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People stretch their hands through the barred windows of an isolation center in the Argentine province of Formosa
Photo: Leo Fernández
At about half past one the doorbell rang.
Laura Rodríguez saw flashing lights and police boots through a window.
She was scared when she opened it.
Two men in full-body protective suits stood in front of it.
“Her husband's Covid test was positive.
You have to come with me, ”she was told.
The family had fifteen minutes to pack their things.
Rodríguez woke the children.
The son Augustín, 7, started crying.
Her daughter Matilda, 9, screamed as they put her father in an ambulance and drove away.
Rodriguez and the children had to get into a police van.
The car drove through the city for three hours, collecting members of other families who had been in contact with corona infected people.
Then Rodríguez, 42, and her children were tested in a center before being taken to a school that had been converted into an "isolation center" at around six in the morning.
"The first thing I had to do was sign a declaration that I was there of my own accord," says Rodríguez, who works as a psychologist. "I signed it so that the children could finally sleep."
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Laura Rodríguez was placed in an isolation camp with her children
Photo: Laura Rodriguez
What happened to the Rodríguez family from the city of Formosa in Argentina on January 19, 2021 sounds like something out of a horror film.
But something like this has happened to around 25,000 people in the Argentine province since April 2020.
They were taken to quarantine centers by the police.
Covid positives were sometimes housed together with suspected cases under catastrophic hygienic conditions.
Children and families sometimes slept together with strange adults in overcrowded halls with bunk beds, even in sports stadiums and tent cities.
Many spent far more than 14 days there, and some were left in the dark about their test results;
many were believed to be infected there.
The worst centers have now been closed and some of the "abusive measures" softened as a result of social and media pressure, "but we are faced with an ongoing problem," says José Miguel Vivanco, Latin America director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) .
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Quarantine center in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires
Photo: Natacha Pisarenko / AP
With the beginning of the pandemic, the poor province of Formosa in northern Argentina created one of the strictest corona regimes in the world: living alongside coercive measures such as the rigorous isolation of the province from the rest of the country
the citizens in a largely permanent lockdown with exit restrictions, which is enforced with police violence.
"In fact, we've been in phase one for a year," says radio journalist Julieta González, "the family businesses are dead. Poverty is extreme, only large supermarket chains survive."
The provincial government even created something like new borders: The city of Clorinda on the border with Paraguay was completely cordoned off for months.
Sometimes people were even denied travel for necessary medical treatment or mothers were separated from their newborn babies if they had to go to the capital for medical care, doctors report.
"Chinese approach" of the regional government
Political scientist Julio Burdman speaks of a "Chinese approach" by the regional government. This defends itself with reference to the low number of corona deaths, allegedly only 151 since the beginning of the pandemic. More than 64,000 people died across the country. But doctors from the region assert that the numbers from Formosa have been manipulated and are much higher.
On that Tuesday morning in January, the psychologist Rodríguez and her two children were given room number 10 in the converted school: four beds, a packet of toilet paper, cleaning supplies.
They weren't allowed to go into the courtyard;
a police officer made sure that they did not leave their room without permission.
They had to share the bathroom with 30 other people - and clean it themselves.
"It was incredibly dirty, the toilets overflowed, there were cockroaches everywhere," says Rodríguez.
She was unable to lock the bathroom or bedroom.
“I showered the kids every night at eleven thirty.
We were afraid.
I didn't know who the other 30 people were. "
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A woman protests against the strict corona measures in the province of Formosa
Photo: Nathaniel Caceres / AP
After three days, Rodríguez and her children received a negative test result - but they had to isolate themselves for another ten days.
“Quarantine at home wasn't allowed,” she says, “but in the center
we couldn't stay. ”Rodríguez moved the children to a hotel, paying not only for the room but also for the policemen who were watching them.
"I could afford this expensive stay and I can assert myself," she says.
Other people have been traumatized and have "experienced a cruel disregard for their privacy and their rights."
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch sees it similarly.
She speaks of "arbitrary arrests" and reports of people who were detained for up to 30 days or more.
The case of the pregnant Zunilda Gómez, who was locked in a hotel room with her three children, caused a stir.
When she suddenly started bleeding, no one responded to her screams.
Finally her daughter climbed out the window for help.
The mother suffered a miscarriage in the hospital.
Her children were locked alone in the hotel room until the next morning.
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This isolation center in the Argentine province of Formosa has since been closed
Photo: private
"I accompanied my patients in their decision not to be tested," says doctor María Paula Zarza from the particularly affected city of Clorinda, "even if they had symptoms." The patients asked about the consequences for themselves and their families . The test system is firmly in the hands of the state. If someone was positive, the result would be passed on to the police. "Anyone who becomes infected with Corona will be criminalized."
Freedom of expression in the province is also restricted: journalists complain that their reporting is suppressed.
Julieta González, who works for an independent radio station, has no access to the quarantine centers, nor can she attend government press conferences.
The 26-year-old tells of men on motorbikes who follow her after work and take photos.
The police arrested them during a demonstration against the epidemic protection measures.
She receives threats by e-mail and telephone: "We will infect you and carry you away in a black sack."
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The journalist Julieta González at a protest in Formosa
Photo: Julieta Gonzales
On January 27, the central government's human rights commissioner in Buenos Aires visited the province. Some particularly desolate isolation centers were closed, the quarantine rules changed: Infected and suspected cases are now housed separately. Anyone who has young children or is over 60 can isolate themselves at home. "However, quarantine at home is only allowed if the apartment meets certain standards," says Vivanco from Human Rights Watch. "This is seldom the case, especially in the poorer neighborhoods." Families are still locked up in the centers. "I don't think the central government in Buenos Aires is particularly interested in changing the situation in Formosa," Vivanco said.
The governor of Formosa Province, Gildo Insfrán, has ruled for around 25 years and belongs to the Peronist Party like Argentina's President Alberto Ángel Fernández. "The opposition wanted to take advantage of the events in Formosa," explains political scientist Burdman, "that led to a strong politicization of the subject."
Recently, the number of corona infections rose sharply in Argentina and across the continent, and the country is at the height of the second wave. President Fernández, who from the beginning relied on the isolation of his country and hard lockdowns and who was celebrated at the time as a kind of rational counterpoint to the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro, has now come under fire. "At first it looked as if Argentina were doing everything better than the other countries in the region," says political scientist Burdman, "but the bubble burst quickly." The economic situation became more and more disastrous, the population more dissatisfied.
In Formosa, too, the number of cases is currently increasing rapidly.
The isolation centers are still in operation.
In the past few days, an elderly woman who suffered from diabetes and who, according to the news website Prensa Libre, had been refused medical help, died in one of these centers.
"They released her from the hospital and, after a positive Covid test, took her to the isolation center and let her die there," says journalist González.
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This tent city in the Argentine province of Formosa has since been closed.
It served to isolate corona infected people, especially from indigenous communities
Photo: private
People would send her pictures from the centers almost every day.
It shows: mattresses on the floor, a line in the shower, maggots in the food.
These images cannot be verified by SPIEGEL.
HRW and other human rights groups have not been granted access to the province to date.
Political scientist Burdman believes the governor's approach is not a perfidious strategy to usurp more power under the guise of pandemic policy, but rather "bad decisions made out of panic about the collapse of the health system" .
And yet, the regional government has "created an authoritarian-bureaucratic nightmare that affects the poor in particular," says family doctor Zarza, who mainly looked after indigenous communities in the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Clorinda, which is still largely sealed off.
She has since given up her job in the public health system and left the province.
She says: "What the state asked of me was unethical and contradicted my principles as a doctor."
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