executive director of the company, joined the efforts on Wednesday Local Communities in Leadership (CIELO), who said that from San Diego to Northern California, there are indigenous communities in both rural and urban areas.
“Having information about California’s indigenous people is important for our communities, which are often invisible due to the dominant Latino narrative that puts us under one umbrella and ignores our many languages, backgrounds, and traditions. “If we don’t exist in numbers, we don’t exist at all,” she said.
According to activists, Mesoamerican indigenous communities are often forced to identify themselves as “Latino,” which erases their identity as the continent’s first peoples.
Mexico has 68 indigenous ethnic groups with their own unique languages, and these indigenous languages are spoken in schools, homes, and workplaces throughout California.
Vanessa Theran, Police Chief Mixtec/Indigenous Community Organization Project (MICOP)He said that when considering health factors it is important to analyze the conditions in which people are born, grow, work and age, because these factors affect health.
“Only with this information can we make progress in combating health disparities,” she said, highlighting MICOP’s findings on health disparities within indigenous communities.
“Health insurance coverage is low: 85% of the villagers do not have health insurance; many have never received primary care and less than half have ever had a physical exam (46%); only 35% managed to pass the dental exam and 16% the eye exam. 64% had no food on their table and went hungry during the year,” said Terán.
