THREAD: We traveled more than a thousand miles across Colombia to examine how the pandemic and lockdowns are affecting everyday families, looking for a window into what is happening across Latin America. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/world/americas/coronavirus-latin-america-inequality.html?smid=tw-share

Why did we make this journey? Over the last 20 years, Latin America has dramatically reduced inequality, and millions moved out of poverty. The pandemic threatens to reverse those gains like nothing else in recent history. Here: evictions in Bogotá.

We wanted to know what was happening to the families that had been so central to that march toward equality. So we began to drive. (Battery died just once.)

So many moments from our trip across Colombia were left on the cutting room floor, so I’ll share some here. Image: a community at the border with Venezuela.

I could not get the clattering out of my head. Sandra is a housekeeper in Colombia who lost her job because of the pandemic. Here she is being evicted for the second time in the short course of the health crisis.

As we traveled through pandemic-choked Colombia, we realized the engines of social mobility were collapsing around us. Here: Handprints of students at a school that was teetering near closure, with parents unable to pay fees. The kids' names: Susana, Samuel, Ximena.

Amid the health crisis, small businesses in Colombia had closed for good. Universities were hemorrhaging students. Farmers were ruined by disrupted markets. Boys had turned to selling drugs to feed siblings. Women and girls had been pushed into prostitution to pay the bills.

There was also a lot of beauty. Not just the road, but in town after town across Colombia we met people who had gone into crisis mode to help their neighbors amid the pandemic.

We covered a lot of terrain on this trip.

Some roads bumpier than others.

The most glaring image of Latin America’s backslide was the highway. We met hundreds of Venezuelan migrants pushed by the pandemic to begin hiking home. The challenge of this journey cannot be overstated. Searing sun. Powerful wind. Driving rain. Here: Annabel,16, y Alfonso, 18.

Amid the pandemic, Annabel, in pink, spent her 16th birthday hiking back to Venezuela. She is an aspiring graphic designer. Here, she and her boyfriend and their companions are about to begin the hardest portion of the journey, a high altitude climb to the border.

Annabel, pushed by the pandemic to hike back to Venezuela, stuffed golden heat blankets in her plastic shoes to keep warm.

Annabel's groups tries to layer up before the last leg of the journey to Venezuela, a high-altitude climb where migrants have died in the past.

What else? We collected so much material that there are at least two more stories coming. Stay tuned.