América Reyes sits on the steps of Guatemala’s National Cathedral, with her four-year-old son at her side and white flag in her hand.
It is a symbol not of surrender, but of gnawing hunger amid the strict coronavirus lockdown which has brought the country’s informal economy to a grinding halt.
“We are asking for help, we are in need,” she said.
Reyes, 37, used to sell donuts and cakes, but the store where she worked was closed amid the pandemic, and Reyes is struggling to pay the rent and feed her two children.
She now walks each day nearly four kilometers from her small apartment on the outskirts of the capital to the historic center to beg for help.
“We are suffering during this crisis,” she said. “This crisis is affecting us all.”
White flags first began to appear on the streets of Guatemala City in early April shortly after quarantine was imposed in the village of Patzún, where the country’s first cases of community-transferred coronavirus were detected.
Since then, flags have become common across the country, with an entire lexicon of need reflected in their colors: white means hunger; red is for medicine; black, yellow, or blue means that a woman, child or elderly person is in danger of violence.
Parezo Sánchez, 77, has shined shoes in Guatemala City’s central plaza for 13 years to support his family. Now he stands on the street with a white flag.
“There is no work right now,” he said. “I am sad and in pain. [But] I don’t want to go home because I have no way of providing food for my family.”
Guatemala has reported 48 deaths and 2,512 infections from the virus. But the economic fallout of the pandemic has affected millions.
Like Reyes and Sánchez, nearly 70% of Guatemalans earn a precarious living in the unregulated informal economy, living from day to day.
Measures imposed by the government of President Alejandro Giammattei to slow the spread of the virus – including suspension of public transportation and daily curfews – have hit those living in poverty the hardest.
“It is another sign of a society that lacks social services and that does not have a labor market that permits people to have savings to confront the crisis,” Jonathan Menkos, the executive director of the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI), told the Guardian.
“[The white flags] are the most clear evidence that the social and economic model leaves most people behind” he said. “They cannot go one month without resources to eat.”
More than 60% of the population of Guatemala lives in poverty, and the country has one of the highest rates of childhood malnutrition in the world.
Menkos fears that the current crisis will only worsen such dire statistics.
In March, the Congress approved a series of emergency measures worth millions of dollars. Among these efforts was a stimulus of 1,000 quetzales (roughly $130) to over 2 million people as well as food boxes for the needy.
The government says it has delivered nearly 190,000 food boxes for over 1.2 million people. But two months later, many poor Guatemalans say they still have not received any support.
“This isn’t for all of the people,” she said. “We have not received anything from the government. Those who have received the support are those that do not need it.”