The pandemic plunged millions of Latin Americans into poverty. Young people are inheriting the consequences

IQUITOS, Peru — When the pandemic began to ravage this jungle city, Marlon Ashanga loaded his wife, two kids and virus-stricken father into a canoe and guided them three days upriver, deep into the Amazon rainforest.“People were getting sick everywhere, and we were scared,” recalled Ashanga, a boatman in Belen, a port district of bustling street stalls and homes on stilts. “In the forest, we could rely on natural remedies. And I knew we wouldn’t starve.”

Felipe Solomón Valles fled in the opposite direction: He was with his wife teaching in a remote village when the radio carried word of a spiraling contagion and nationwide lockdown that was threatening to trap the young couple and their infant far from their families. The three slipped out in a banana boat and later trekked through the bush lugging their belongings to elude stay-at-home orders enforced by police.