A region caught between stagnation and angry street protests

They stare out in black and white, a double row of portraits winding the full length of the curving wall of the clifftop mansion overlooking the Pacific that is the headquarters of Peru’s medical association, and then even continue into the garden. They are “the heroes of medicine”, records a plaque: the 551 doctors who died of covid-19 in Peru from the start of the pandemic in 2019 to the end of September 2021. Even as Latin America begins to leave covid behind, this poignant memorial is a reminder of what a savage toll it has wreaked. With just 8% of the world’s population, the region has suffered 28% of the officially recorded deaths from the disease. In The Economist’s reckoning of “excess deaths” per 100,000 people (the total number above the normal mortality rate), it trails only Europe.