Want to get money to the most in need during a pandemic? Don’t count on your government. Do it yourself.
Roque Sevilla, former mayor of Quito, Ecuador in the late 1990s, had an idea. The coronavirus was ripping through Guayaquil and then later into Quito, the nation’s capital. His concern was that the virus would spread into crowded and cramped inner cities, and — primarily — into the Amazon jungles where some 15 different indigenous peoples live along rivers.