Shipibo Konibo Cantagallo Intercultural Hospital

Lima has long been ground zero of a centuries-long process of «deindigenization» of the Peruvian population, 83% of which is of Andean indigenous descent, including mestizos. Bloodlines mingle, languages are forgotten and traditional practices disappear in the face of a persistent Eurocentrism that forces wave after wave of indigenous Peruvians to choose between economic and cultural survival. Founded in 1998 by some 15 Shipibo indigenous families who were part of a mass exodus of Amazonian immigrants driven out of their communities by logging, drug trafficking, terrorism, illegal mining and infrastructure development in the Amazon basin.

Displaced, denied, living on top of a garbage dump, next to the Rimac River near the city center, the Shipibo-Konibo resisted and grew to become an important center of indigenous identity and culture in Peru's capital, an example of how an indigenous community can navigate urban life without losing its roots, also affirming an indigenous identity that refuses to fade into urbanized obscurity.

«Indigenous health
it is up to the nations
indigenous people.»

The case of Cantagallo challenges many assumptions about the migration of indigenous peoples, who until now have been able to preserve their heritage in the midst of dislocations, but in the absence of basic services such as: clean running water, electricity, culturally appropriate health care, they began to demand access to the rights that the State has denied them for so many years, but there is no response.

The resilient Shipibo Konibo nation settled in Cantagallo, Rimac Lima Peru with the help of the school of Indigenous medicine Kusy Hampina Wasy we are building after designing what will be the First Intercultural Hospital of Peru that responds to the health needs and conceptualization of the phenomenon health disease of the Shipibo Konibo nation and this is a self-managed project that empowers the culture and the Shipibo Konibo nation.