Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2020/07/08/Peru-internal-migration-coronavirus
Migration News 8 July 2020
COVID-19 shifts Peru’s internal migration into reverse
‘The government keeps extending the lockdown by two weeks. It is impossible to survive.’
Paula Dupraz-Dobias
Geneva-based journalist, also covering Latin America
After welcoming nearly 900,000 Venezuelan migrants fleeing political and economic strife in recent years, Peru is now experiencing a migrant crisis of its own. Some 200,000 Peruvians have been trying to return to their original homes from Lima, since strict lockdown measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 cut them off from their jobs.
In late April, after the first of several lockdown extensions that will now stretch till 7 September, thousands of jobless and newly homeless informal workers and their families filled the main roads out of the city. Most had moved to Lima, the capital, with the hope of bettering their lives. But now they were beginning journeys back to their former communities, sometimes thousands of kilometers away, many traveling by foot.
Some are still in limbo, delayed along the way by muddled quarantine policies and a lack of aid. For those who did make it home, the scrambled response was compounded by some communities that were unwilling to welcome returnees for fear of infection.
“All we want is to go back to our homes and our family,” said Susan Chota Cora, speaking with The New Humanitarian via WhatsApp in June. She spoke from the site of the 2019 Pan American Games, in Lima, where she was in quarantine with other workers from Loreto – a region in Peru’s Amazon basin accessible only by plane – who had tested positive for the virus and were not permitted to fly...
Migration News 8 July 2020
COVID-19 shifts Peru’s internal migration into reverse
‘The government keeps extending the lockdown by two weeks. It is impossible to survive.’
Paula Dupraz-Dobias
Geneva-based journalist, also covering Latin America
After welcoming nearly 900,000 Venezuelan migrants fleeing political and economic strife in recent years, Peru is now experiencing a migrant crisis of its own. Some 200,000 Peruvians have been trying to return to their original homes from Lima, since strict lockdown measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 cut them off from their jobs.
In late April, after the first of several lockdown extensions that will now stretch till 7 September, thousands of jobless and newly homeless informal workers and their families filled the main roads out of the city. Most had moved to Lima, the capital, with the hope of bettering their lives. But now they were beginning journeys back to their former communities, sometimes thousands of kilometers away, many traveling by foot.
Some are still in limbo, delayed along the way by muddled quarantine policies and a lack of aid. For those who did make it home, the scrambled response was compounded by some communities that were unwilling to welcome returnees for fear of infection.
“All we want is to go back to our homes and our family,” said Susan Chota Cora, speaking with The New Humanitarian via WhatsApp in June. She spoke from the site of the 2019 Pan American Games, in Lima, where she was in quarantine with other workers from Loreto – a region in Peru’s Amazon basin accessible only by plane – who had tested positive for the virus and were not permitted to fly...