It is ironic then that most of the first cases in Latin America are linked to those who could afford to travel back from abroad carrying the disease, who were most likely the region's middle and upper-class.


Low-income families in Latin America

The pandemic has worsened the way the underprivileged live, making it harder to avoid the coronavirus as they have poor living conditions and limited access to healthcare.

A consensus report in 2017 compiled by AS/COA from the World Bank, showed that three-quarters of Latin Americans were low or lower-middle-income. From the total population, only 3% counted as high-income Latin Americans.

According to the data by ECLAC in 2018, 30% of the population lives beneath the poverty line, whereas 10% lived in extreme poverty.

In a separate report by the Inter-development American Bank, over 240 million Latin Americans have work that did not grant access to pensions, meaningful productivity, and sufficient wages. In this same vein, access to health care in the region requires financial maintenance, which is only possible with stable employment, two things that the unfortunate lack, more so during the pandemic.


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More pronounced class disparity

The magnanimous population of low-income earners in Latin America presupposes that only a handful of high-income earners keeps much of the wealth of the region.

In an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Peru, Nadia Muñoz was taking care of her son while he was taking his online classes. While she was recording a makeup lesson that she planned on posting on her Instagram, she said, "We have a supermarket nearby, light, water, internet, a phone, and cable TV."

In contrast, the de la Cruz family on the outskirts of that same neighborhood lived in a shack on the hill. Ramiro's line of work was selling clothes on the street right before the pandemic started. With a plummeting in sales, he joined his father, age 86, and mother home. They did not have running water or electricity.

They lived in a community of blue-collar workers who were now rendered jobless amid the quarantine, all in similar situations as the Dela Cruz family.

In Haiti, authorities reduced working hours for banks and government offices, closed schools and establishments, and implemented strict stay-at-home orders. However, in Port-au-Prince, people are still crowding by the thousands in markets and public transportation.

A local vendor believed that if she stayed home, she would lose all her goods. She needed to sell for income. Marie-Ange Bouzi sold fruits and vegetables in Haiti's capital. She said, "People are not going to stay home. How are they going to eat? Haiti isn't [designed for addressing] that."

Meanwhile, in Chile, a lot of the coronavirus cases were accounted for by patients who lived in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Despite strict measures prohibiting people from loitering outside their homes.

Chilean Health Minister Jaime Mañalich called out residents in Las Condes and Vitacura, especially for constant violation of quarantine protocol after testing positive or encountering people with the virus. He said, "You hear honking and street noises, which tells me they're fooling us and disrespecting the quarantine."