Facing Vulnerability and Mobilizing Resilience: Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Speakers of Indigenous Languages in Mexico and Their Protective Behaviours

Abstract

Although the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been devastating to societies at large, Indigenous groups have been disproportionately affected, a fact which is reflected globally in the rates of COVID-19-related deaths. Indigenous and minority communities are particularly vulnerable during this health crisis due to systemic discrimination and poverty and a lack of access to adequate medical care. This chapter reports the results of the pandemic-related survey carried out between June 2020 and January 2021 among Indigenous groups in Mexico, a country in which the disease’s impact has been particularly harsh. The ethnic groups whose representatives participated in our survey survived colonial depopulation caused by deadly epidemics and many forms of exploitation. They have been subjected to the intense assimilation policy implemented by the independent Mexican state as well as widespread racism and discrimination. The survey assessed the physical and psychological impacts of the pandemic, including how it has affected heritage language use, access to health services, experienced discrimination and protective behaviours. A majority of the Indigenous respondents acknowledged a strong similarity between the epidemics that decimated local populations in the colonial period and the pandemic of the “Spanish flu” of 1918–1919, on the one hand, and the present pandemic, on the other. Our study shows that this historical awareness may indeed act as a protective factor favouring more rational behaviours during the present health crisis. We argue that the respondents who identified as Indigenous had higher levels of resilience and protective behaviours during the pandemic than participants who identified themselves exclusively as “Mexican.”