The Precarity of Those in the Informal Economy
Maria Eugenia Brockmann has been a friend of Solidarity Bridge since our founding. She frequently serves as an interpreter on mission trips, and for meetings between the Solidarity Bridge and Puente de Solidaridad staff. She is currently in Bolivia. Below she shares a first-hand account of how she and her fellow Bolivians are experiencing this pandemic.
Traffic has disappeared from Mariano Mendez Avenue in Cochabamba
As of midnight of Thursday, March 25, the transitional government of Jeanine Añez enacted a Sanitary State of Emergency (Estado de Emergencia Sanitaria), with the hope and goal of protecting Bolivians from the rapid spread of COVID-19. In practice, this has meant the total closure of national borders to everyone; no person is allowed to enter or leave the country. Public and private transportation has been banned, as well as any type of travel between regions. The quarantine measures have been heightened to allow only one person per household, aged between 16 and 65 years old, to leave the house, once a week, to get food, medicine, and other basic needs for subsistence. In our family, this responsibility falls on me as both my parents are older than 65. Based on the last number of my national ID card, I can leave my parents’ home on Wednesdays, between 7am and noon. Anyone older than 65 is banned from being in the streets and must rely on family members, friends, or the state to guarantee their basic needs. In light of this, neighborhood committees have organized volunteers to assist the older population in their neighborhoods, as well as others who may require help and company. We are in this together.
Maria Eugenia Brockmann (right) pictured with her father at the Punata Hospital on a previous mission trip
While some have applauded the strict enforcement of the Sanitary State of Emergency, others criticize it based on their life experiences. For many Bolivians who belong to the informal sector of the economy, in some estimates between 70 and 83 percent of the population, they cannot stay at home without work for such a long time. Daily wage earners, like street vendors, domestic help, drivers, and agricultural workers face the prospect of no income for at least two more weeks, when the State of Emergency will be re-evaluated. For them, the question is how to cope with hunger and feed their families. If they do not work today, they will be unable to eat tomorrow. The state is delivering canastas familiares, or family baskets, filled with basic food staples for more than one million families, as well as covering the bills of gas and electricity until June. Still, the resistance to the quarantine is big, and understandable. A lemon vendor interviewed on the nightly news expressed the conundrum many face: “I die of hunger, or I die of a cold… I will die anyhow.”
COVID-19 is not a cold, it’s not the flu. It is new. It questions our values and how we act in this world. In Bolivia there is a level of collective misinformation, mistrust, and disbelief stemming from irresponsible–even criminal–interests that deny the existence of the illness, or its severity. This makes everything more difficult, including how we respond together to the challenges posed by the pandemic. Hopefully, raising awareness of our interdependence will help foster the solidarity needed for our mutual wellbeing.
As Pope Francis reminds us, “Scripture constantly speaks of God acting on behalf of the poor.” May these days of disruption to our everyday routines also be days that break down the walls in our hearts—walls that have separated us from our brothers and sisters, and from our role in the structural sins that unduly burden them. May we learn to live the Gospel in the truest sense, and find in this trial a special time of solidarity that can transform our world.
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