Latin America’s Lost Decades The Toll of Inequality in the Age of COVID-19
By Luis Alberto Moreno
During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, in March 2020, Guayaquil, Ecuador’s business capital of some three million people, was in trouble. By a twist of fate, more than 20,000 Ecuadorians had just returned home from their seasonal vacations.
Many had come from Italy and Spain, two coronavirus hot spots, with the earliest and most deadly outbreaks of COVID-19.
President Lenín Moreno understood that the threat was serious but opted, at first, not to close the country’s airports, instead asking the returning travelers to self-isolate at home.
“If people do their part, I think we can control this,” he told me at the time. But the travelers, many of whom were members of the city’s elite and middle class, mostly ignored the government’s request. Some attended a large wedding, which turned into a superspreader event.
Source: Foreign Affairs
