By Mireya Olivera, Impulso
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Los Angeles, Calif. – At 23, he was already a champion with his basketball team representing Xochixtepec, one of the oldest Zapotec-speaking indigenous Oaxacan communities of the migrating tradition to Southern California.
Juan Bernardo, Jr., was part of the team that every weekend faced basketball teams like Luvina, Macuil, Jaltiangusis, among others considered the favorites and with the most Benito Juarez Cup trophies, the top sporting event in that sport in the serranos, as the whole community is known because they come from the mountain range south of Oaxaca.
Every Sunday, for at least 20 years, more than 100 Oaxacan basketball teams would face off at Toberman Park in Pico Union, Normandie in Korea Town, or Manual Arts High School in South Central Los Angeles, as well as El Sereno Park, for a long weekend, for the tournaments organized by the communities themselves, the Xochixtepec community being one of them, which not only had had a leading role in the Oaxacan immigrant sport but also in banda music and the preservation of traditional culture.
Juan Bernardo, Jr’s father, also with the same name, not only was the sport‘s leader of that Zapotec immigrant community, but also lead the Christian religious congregation in South Los Angeles. His religious opinions lead him to decide to not believe in the COVID-19 vaccine.
The pastor, father of 7 children, two women and the rest men, died of COVID-19 on December 22 last year, just when vaccination was starting in the County of Los Angeles, first with the medical sector.
With his father’s firm idea, Juan Jr. declares himself clearly anti-vaccine, not only for religious reasons but also because he feels he is in good health, he does exercise and he eats healthy.
He also feels that neither his employer nor the government can force him to do it, besides he feels he “might” get even sicker.
“I don’t believe in the vaccine because my father was a pastor, before he died, and he never believed in that vaccine because he would say, “It’s not in the Bible that the vaccine is good” and well, I followed him. Now, for sure, what he said…I listened to him,” he commented, after noting that for him the vaccine sometimes is bad.
“They say that if you get COVID it helps you a little more because the vaccine has some products that can help you to recuperate more quickly, but at the same time it can also go badly for you because there have been many who have passed away even having been vaccinated. I’m 50/50, I believe and I don’t believe, but I also don’t want to be forced to be vaccinated,” he confessed.
Los Angeles theologian Felipe Agredano, who frequently contributes his opinion on well-known media like the Los Angeles Times, Univision, Telemundo, La Opinión and Harvard Crimson, is of the opinion that it is an “anti-modernist thought” to argue that nowhere in the Bible does it say that the COVID-19 vaccine is not good and that they don’t get vaccinated because of religion.
The expert on the subject of religion says that “many things are not in the Bible, like the measles, etc; but they are part of our reality. The Christian Bible and other world religions talk about health. They give us examples of how to stay healthy, with good nutrition. The Bible is not opposed to this or to medical, technological and scientific advances.
“The Bible also doesn’t say that we should use cars, watch television, not listen to the radio, use clothes or microphones, but technology has advanced and we use the new technology that pastors use to get their message to more people,” Agredano commented.
And he was clear in noting that there is nothing that prevents humans from using technology and science to know what is good in order to be healthy and what is good for protecting oneself.
Juan Jr. also says that many companies are forcing its employees to get vaccinated, and if they don’t, they get fired, and that, for him, should be a worker’s choice.
“If my employer tells me I have to go get vaccinated, I’m going to say no, and if not then they’re going to want to fire me and I can say that’s fine, no problem. But there are many people who don’t have the chance to say fine because theirs is the only income of the family and they don’t have a choice,” he said.
“I would say no to the vaccine,” he reaffirmed and said that he doesn’t think that it would affect him if he lost his job for that reason because he feels he has grown up in a Latino place, where he says he’s getting used to working and not giving up. “If one door can’t be opened, another one is opened,” he said in this regard.
Another reason this young man gave for refusing to be vaccinated is that he doesn’t believe in the vaccine because he considers it a health risk.
“Maybe it’s not true that they’re helping with that vaccine. Maybe they can get people sicker.” “I prefer not taking a risk like that because I don’t know if I could get sicker or I might not get sick. I prefer to not have the vaccine,” he admitted.
“No one has tried to influence me,” he said when asked if he had been pressured to get vaccinated. But he did say that when someone from his family or among his friends asks him why he hasn’t been vaccinated he says he always gives the same answer, that he doesn’t believe in the vaccine.
What saves you from not getting sick? The 38-year-old, who at 17 started on the road to community basketball, and who was motivated by his father, was asked.
His answer was sports and healthy eating. “Sports helps a lot, too,” he stated.
“I haven’t felt like getting vaccinated. Mi wife asks me “When are you going to get vaccinated?” I tell her I don’t have any use for it. I’m fine and healthy. It’s just about following the steps, eating well and doing my sports.”
For the father of four children, the eldest being 17 and the youngest 10 months old, eating healthy means drinking teas and eating salads. “I’m not saying I don’t eat fats. I can’t say no to tacos. You can’t say no to Tlayudas (considered the most famous Oaxacan street food in Latin America),” he acknowledged.
His father’s death affected the whole family, because for them he was the head of everything.
“He would say ‘It’s going to be done like this’ and we were guided by him,” admits Juan.
After his father’s death, little by little his maternal family as well as his paternal family started saying yes to the vaccine. His wife, too, and his two sons and his daughter, these did it for school, he argues.
His whole family has gotten vaccinated, except him and two of his cousins, who don’t want to. There isn’t a vaccine yet for his 10-month-old son.
