By FRANKLIN BRICENO
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Pushing a shopping cart with two children, César Alegre emerges from the large, deteriorated house near Peru’s presidential palace that is shared by 45 families to search for food. Sometimes he begs in markets. Sometimes he sells candies.
It is a task that was hard at the best of times, but with a month-long quarantine that has forced 32 million Peruvians to stay home and closed restaurants and food kitchens, it has become much harder.
“We eat once or twice a day,” said the 52-year-old, who says he has spent time in six different prisons for theft. Many among the 100 or so residents of the three-story house are ex-convicts who can’t find work. The old building is opposite Lima’s San Lazaro church, which was founded in 1650 as a hospital for refugees from a leprosy outbreak. Read more >>