Latin America’s new poor

WHEN THE pandemic struck Piura, a city in northern Peru, Daniel Zapata had a part-time job with a market-research firm. The 250 soles ($70) he earned each month paid his fees for a three-year course in business administration. The covid-19 recession put paid to all that. The firm closed, and Mr Zapata, who is 20 and lives with his parents and a sister, has dropped out of his course. The family received 760 soles in emergency aid from Peru’s government. With the lockdown over, they must now rely on his sister’s income as a teacher and his father’s pension from his years working in a textile factory. Having lived in the lower tier of the middle class, Mr Zapata is staring into the abyss of poverty. He expects little from a general election next April. The politicians “just squabble instead of working”, he says.