Peru's Civil War Left It Vulnerable to the Pandemic

The country should address the worsening coronavirus crisis with policies that will also repair long-standing inequality.
BY MICHAEL ALBERTUS | MAY 15, 2020, 3:39 PM

May 17 marks the 40th anniversary of the start of Peru’s two-decade-long civil war, when the Marxist insurgent group Shining Path kicked off an internal conflict by burning ballot boxes in the rural village of Chuschi. The move was a symbolic rejection of the 1980 national elections that were slated to return Peru to democracy. Today, the country is still living with the war’s consequences as it fights a new enemy: the novel coronavirus.

The civil war, despite ending 20 years ago, has had a long legacy in the country, creating conditions ripe for the spread of contagions like the coronavirus by displacing hundreds of thousands of inhabitants from rural areas where the conflict was most severe and concentrating them in tightly packed settlements in the capital, Lima. Most work in the informal economy and do not have reliable access to government services including health care.

The pandemic is Peru’s gravest threat in decades. To adequately help citizens facing its effects, the country must also address some of the war’s lasting legacies.

The Peruvian civil war was one of Latin America’s most brutal 20th-century conflicts: Parties including militant groups, paramilitaries, and the armed forces killed an estimated 70,000 people from 1980 to 2000. Many of the conflict’s refugees began informal settlements at the outskirts of Lima. They cobbled together houses on the city’s fringes and sought any work they could find. Most joined Peru’s enormous informal sector and received little government support.

More:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/15/peru-civil-war-vulnerable-coronavirus-pandemic/