As Hunger Spreads Under Lockdown, Guatemalans and Salvadorans Raise White Flag

Residents of the Las Victorias neighbourhood, most of them informal sellers, wave white flags as a sign asking for food, since the government suspended the movement of people due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Soyapango, El Salvador May 19, 2020. Victor Pena/Reuters

GUATEMALA CITY/SAN SALVADOR—Strict coronavirus lockdowns in Guatemala and El Salvador have so battered local economies that hundreds of families are flying white flags outside their homes or waving them in the street—not in surrender, but to seek food and assistance.

After 50 days of lockdown that has snuffed out their livelihoods, Ana Orellana and three neighbors put up a white flag and a sign asking for food on the graffiti-scrawled concrete boarding house they share in central San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.