Agredano, the theologian, said that “there really is nothing in the Bible or in the religions that go against health, but those opposed are conservative political groups and less so of religious beliefs. Even many Christian and Catholic churches, religious groups have taken the position that people should be vaccinated.”
“The pastors or religious leaders who have a different opinion are people who are doing it individually, but not in name of some denominations. They are some pastors, some ministers who have conservative political beliefs,” he explained and reaffirmed that “they take an individual position. They don’t do it by religious denomination.”
But he added that unfortunately that position influences his parishioners. “There are people who oppose it because they think it’s something new and they use religion as an escape, an excuse to not get vaccinated, but it’s nothing new.”
Alejandro Mendez is another Oaxacan Zapotec indian immigrant, resident for more than 30 years in Los Angeles, who despite have been infected with COVID-19 last December 31 and having spent a week with high fevers, chills, body aches and lack of taste for food, leading him to lose almost 10 pounds, is not considering getting vaccinated until he sees how the pandemic develops.
The reason, he argues, is that the vaccine was developed in a short time and that he has heard conversations among family members, neighbors, friends and acquaintances that after the vaccine they say they had medical problems.
“After the vaccine, my wife’s arm remained painful and sometimes she has discomfort, but I know that they are the effects of the vaccine. Now, when she went to the doctor, she was diagnosed with diabetes. I don’t know if it’s because of the vaccine,” he explains, as he talks about what he has heard of other similar cases from conversations with friends.
On that matter, the well-known doctor from AltaMed, Ilan Shapiro, says that the COVID-19 vaccine wasn’t made overnight, but rather its research has evolved for more than 20 years. “In reality, COVID-19 is a cousin of the other two coronavirus, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-Cov) that killed many people in the Middle East and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which is a severe form of pneumonia.”
“All that technology has evolved for 20 years. The real miracle is that (now) the pharmaceutical companies, governments, Public Health Departments and us as a community have organized in order to have the resources for these vaccines. The technology was already there,” he explained.
Mendez, who is originally from the Santiago Matatlan community in the Central Valleys, admits to not knowing if the conversations that go on among friends are true or not, but they worry him, like the case of a conversation he heard about that because of some vaccines that came out in the 90’s and were given to children, these children then had children with autism and that’s where the ailment comes from.
Doctor Shapir says that that was a myth which unfortunately has progressed for more than 20 years, detailing that a person in England wrote a whole article, in which they talked about 10 special children, but not even about autism, rather about something that was happening in their stomach.
In the article the author said that maybe it was related to problems like autism, which caused a whole movement with those kinds of erroneous commentaries.
“And the children the author referred to never could be found, after reviewing his article.”
The doctor also said that it was discovered that the author worked with lawyers who had a suit against the laboratory.
“He practically created a problem that didn’t exist,” stated Shapiro, who specializes in children.
The doctor said that autism is a multifactorial problem, in which there is no gene or specific problem. “Many times there are birth issues, exposures during pregnancy or simply the family had a problem since before and they already carried those genes, which were activated in the child.
The fact of saying that we’re vaccinating more and there is more autism is like saying there are more cars and that’s why we have autism. There is no direct relationship,” he stated, as he said that if there were a direct relationship we would be in a heap of trouble with everyone and it’s not a reality, but a complete myth.
Another one of Mendez’s suppositions, like Juan Jr’s, to not get vaccinated is that he thinks that he’s healthy and that he has no medical problem because he considers his nutrition as very natural, without chemicals and substances that harm the body.
“We, as indigenous people, our nutrition is more natural, not with chemicals, that’s why we don’t go to the doctor,” he says, as he notes that in Oaxaca he never, as far as he can remember, went to the doctor and that here he doesn’t go very often.
Alejandro admits that not getting vaccinated has annoyed his older children and his daughter-in-law, who tell him that he is stubborn for not getting vaccinated.
He also admits that he’s the only one that had the most serious effects of the COVID-19 he contracted, because his wife and son didn’t have anything, his two 17-year-old twins only had light discomfort because everyone in the family is vaccinated, except him.
Even so, he says that for the moment he prefers to wait, because according to him he now has the antibodies for at least six months.
For Dr. Shapiro it’s okay to be scared, to be worried, “but the most important things is to have conversations in order to have information in our hands. That’s what doctors are for and places on the Internet like ¡Ándale qué esperas! , to access real information and clear up doubts, but having the best information to take care of ourselves and our families.
It’s excellent that you continue eating well. You’ve got to keep taking care of yourselves, but from what we’ve seen in the two years with COVID-19 is that because we’re human, we can catch it,” he stated.
“We don’t know who can get it most or who can get it less. Unfortunately, healthy young adults have died, as well as senior citizens with many complications. Obviously there will be more complications for some people with weight issues, hypertension, diabetes, but it’s not just about surviving, but rather the problem that we’re seeing now is prolonged COVID that 10% of the people are getting, that even though they had super light COVID, including children, they may have memory problems, loss of smell or taste, arrhythmias, and heart inflammation due to the illness. So it is very important to be healthy and have natural immunity, but the fact is that by having the vaccine it can help us to prevent a lot of those complications.
Dr. Shapiro says that the majority of the Latinx community is starting to take care of itself again and getting vaccinated, and this is making a difference for families, because COVID-19 hasn’t disappeared and you shouldn’t lower your guard.
According to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) as of March 17, 72,366,458 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, that is 83.6% of the eligible population over age 5 is inoculated with at least one dose.
