An article by Ximena Sokolic
Multiple experiences, images, trajectories, decisions, losses were engraved in one year, hijacked by the COVID-19. Every man, woman, boy, girl, elderly, and adolescent has seen his or her life change from one second to the next. However, each change has thousands of nuances that intertwine and a structure that supports the different levels of severity. Depending on the continent, country, city, neighborhood, and even home, stories shift. They are stained with grief, deficiencies, grassroots organization, privileges, home office, stability, or a mix of all these categories. The pandemic's different impacts have shown the enormous inequalities on which cities, countries, and entire continents are built. Still, it invites us to look beyond economic characteristics and pay attention to the underlying framework that allows for that economic difference to subsist and reproduce. In light of a historical perspective, this article analyzes the different impacts of the pandemic on Lima, Peru's capital.
In March of 2020, Peruvian's former President, Martín Vizcarra, established a strict lockdown nationwide (Supreme Drecee N° 008-2020-SA). Every store, office, school, university, cinema, and other work, study, or recreation areas were shut down. People were only allowed to buy food and essential products, but even running outside was forbidden. The government extended the lockdown many times. It lasted more than four months; even when they finally allowed some stores to open to the public, to avoid economic collapse, schools, universities, restaurants, and bars remained closed until today (Urgency Decree N° 026-2020 - Peru). Although the measures were strict enough, the spread of the disease could not be controlled. The numbers continued to grow, and the economic preventive measures implemented, such as cash transfers for the "poor" population, food baskets, and the withdrawal of pension funds, did not help prevent people from leaving their houses for work and did not stop the disease's spread.
Figure 1: New urbanizations in Lima 2018-2019 (Done by Espinoza and Fort, 2020)
Lima, Peru's capital, has had the worst numbers all through the pandemic. Not only because it holds up more than 30% of the country's population. Lima has doubled its population in the last twenty-five years, from 7 million in 1995 to 10 500 million in 2020 (INEI, 2020). Also, because the growth of the city has no correlation in the expansion of basic services for the population, leaving millions of migrant families living in highly vulnerable situations, without schools, health centers, drinking water, roads, among others.
Specifically, in the last five years, almost three-quarters of a million people immigrate to Lima from other regions of the country (INEI, 2020). Espinoza and Fort (2020) state in Lima, the new urban land is approximately distributed as follows: 46% of illegal occupations, spaces that lack services, infrastructure, and property titles; 47% of informal lots, these lacks the same services as the illegal ones, however, have partial property titles; and only 7% of new urbanizations projects are formal: 6% are private projects, and just 1% is social housing projects (p.11). Furthermore, illegal and informal occupation brings a severe overcrowding problem (Grade, 2020) due to the precarious housing conditions. Also, it enlarges the informal economy, which already represents 70% of the Peruvian working population (INEI, 2017). During the pandemic, this condition limits a family's possibilities to follow the social isolation measures.
The same areas that are mostly occupied in illegal and informal conditions suffer the pandemic's worst impacts. A recent study on the excess of mortality in Lima during Covid-19 shows that almost 35% of the total excess death were concentrated in the districts with the lowest Human Development Index, which involves aspects of health, education, and wealth of a specific population (Hernández-Vásquez et al. 2020).
Figure 2: Lima's overcrowding by districts (GRADE, 2020)
Seen from this angle, we could explain the large number of cases of Covid-19 and the consequent deaths in the poorest districts of Lima because of the lack of health services close to home, the limited access to water, and the informal economy. However, it is not enough. What makes these districts, places, people more "vulnerable" than others? Where do most of these people come from?
The last National Census (2017) shows that 25% of the people that self-identify as indigenous and 27% of the Afro-Peruvians live in Lima. Lima has the largest number of indigenous speakers, the vast majority of whom are Quechua speakers, followed by Aymara speakers and Shipibo-Konibo speakers (INEI, 2018). Keeping in mind that many people do not self-identify as indigenous because of the racial, cultural, and linguistic discrimination they and their families have faced and keep facing every day (Moreno, 2014), we could think these numbers are even more prominent.
