By Luis F. Yanes
“They took me to a hospital ‘of people’ (supposedly)
And in the emergency room, the receptionist was listening to the lottery.
We’ve got to check your blood pressure, but the room is occupied.
And, my dear, in this hospital there’s no electricity for an EKG.” – J.L. Guerra.
It’s been almost 20 years since Juan Luis Guerra’s famous song ‘El Niagara en Bicicleta’ came out, and the dramatic situation of public hospitals in Latin America has not changed. Anyone who listens to the song would think it embodies part of Latin American magical realism narrative: exaggerated, full of metaphors and borderline sci-fi. However, one needs only to read some of the news concerning the public health crisis in countries such as Venezuela, Brazil or Guatemala, to understand that this is not exaggerated narrative, this is the dramatic reality that millions of people are facing in Latin America.
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