Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the sanitary and socio-political impact of the work of a Yanomami Health Agent, and his relation with the health system. It argues that community welfare relies more on the co-option of state resources by the people than on the State´s effort to sanitarize them.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the impact of the work of a Yanomami Community Health Agent in a group of previously unattended villages of the Upper Ocamo basin of the Venezuelan Amazon. It draws on fieldwork undertaken between 2007 and 2011, and combines an analysis of the effect of the Health Agent´s sanitary work on the general well-being of the village; the impact of his endowment with a paid job in the socio-political climate of the community and neighbouring villages; the gradual abandonment of supervision and support of his work by the regional health system, and the agent´s response to this. While the case shows that the transference of a first level of attention to community workers seems to have had a positive sanitary impact over a certain period of time, the lack of continued support to the Agent expresses a constitutional inertia of the State culture, which works against the declared welfare goals of the program. Providing a discussion of Kelly´s (2011) analysis of Yanomami state healthcare, it will argue that in the contentious interaction between health governmentality and indigenous agency, community welfare is better served by the people´s drive to co-opt state resources than by the State´s drive to sanitarize hinterland peoples.