Latin America waits for tourists to return

“PERÚ, DESPEGUEMOS nuevamente” (“Peru, let’s take off again”) pleads the slogan in big letters across the glass front of Lima’s airport terminal. In the Plaza de la Independencia in the colonial heart of Quito, Ecuador’s capital, a small group of blond tourists stands out like an exotic species in a sea of dark-haired street vendors. From the beaches of the Caribbean to the lakes of Patagonia, the question being asked is that posed earlier this year in a cartoon by El Roto in El País, a Spanish newspaper. He drew two empty sun loungers with one asking the other, “Do you think they’ll come?”