17/07/2020 The New Humanitarian | COVID-19 shifts Peru’s internal migration into reverse Speaking with TNH via WhatsApp at the end of May, he said that he had been unable to qualify for years oftojournalism the heart of crisesand his Newsletter governmentFree support, which includes monthly25payouts families offrom 380 soles ($108). He multigenerational family rely on government food handouts. Only 50 food packages are distributed for all of his neighborhood’s 185 families, and neighbours pool donations so everyone can eat.  “Over here, people live in extreme vulnerability,” Caillahua said. “Some families are thinking of returning, even informally, to their land. They try to look for trucks that may take them. They think they could survive better than in Lima.” For him and others in Nuevo Amanecer, a former wasteland some 25 kilometers from the centre of Lima, such a return would have been unthinkable before the pandemic. The neighbourhood’s residents ed the region of Ayacucho, approximately 1,000 kilometres southeast of Lima, more than 25 years ago. They left behind a con ict between the government and extremist armed forces – including ghters from the Maoist Shining Path group and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA. Subscribe https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2020/07/08/Peru-internal-migration-coronavirus 4/10