Why T. cruzi is Striking The Impoverished

Andean people traditionally associate earth and home. Physical aspects of their homes are related to social and cultural aspects. The earth and nature are spiritually related to Andeans and their lives are dependent upon the earth. This intimate relationship has ecological advantage in that they do not destroy land and animals. This bonding with the earth enabled Andeans to adapt and survive in high, mountainous regions for millennia. The earth is home to their ancestors, and this totality includes living with insects. One concern is that educators teach Andeans that vinchucas are bad and should be destroyed by insecticides, whereas a more appropriate approach would be to restore balance by improving and maintaining their houses so that vinchucas are unable to nest inside.

More recently, migration increases the transmission of T. cruzi among peasants who have to move, because their land has been expropriated and sold to be used for commercial farming or depleted by excessive farming. Moreover, many peasants don't own their homes. Migratory peasants often don't have the time and money to invest in a stable home. They construct temporary shacks made of refuse as they move to earn a living. These shacks readily become infested with vinchucas. As peasant families settle in an area to build a house, they often cut down brush from the area. This forces the vinchucas out of their nests where they feed upon birds and rodents. Triatoma infestans have become the primary T. cruzi parasite because it has also migrated from a sylvatic domicile to a domestic domicile. These vinchucas can hide and readily get blood meals from sleeping humans. Migration from the countryside to cities has also brought urban crowding and widespread Chagas' disease in cities, whereas until recently it was a rural and lowland disease.

Global capitalization has brought excessive burdens on peasants who are forced to move to marginal areas as their land is being consumed for industrial farming, especially of soy beans, corn, and cattle raising, which products are exported to industrial countries. Peasants are forced to migrate and farm in hilly, marginally productive areas. Also of grave concern is the timbering of Amazonian forests, of which if it continues at the present rate will cut down the forests of the Amazon by 2020.

Social stratification is also relevant to the spread of chagas. Class and ethnic distinctions have a strong history in Latin America. Once colonies of European empires, South American countries have evolved to form their own stratification of classes that are often based on class, ethnicity, and race. The center of many cities are remnants of this system that are crowded and polluted. As the urban areas became more crowded, people without adequate resources for decent housing build around the city's periphery. Resources that are available to urban peasants are few. The classes that continue to hold resources, the upper and middle classes (the mestizo), affect the housing conditions of the campesinos.