Tuberculosis (TB) is still one of the infectious diseases ?of poverty? that causes more deaths in the world: Nowadays, it is the second cause of death among them, after AIDS. The situation of the disease in the world is a reflection, not only of the enormous political, economic, social and epidemiological differences persisting globally between the ?central? and the ?peripheral? countries; but also of the inequalities that can be identified at a national, regional or local level. Part of the Bolivian immigrant workforce in Argentina and Brazil was recruited in their country of origin through local agents that belong to an organized network of human traffickers. They arrive to Buenos Aires and São Paulo where they are submitted to exploitation of manpower in semi-slavery conditions in clandestine textile workshops. The cases of TB corresponding to Bolivian immigrants in both cities show a growth, mainly from 2004 on awards. Returning to the contributions of various authors, TB can be considered the ?emblematic disease? that incorporates the existing social and cultural inequality (Fassin, 1996). In the same way, the concept of structural violence (Farmer, 2004) allows to explore the ways in which structural violence penetrates coercively the life of these individuals causing them a particular social suffering (Quaranta, 2006); including, as part of this, the semi-slavery conditions to which they are subject in the workshops, the access limitations to the health system to treat ailments, aches and pains -like TB-, and the impact on their bodies (Csordas, 1994).The multi-sited ethnographical comparative research done expresses clearly the way in which, in some contexts, social inequalities are translated into health inequalities, not only by the indicators, but also by the relation with the access to the public sanitary services, the diagnosis and the treatment of infectious diseases as TB.Key words: context of social vulnerability, tuberculosis, Bolivian immigrants.

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Bolivian Immigrants,Tuberculosis,Buenos Aires,Sao Paulo