Strict coronavirus lockdowns in Guatemala and El Salvador have so battered local economies that hundreds of families are flying white flags outside their homes or waving them in the street: not in surrender, but to seek food and assistance.
After 50 days of lockdown that has snuffed out their livelihoods, Ana Orellana and three neighbors put up a white flag and a sign asking for food on the graffiti-scrawled concrete boarding house they share in central San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.
Orellana, a street vendor of coffee, said that since the government ordered people to stay home in March, she has had no income to pay for food or the $75 monthly rent on the room she inhabits alone in the building. Now she takes turns with her neighbors to scavenge throwaway food at a city market.
“I go looking through the bins where the rubbish is,” the 51-year-old said. “I go to the Tiendona market to get stuff, because we really don’t have tomatoes or onions now, and we make a tomato stew here without oil, just parboiled.”
Alongside the white flag is a misspelled sign over a boarded-up window saying “we were not beneficiaries” to signal they did not receive a $300 voucher issued in March by President Nayib Bukele to 1.5 million poor families, about three-quarters of the population.
The bleak outlook for Orellana and her companions extends deep into Central America and much of Latin America, where the pandemic threatens to worsen chronic poverty among the millions of people who live hand-to-mouth. (Reuters)
