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Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://www.afr.com/world/south-ame...s-virus-pummels-latin-america-20200622-p554zm
Hungry neighbours cook together as virus pummels Latin America
Economic shutdowns have forced poor Peruvians, Argentines and tens of millions of others to fall back on community-based efforts unseen in large numbers since the region's crises of decades past.
Franklin Briceno and Rodrigo Abd
Jun 22, 2020 – 4.03pm
Lima | Clara Arango wakes at 4 am daily and checks on the ingredients for breakfast.
Eighteen pounds of oats, 13 pounds of sugar and a pound of cinnamon sticks, all ready. An hour later, Arango, 43, is using a shovel to stir 30 gallons of sweet oatmeal in a stainless-steel pot over a fire of wood scraps alongside a cinder-block community centre in the hills overlooking Peru's capital.
Residents stand in line to receive a free lunch from a "community pot," in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru. AP
By 9 am, more than 150 of Arango's neighbours in New Hope have paid 14 cents each for a plastic bowl of oatmeal from the "community pot," a phenomenon that's become ubiquitous across Peru in recent months as coronavirus quarantines and shutdowns have left millions of poor people with no way to feed their families.
Often operating with help from the Catholic Church and private charities, soup kitchens and community pots have become a symbol of the conundrum facing a region where most of the working population labours outside the formal economy.
Economic shutdowns have forced poor Peruvians, Argentines and tens of millions of others to fall back on community-based efforts unseen in large numbers since crises like Peru's 1990s civil war or Argentina's financial crash two decades ago...
Hungry neighbours cook together as virus pummels Latin America
Economic shutdowns have forced poor Peruvians, Argentines and tens of millions of others to fall back on community-based efforts unseen in large numbers since the region's crises of decades past.
Franklin Briceno and Rodrigo Abd
Jun 22, 2020 – 4.03pm
Lima | Clara Arango wakes at 4 am daily and checks on the ingredients for breakfast.
Eighteen pounds of oats, 13 pounds of sugar and a pound of cinnamon sticks, all ready. An hour later, Arango, 43, is using a shovel to stir 30 gallons of sweet oatmeal in a stainless-steel pot over a fire of wood scraps alongside a cinder-block community centre in the hills overlooking Peru's capital.
Residents stand in line to receive a free lunch from a "community pot," in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood of Lima, Peru. AP
By 9 am, more than 150 of Arango's neighbours in New Hope have paid 14 cents each for a plastic bowl of oatmeal from the "community pot," a phenomenon that's become ubiquitous across Peru in recent months as coronavirus quarantines and shutdowns have left millions of poor people with no way to feed their families.
Often operating with help from the Catholic Church and private charities, soup kitchens and community pots have become a symbol of the conundrum facing a region where most of the working population labours outside the formal economy.
Economic shutdowns have forced poor Peruvians, Argentines and tens of millions of others to fall back on community-based efforts unseen in large numbers since crises like Peru's 1990s civil war or Argentina's financial crash two decades ago...