Preamble
1. We, the undersigning individuals and organizations, have gathered from all over Latin America in joint work to accompany people and communities of faith and society in general amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Also known as Coronavirus, this disease has disrupted all the personal and social life of those who inhabit this continent. That also includes the work of spiritual accompaniment and social solidarity that our different faith communities have been developing.
2. We understand that this pandemic highlights the lack of guaranteed rights for most of our Latin American peoples. It is not merely a question of contagion by the virus. It also entails the visibility of dynamics of inequity and social inequality that emerge in each society on the continent in a dizzying and worrying way.
3. At the same time, we observe that there is no awareness of the reality of the situation. Messages from so-called “experts” have flooded social media, who, instead of reporting, misinform. Although our knowledge of the virus increases day by day, during a rapidly spreading pandemic, there is no wholly fixed or closed data. Due to this, the landscape is continuously changing. Science gives us the available information according to the needs of the moment. Governments and civil society organizations must contribute to educating people to pay attention to that issue without falling into “miracle solutions” that are neither based on science nor help to calm the anxiety, fear, and mistrust that a pandemic generates.