Many countries struggled with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as it overwhelmed health services and forced everyone into lockdown. In Ecuador, inadequate public funding for healthcare and longstanding unequal access to resources heightened the damage of the virus. Here, Michael D. Hill and Consuelo Fernández-Salvador examine how Ecuadorians adapted to the digital divide apparent in the shift to virtual classes and state abandonment in healthcare. They found people opted for collaboration, solidarity, and medical pluralism to tackle the inequalities heightened by the pandemic.
Consuelo Fernández-Salvador
Consuelo Fernández-Salvador is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and holds a PhD in development studies from the International Institute of Social Studies-Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests have focused on ethno-politics, extractivism, and development, particularly around large-scale mining in the southern Amazon region in Ecuador. She is coeditor and coauthor of the book La Amazonía Minada: Minería a Gran Escala y Conflictos en el Sur del Ecuador (with coeditors van Teijlingen, Leifsen, and Sánchez-Vázquez; USFQ Press-Abya Yala, 2017). Recently, she has also been involved in collaborative research on organizational cultures, as well as community tourism and the impact of Chinese mega-infrastructure on local populations. She is now the coordinator for Ecuador of the Latin American Consortium of the international research project, “Solidarity in times of a pandemic.”