Being a Haitian patient in Chile and experiencing racism in centers of the public health network

Abstract

The present work is inscribed within the field of contemporary migration studies in Chile, a line of investigation initiated during the nineties. At the time, various people from South America and the Caribbean arrived to the country, which was undergoing a democratic transition and presented itself as a successful economic model. Twenty-five years later, migrants from Haiti began arriving. Despite not constituting the largest group of migrants, they have become one of the most targeted by Chilean society, the media, the political class and government authorities. Since the election of Sebastián Piñera in 2018, certain measures were taken that signaled a policy aimed towards reducing Haitian presence in the country: namely, a “humanitarian” return plan exclusively for Haitians and the creation of a consular visa as the main permit in order to enter the country. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they were singled out as disobedient to the measures imposed by the state of emergency and the sanitary restrictions put in place. Chilean society agrees with restrictive norms and policies and looks with suspicion at a migrant group that it perceives as different. Chile, a country colonized in the name of humanist and republican values, which upholds cultural homogeneity, does not look favorably on the arrival of migrants from elsewhere in the region, and even less so on a migrant group whose skin color has been negatively evaluated, to the point of linking it to physical, cultural and psychological characteristics. This work makes brief references of the context of migrating to Chile, of doing so from Haiti, and of some elements of Haiti’s history that make up this particular migratory situation. The proposed objective is to identify racism present within the interactions between public health workers and Haitian patients who approach them for help or treatment in the city of Santiago. This work stems from a larger project that analyzed the sociability and cultural skills of different public health professionals interacting with migrants. Employing a qualitative methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with professionals from the public health service and focus groups were organized with Haitian patients. The frame of reference focuses on racism as a system and as a social relationship, on racial discrimination and its effects on people. The words of patients and professionals are analyzed and conclusions are drawn in regards to racism and registered violence as forms of sociability, the latter understood as the way in which two actors interact when one of them is in a position of superiority. These processes need to be reflected upon in order to account for the damages caused to Haitian men, women and children seeking care in the public health network. Considering the importance of the right to migrate in current times and the multiple obstacles that impede it, Haitian life in Chile emerges as a “problem” when it comes to being attended, cared for or assisted to by health professionals, an issue that is linked to the fact that contemporary migrations have been repeatedly characterized as a “problem” and not as a social phenomenon that needs to be seriously analyzed with academic accuracy. Racist criticism emerges violently, offending and harming Haitian migrants who, in order to avoid it, sometimes prefer not to go public health centers, to look for alternatives when dealing with the ailments that afflict them, or straightforwardly abandon the possibility of being attended at all. Finally, some guidelines are advanced which may help to overcome these situations by training professionals in order to improve communications between them and Haitian migrants.