As coronavirus restrictions decimate Guatemala’s economy, white flags are flying in desperation

It’s midday in Villa Nueva, and the sun is beating down on la carretera al Pacifico.

Twenty-year-old Leidy is standing on the highway’s narrow median strip with her two-year-old son Leiton, waving a white flag at peak hour traffic.

Desperate, dehydrated and exhausted, they remain hopeful a passer-by will stop to spare some change or donate food staples like beans, oil and rice.

Like millions of Guatemalans, Leidy is out of work due to coronavirus lockdown restrictions and she is struggling to feed her family.

The white flags, appearing in droves hung from residences or waved from roadsides across Guatemala, signify a surrender to hunger.

For Leidy, appealing to the solidarity of passers-by is a last resort to put food on the table.

Collapse of informal economy ‘devastating’

Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei ordered the closure of all non-essential businesses, shut down public transport, restricted domestic travel and implemented strict stay-at-home orders to contain a coronavirus outbreak mid-March.

The lockdown has kept the infection rate relatively low — about 5300 cases and 116 deaths — in the country with Central America’s weakest healthcare system, but it has caused the collapse of its precarious informal economy, in which more than 70 per cent of Guatemalans participate.

More than two months into lockdown, the economic impact on vulnerable low-paid workers has been “devastating”, says Oxfam’s Humanitarian Program Manager for Guatemala, Iván Aguilar.

“Although restrictions on mobility and confinement have not been as drastic as in other countries, the fragility of the informal economy and the consequential reduction in consumption have dealt a devastating blow to those who depend on it,” Mr Aguilar said.

The government is alleviating some of the economic effects of the lockdown by distributing food assistance packages, administering “unconditional” cash transfers of 1,000 quetzales ($197) per month for three months for two million households and other measures.

However, while the initiatives support many in need, accessing assistance can be difficult and millions more require longer-term humanitarian and economic relief.

“It is a matter of urgency that the government adapt the process so that rural families in high food vulnerability who do not have cell phones, internet or electricity can access the social protection and economic relief programs,” Mr Aguilar said.

‘This is a life or death issue’

Impoverished rural indigenous communities with some of the world’s highest chronic malnutrition rates have been hit particularly hard by coronavirus restrictions, say grassroots NGOs.

Konojel Community Centre operates in San Marcos la Laguna, where about 70 per cent of the town’s indigenous residents suffer from chronic malnutrition and almost half of the town’s households live off just $2 per day.

As lockdown restrictions obliterated the local tourism sector and informal economy, Konojel suspended its nutrition programs targeting chronic childhood malnutrition in order to distribute food bags to the community’s most vulnerable families who were suddenly without income.

Konojel’s director Ingrid Paredes says without their intervention, families “will quite simply starve”.

“We are extremely worried about the massive expansion in families needing support (due to coronavirus restrictions), who are at additional risk as a result of their chronic malnutrition,” Ms Paredes said.

“Most indigenous households in San Marcos la Laguna were already unable to provide adequate nutrition for all families members, so without food deliveries… families would be forced to make difficult decisions about who is fed and who goes without.

“We are afraid that without our regular intervention, we will see the progress we’ve made in fighting malnutrition over the past nine years erode, and we will watch the descent of our community into starvation.”

However, as economies plunge into recession and worldwide unemployment rates hit record highs, Ms Paredes says it’s a tough time for NGOs like Konojel to raise the funds they need to assist their communities.

“Thousands of organisations around the world are working with the same vigour to meet crisis level needs — there is a shortage of funding across the board and we are struggling to raise emergency funds to expand our capacity to feed the hungry in our village,” she said.

“But if we fail to raise money for the delivery of healthy food, people in our community will actually starve.

“This is a life or death issue in our community.”

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Acute malnutrition the ‘most dangerous white flag’

Increasing acute malnutrition amongst Guatemalans due to coronavirus restrictions is “the most dangerous ‘white flag’ that is being raised”, says Mr Aguilar, “and one to which the government must pay close attention”.

Not only is the coronavirus pandemic exacerbating existing food insecurity, he said, but it is “taking it to areas that were not so severely affected, such as marginal urban and peri-urban areas, and that will double or triple the numbers of people requiring food assistance in 2020”.

Meanwhile, Ms Paredes is pleading for the government to invest loans received from the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank to mitigate the economic emergency in rural areas “almost always forgotten by the authorities”.

“In the meantime, need is great and we are working diligently alongside other partner organisations and individual volunteers to make sure that our neighbours have enough to eat,” she said.