Picture 1 - Lima (Photo from Omar Lucas, January 2014)
Having a bigger picture of the city's configuration and the different impacts of the pandemic is even more pressing the need to understand how the social and cultural fabric is constructed. Following Todorov (1982), it is necessary to study the past of "us" to understand the self and the "other" of the present, meaning that the construction of uneven social relationships should be understood as a historical process. The Peruvian republic was constructed over hundreds of years of forced labor, abusive use of power and force, and genocide of indigenous people; the "other" was constructed as inferior, stripped of knowledge, barbaric, or in need of evangelization (Todorov, 1982). The colonial past is significant because it presents us more visibly the racial structure on which capitalist relations are built to this day.
"It is out of this structural location that the irresolvable contradiction of value minus worth arises. Stated differently, Blackness is a capacious category of surplus value extraction essential to an array of political-economic functions..." (Burden-Stelly, 2020 p.10). Taking the idea of racial capitalism, where capitalism draws on pre-existing differences and function based on racial inequality and extrapolating it to Lima´s actual situation; we could state that the different impacts of the pandemic are a consequence of the capitalist relationships build on the basis of a hegemonic cultural project (Robinson, 1983). Where the efficiency of the State or an increase in the health service´s or water systems supply´s budget, are unable to change the inequality and injustice that some groups of the population are compelled to live with.
Figure 3 - The increase in the percentage of deaths from 2019 to 2020, by the per capita income of each district in Lima (@PepitoPerezEC, January 2020)
The ownership of the land, understood as part of the legacy of colonial times, is essential for the configuration of the country, and in particular of Lima, as a city of migrants; the spaces where migrants are able to inhabit are spaces in the "margins," marginalized and racialized spaces. The informality of their realities, at least the one imposed by the State, enables growing levels of exploitation, abuse, and neglect. As we clearly see in Figure N° 3, the colored dots on the upper left side are all the neighborhoods from the margins of Lima, the ones who have the lowest incomes of the city, and the ones who have a higher number of death rates due to Covid-19.
Still, as much as this approach into the pandemic impacts helps to understand how a racialized social structure has been constructed and how it survives, it is fundamental to remember that that is not the only thing that defines these populations. As Hooks states, we should think "[m]arginality as site of radical possibility, a space of resistance. […] Our survival depended on an ongoing public awareness of the separation between margin and center and an ongoing private acknowledgment that we were a necessary, vital part of that whole." (Hooks, 1989:20).
References:
Akram Hernández-Vásquez, Jesús Eduardo Gamboa-Unsihuay, et.al. (2020, August) Excess mortality in Metropolitan Lima during the COVID-19 pandemic: A district level comparison. Medwave, 20(8): e8032 doi: 10.5867/medwave.2020.08.8032 In: https://www.medwave.cl/link.cgi/Medwave/Estudios/Investigacion/8031.act?tab=ingles
Burden-Stelly, Charisse (2020, July). Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism. Some Theoretical Insights. Monthly Review, Vol. 72, No. 3, 8-20.
Don Pepito Pérez [PepitoPerezEC] (2021, January 3). Percentage increase in deaths from 2019 to 2020, by the per capita income of the districts of Lima [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/PepitoPerezEC/status/1345522648395165701?s=20
Espinoza, Alvaro and Fort, Ricardo (2020). Mapeo y tipología de la expansión urbana en el Perú. GRADE, 2020.
Hooks, Bell (1989, January) Choosing the margin as space of radical openness. Framework, N° 36, 15-23.
INEI (2017) Producción y empleo informal en el Perú. Lima, INEI.
INEI (2018). La autoidentificación étnica: población indígena y afroperuana. INEI, Lima.
INEI (2020). Estado de la población peruana 2020. Lima.
López, Sinesio (2000). Democracia y participación indígena: el caso peruano. In: García, Fernando (Ed.) Las sociedades interculturales: un desafío para el siglo XXI. (pp. 137-178). Quito, FLACSO.
Moreno, Martín (2014). Patrones de autoidentificación etnorracial de la población indígena en las encuestas de hogares en el Perú. In: Debates en Sociología N° 39, 2014, 39-71.
Robinson, Cedric (1983). Black Marxism. The making of the Black radical tradition. London, University of North Carolina Press.
Todorov, Tzvetan (1982). The conquest of America. The question of the other. New York, Harper & Row.