The thin line between farce and tragedy: my Covid story between Italy and Guatemala

When the pandemic hit Italy in February 2020, I was in Milan, where I work at Bocconi University as Research Fellow in Public International Law. On the other side of the world, my partner was in Guatemala, where she had recently moved for a new job. I was supposed to fly on the 13th of March for a short visit, but our plans got overturned a few days before due to the closure of frontiers. Once Guatemala airports reopened in September 2020, I spent several months in the country, taking advantage of the new virtual reality and avoiding the cyclical European lockdowns and related measures. I managed to fly back and forth several times, when the situation in Italy allowed it and was required for teaching and other in-person commitments. In this short story, I would like to present some reflections based on my experiences during the past two years on the effects of the pandemic on structural inequalities. Living in balance between two different worlds led me to confront the ways in which people in Europe and Central America experienced the pandemic. The growing relevance of a third, online, world, will also be at the centre of my thoughts, as it was at the centre of my life in these years. More often than not, I could make sense of reality only in the virtual space, while surrounding events became more and more surreal. Farce and tragedy interchanged with unusual rapidity, leaving no time to understand feelings or realize what was ongoing. This contribution represents a first attempt to pause and analyse my chaotic environment, composed of news, laws, and emotions.