Neoliberalismo en salud: La tortura de trabajadoras y trabajadores del Instituto Materno Infantil de Bogotá

Resumen

We suggest to analyze the links between the different kinds of violence and pain and suffering as torture. This category is defined as the set of violent actions that cause physical and emotional pain, which are performed by actors in positions of power over other people who challenge that power and are part of modern States' ideological principles around a defined moral social order. For the IMI workers' case, the ideological principle that is being challenged is health care neoliberalism. From the analyses of bureaucracy, confinement, torturing agents, and the breaking-off of the body-mind unit we conclude that this relationship between neoliberalism and torture aims to eliminate the last health care workers of the country who had job stability and full-benefits through public labour contracts. Their elimination furthers the accumulation of capital generated by increasing over-exploitation of labour and commodification of health care.