AS much as guns and gadgets, pathogens have written history in the Americas. Smallpox cut through the Aztecs long before Hernan Cortes’s troops marched into Tenochtitlan. Yellow fever stopped Napoleon in Haiti, laying the way for the island’s independence. Epidemiologist Arnoldo Gabaldon liberated more than half of Venezuelan territory from malaria, launching the pestilent nation into the 20th century.
So what will be the legacy of coronavirus in the latitudes where it has found such accommodating quarters? By the end of May, Latin America was accounting for at least 40% of new daily Covid-19 deaths globally. The International Monetary Fund predicts that Latin America’s gross domestic product will contract by 9.4% this year, calling it the worst recession on record. Those who toil in the gray economy, one of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic, have already seen earnings shrink by 80%, with nearly two of every three 15- to 24-year-olds idled. Brazil alone lost 1.4 million jobs from March through May; in Argentina, up to 852,000 jobs could disappear this year.
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