Artist publishes 100 drawings from Peru’s COVID-19 pandemic

The first drawing in his latest book shows the reaction of members of a working-class Peruvian family as they stare in shock at the television during the announcement of the start of the state of emergency and mandatory lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The shutdown lasted 106 days.

Jiménez found scenes to drawn near his home. One morning, when he was returning from the market, he saw an old man fall to the ground and not get back up. People walked away from the man, saying he was infected.

“Only stray dogs came near him, and a few pigeons,” the artist recalls.

Jiménez, who is also an anthropologist, says that when he saw the man lying on the ground and the fearful witnesses, it reminded him of what he saw almost four decades ago when a man fell in the streets of Ayacucho during the political violence.

His drawing of the pandemic scene shows the man collapsed on the ground, surrounded by hundreds of the dead who try to take him away while two barking stray dogs try to defend him.

Other drawings show people dying in front of a hospital door, police chasing away street vendors with sticks, the unemployed or a family watching their father die because of a lack of oxygen.

He said he also collected stories by watching television or reading news stories, including a May 20, 2020, Associated Press story from Lima about corpses and a gardener who hanged himself after learning he had contracted the virus.