Horror and Solidarity: Collective Health During the COVID-19 Emergency in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Abstract

In 2020, Ecuador was among the most affected places in the world in the context of the COVID-19 emergency. Serious problems of structural inequality and governance resulted in corpses lying in the streets of Guayaquil—Ecuador’s largest city—while local communities resisted in different ways. We interviewed 18 participants who engaged in actions of solidarity during this context, critically analyzed their discourses, and generated relevant themes. There was a structural scheme of (pandemic) brutality that determined embodied experiences of horror, conditioned by a governance of abandonment and its related problems. To confront such horror, solidary community resistance focused on food, physical and mental health, management of corpses, community-led communication, online education, and political participation. We interpret that this was a process of social determination of collective health and discuss important theoretical, methodological, and ethical–political implications.