Disease that began among rich shifts to Latin America's poor
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The passenger from Spain that Sonia Sanchez picked up at the airport in Colombia's capital in March did not seem well.
He coughed during the Uber ride in her small, red Chevrolet Spark, as he sat next to her, a precaution many of the app's drivers use to avoid attracting the attention — and harassment — of police.
A few days later, the mother of two had a soaring fever, her relatives say. Within three weeks, she was dead — the first coronavirus patient to die in Bogota’s working-class Kennedy neighborhood, now a hot spot of infections.
“The only thing we have of her is her ashes,” her brother, Oscar Sanchez, said.
Sonia Sanchez’s story illustrates a phenomenon emerging in Latin American nations and other developing countries: The virus initially brought to the region largely by wealthy citizens or visitors coming from Europe and the United States is now increasingly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods where residents have few means of protecting themselves.
“Epidemics are not democratic at all,” said Diego Armus, a professor of Latin American history at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. “We know this because those who have suffered the most are the poor.”
In megacities throughout the region — from Bogota to Sao Paulo; Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile — infections first emerged about three months ago in upper-class neighborhoods. Data from city health bulletins show many of those areas have succeeded in slowing the virus, in large part because residents there are able to stay indoors, working from home or living off savings until the crisis passes.
The disease took longer to reach the poorer areas of those cities, but now infections are surging in those heavily congested neighborhoods, and hospitals are...
