Hungry neighbors cook together as virus roils Latin America
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Clara Arango wakes at 4 a.m. daily and checks on the ingredients for breakfast.
Eighteen 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.
By 9 a.m., more than 150 of Arango’s neighbors in New Hope have paid 14 cents each for a plastic bowl of oatmeal from the ‘’community pot,’’ a phenomenon that’s become ubiquitous across Peru in recent months as coronavirus quarantines and shutdowns have left millions of poor people with no way to feed their families.
Often operating with help from the Catholic Church and private charities, soup kitchens and community pots have become a symbol of the conundrum facing a region where most of the working population labors outside the formal economy.
Clara Arango, with pick axe, and her daughter Kimberly, raking, loosen soil in order to lay a cement floor as they work to expand their home, in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
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.
Still, without unemployment benefits or the ability to work from home, a cut-price plastic bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, some lentil stew or noodles in tomato sauce for lunch, and leftovers for dinner aren’t proving enough to keep poor Latin Americans from leaving their homes each day to earn a living as construction workers, street vendors or other types of day laborers.
The inability to keep people at home is proving a major factor in the spread of the coronavirus around the continent, where new cases and deaths are rising unchecked as an unbent curve of infection pushes intensive care wards to their limits.
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.
Julia Bertila Perez poses for a photo inside her home in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, May 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Efraina Rivera stirs a vat of oatmeal at a "community pot" organized by residents in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, May 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A woman hauls a bucket of water to her home in the early morning hours in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
At the same time, Peru is facing a 12% drop in gross domestic product this year, one of the worst recessions in the hemisphere, according to the World Bank.
“I barely have anything to eat at home," Arango said. ‘’Here I have a community pot and I can pool my resources with my neighbors and we can support each other and work together.
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.
Government figures show more than 2.3 million other Lima residents also lost their jobs by April, out of a working population of roughly 16 million nationwide. The figure is expected to leap again when May numbers are released.
Yeni Anco cries as she relates to reporters the many times her children have asked her for food but does not have any to give them, inside her home in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, May 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A white flag is posted on the summit of a Christ the Redeemer monument, indicating an urgent need for food amid a government lockdown to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, in Lima, Peru, June 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
In Peru, thousands of community pots are steaming at breakfast and lunch in neighborhoods at levels not seen since inflation topped 7,000% in 1990 in the middle of the civil war with Shining Path Maoist guerrillas.
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.
On a recent morning, a brief tour by Associated Press journalists in a mile radius of Arango's pot found more than 15 groups of neighbors cooking food together.
Waiting in line at one was Estéfany Aquiño, 11, who is helping her mother raise her 2-month-old sister after a cesarean section that left the woman unable to leave her house to look for food.
Estéfany said the community pot is her only defense against a hunger that's become a constant feature of life.
“Your stomach starts to hurt, to grumble, and then to talk to you,” the girl said.
Consuelo Pascacio's three children; Estiben 4, Estefany, 11, and Javier, 14, dig into a chicken rice stew she picked up at a "community pot," in their home in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
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.
“We're far from being an example of efficiency as a state,'' he said Monday. “We have so many failings, so many problems.”
But Peru is far from the only country wrestling simultaneously with the virus and hunger.
In Buenos Aires, the church and local soccer clubs have been organizing community pots in some of the capital's poorest neighborhoods, and volunteers say their clients are becoming more desperate as virus-driven shutdowns continue.
“We used to put food for three people in a plastic container,'' volunteer Emanuel Basile said as he worked in the hard-hit 1-11-14 neighborhood. “Now they want us to cram in food for five.”
Julia Bertila Perez poses for a photo standing in her doorway in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, May 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Residents ride bikes and scooters on a communal soccer field in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Jonisa Villano waves at reporters while holding a bag of food she picked up at a "community pot," in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A damaged Peruvian national flag flies outside a home in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A frying pan sits on top of discarded wood pieces in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
11-year-old Fiorella Mendieta, left, and her 8-year-old sister Flavia, sit at a kitchen table as they wait to be served lunch at their home in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Six-year-old Chris Del Aguila and his younger sister roughhouse in their home in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Volunteers carry a pot of carapulcra, a traditional Andean stew, to a nearby table as residents wait in line to receive a free lunch at a "community pot" in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Volunteers cook breakfast at a "community pot" organized by residents of the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood, in Lima, Peru, Saturday, June 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Residents wait in line at a "community pot," in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Romina Vazquez serves up a simple broth for dinner, illuminated by candlelight due to the lack of access electricity in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Residents repair an electric cable in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
11-year-old David Leandro Del Aguila, unable to swat away the flies on his face because he is quadriplegic, eyes the camera while lying on a bed in his home in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Consuelo Pascacio cradles her baby Anyelina as the family pet Demon helps himself to leftovers, in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A child rides his skateboard down an unpaved hill in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
14-year-old Wilmer Pena twirls a spoon using his mouth while listening to his mother, inside their home in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Gabriela watches over her nieces and nephews, illuminated by candlelight due to the lack of access to electricity in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Gladys Tapalluyi talks to a neighbor across the way as her husband uses his cellphone while standing inside their home without electricity, in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Men play a pick up game of soccer minutes before the start of a curfew due to the emergency declared by the government as a measure to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru, June 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Text from AP News story, Hungry neighbors cook together as virus roils Latin America, by Franklin Briceno and Rodrigo Abd.
Sonia Pérez in Guatemala City, Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires and Michael Weissenstein in Havana contributed.
Photos by Rodrigo Abd