A group of Guatemalan citizens gathered on Tuesday in the Plaza de la Constitución in the capital to protest, simulating a funeral procession of victims, the government policies designed to alleviate the expansion of the coronavirus in Guatemala.

Various sectors of civil society and of groups such as workers from the central American country's employers' fairs agreed in the central plaza of Guatemala City to demand from the Government the actions for social support to deal with the economic and health crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic has generated.

Protesters wore widow headscarves and carried white crosses with some slogans, such as "my basic services were cut off and the voucher never came to me".

The workers at the fairs asked the State for help, as the presidential decision to suspend any public activity and mass meeting has deepened an unprecedented economic crisis.

"We denounce that President (Alejandro) Giammattei stigmatizes the returned population, when it has been the migrants who support the country with remittances. The damn you, who leaves the town adrift and blames us for contagion", The group of activists brandished in a manifesto released during the protest.

The words of the protesters come after Giammattei described in an interview in previous days as a "cursed flight" a plane from the United States - and that landed just over two weeks ago - with at least 40 infected deportees from COVID-19.

WAITING FOR HELP

In the proclamation of this Tuesday, the non-conformists declared that they were protesting since "we have died, not only due to the coronavirus, but also due to the horror of hunger, poverty, forgetfulness of the State, the exploitation of the Cacif (the organized economic sector) and of the corruption of the politicians and military on duty ".

In addition, they warned that the funds approved by Congress to face the effects of the pandemic (2 billion dollars) and the government's social programs will not reach "the neediest", nor "served to equip hospitals and protect medical personnel and paramedic".

The group concluded that "550 were affected by the coronavirus, but thousands and millions by historical injustice, hunger, corruption, the illicit enrichment of businessmen and the military" and therefore, they claimed, "it was not the coronavirus, it was the State".

According to official data, Guatemala has registered 530 positive cases of COVID-19, of which 15 have died and 49 have recovered.

63.58 percent of the infections correspond to men and the majority of cases are concentrated in the departments of Guatemala, Chimaltenago and Sacatepéquez, in the center of the country.

The crisis stemming from the pandemic has deepened the anguish of the majority of the population, in a country where more than 60 percent of the 16 million inhabitants live in conditions of poverty and one in two children suffers from malnutrition, according to data from international organizations.

In recent days, in Guatemala, the appearance of white flags has proliferated, both outside the houses and in groups of people who wave them in an effort to get food aid and food due to the worsening of the economic crisis.

In addition to the white one, in Guatemala the use of flags of other colors to ask the community for help has become popular with the pandemic, such as the red one that is for older adults who need medicine or food; the black woman to denounce sexist violence against a woman; yellow for battered childhood or blue for violent men.