State failures in La Guajira have compounded water shortages that bring malnutrition and death
Photographs by Antonio Cascio
In the early hours of the morning, an ambulance carries Rosa Epieyu and her nine-month-old son, Mateo, from Joumana, a Wayúu Indigenous community in La Guajira, Colombia, to a hospital in the nearby town of Manaure. There, a doctor tells Epieyu her son is suffering from malnutrition.
To Epieyu, the diagnosis feels like history repeating itself; one of Mateo’s older sisters was almost lost to malnutrition. Panicked, she grabs some essentials and jumps back into the ambulance for the hour and a half drive to a better-resourced hospital in the city of Maicao.
