Rural communities in the Peruvian Amazon are confronting the coronavirus on their own
By Anna Heikkinen Indigenous and peasant communities across the Peruvian Amazon region have taken the management of the coronapandemic in their own hands. Many have blocked access to their villages and tightened surveillance over their territories to protect themselves from the Covid-19. Over the past eight weeks, the peasant community of San Roque in the […]
The “Forgotten” Essentials: Mexican and Central American Farmworkers during the Covid19 pandemic
By Violeta Gutiérrez Zamora Governments around the world have ordered everyone to stay home amidst the COVID-19 pandemic except the workers deemed as essential to keep running our societies. Farm laborers are among them. Many of the now recognized as essential workers, however, receive low-wages and are hired under precarious conditions. Farmworkers, employed as pickers […]
When urban and ecological injustices meet pandemic: The Covid19 in urbanized Colombia
By Germán A. Quimbayo Ruiz Amidst the covid19 pandemic, in the busy Latin American metropolises like México City, São Paulo, Santiago, Lima or Bogotá, the public has not been exempted to comment on social media about the pandemic’s “unintended” effects and “return of nature” to cities, or the sudden improvement in air quality due to […]
Not everyone has the privilege to wash the hands: Covid–19 and unequal access to water in Latin America
By Anna Heikkinen Water has become a vital weapon in the battle against coronavirus. Since the prorogation of Covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced “washing your hands frequently” as a principal protective measure to slow down the transmission. Unicef further instructed to wash the hands throughout under running water with soap for at least […]
The historical and current issues at stake during COVID-19 epidemic in Brazil
By Mariana G. Lyra Brazilians are fighting COVID-19 by facing current and historical issues. The numbers of registered cases and deaths are not so high, compared to the world ranking or considering that Brazil has a population of more than 220 million inhabitants. At the moment I am writing this piece, there are 2,024,675 COVI-19 […]
ESDLA Blog Special Issue: Latin America and the Caribbean in times of Covid19
The novel coronavirus pandemic (covid19) has caught the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region in a very particular moment of its entangled history. Since last fall, mass protests and demonstrations were springing in the whole region, most of them in South American countries. Regardless of political ideologies, the common denominator of the protests was […]