Communal meals known as 'community pots' have become ubiquitous across Peru recently as coronavirus quarantines and shutdowns leave millions of poor people with no way to feed their families.
https://apnews.com/259e35cdd2eb479d0b49cfcfb0cc936aEighteen pounds of oats, 13 pounds of sugar and a pound of cinnamon sticks, all ready. An hour later, Arango, 43, is using a shovel to stir 30 gallons of sweet oatmeal in a stainless-steel pot over a fire of wood scraps alongside a cinder-block community center in the hills overlooking Peru’s capital.
Economic shutdowns have forced poor Peruvians, Argentines and tens of millions of others to fall back on community-based efforts unseen in large numbers since crises like Peru’s 1990s civil war or Argentina’s financial crash two decades ago. Despite some of the strictest antivirus measures in the region, Peru has diagnosed 237,000 cases of coronavirus and counted 7,000 deaths, the highest number of cases per capita in the region and the second-highest per capita count of deaths.
A single mother of two, she lost her job as a janitor when her employer closed his shopping mall in Lima’s wealthiest neighborhood due to the antivirus shutdown that began on March 16. More than a third of Peru’s 32 million people have had to engage in some form of community cooking due to lack of money, according to a May poll by the private, nonpartisan Institute of Peruvian Studies.
Estéfany said the community pot is her only defense against a hunger that’s become a constant feature of life.Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra says the pandemic has revealed the weakness of the Peruvian system, which topped Latin America in economic growth for decades but has one of region’s weakest social safety nets.
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