Facing hunger, Peru’s poor band together with ‘common pots’

By FRANKLIN BRICENO
Associated Press

CIUDAD DE GOSEN, Peru (AP) — Every day for more than two years, Cindy Cueto has woken up in the house she shares with her three children atop a desert hill in Peru’s capital, and wondered: “What are we going to eat?” The 39-year-old bands together with her neighbors in Ciudad de Gosen to cook up a “common pot,” a survival strategy that resurfaced in Lima’s sprawling shantytowns with the coronavirus pandemic. It has since expanded to ameliorate the impacts of the rising prices of food, fuel and fertilizer due to global inflation, government ineffectiveness and the war in Ukraine. The common pot provides them one meal a day.