Before the pandemic, thousands of people left the capital city of Santiago, Chile, every weekend to head to Los Molles. They filled the hotels and bars run by the town's 648 permanent residents. It was a reliable and amicable relationship: The tourists came for the beaches and laid-back fishing village vibes, and their spending fed the Los Molles economy.
When coronavirus quarantine measures were announced, Santiago residents fled to their beach vacation homes midweek, hoping to escape a claustrophobic quarantine in the capital and relax in Los Molles.
But they found flaming barricades made of wood and tires, billowing tar-thick smoke and blocking the highway entrances leading into town. If the flaming barricades didn't get the message across, the volunteer guards let anyone who wasn't a permanent resident know this wasn't the time for a beach vacation and sent them away.
Those who managed to get in anyway quickly found it difficult to relax. Residents showed up outside their homes shouting and holdings signs, "Senora, this is not your primary residence," "This isn't a vacation," and "Go home!" Protests outside vacation homes drove at least three people out of town.
The neighborhood association made exceptions for some vacation home owners who are elderly or have chronic illnesses if they wanted to pass the duration of the quarantine in Los Molles.
Los Molles is among a handful of small tourist towns in Latin America that have decided on isolation to protect themselves against the coronavirus pandemic. Remote beach towns in Mexico have used the same strategy.
Sayulita, a surf town popular with backpackers north of Puerto Vallarta in the Mexican state of Nayarit, was closed off in April by a group called Gavilanes Vigilantes, the Vigilant Hawks. Members of the volunteer group took it upon themselves to set up checkpoints at every entrance into town and began posting videos on social media of tourists being sent home. "If you are planning vacations, please don't come to Sayulitas," one Hawk says in a video posted to Twitter.
In Puerto Penasco, nicknamed Arizona's beach because it is just four hours away over the border from Phoenix, Mayor Kiko Munro set up checkpoints, and announced a ban on anyone who is not a resident entering the city and an obligatory 12-day quarantine in a hotel for anyone allowed in.
Residents of these small communities say the measures have worked. Los Molles residents said that with community organizing they have avoided any infections as of late July despite being two hours outside Santiago, which is now a global COVID-19 hot spot. Chile has one of the highest per capita cumulative infection rates in the world, 1,750 per 100,000, and 74% of cases are concentrated in the Santiago metropolitan area. The region with the second-highest number of cumulative cases is neighboring Valparaiso, where Los Molles is located.
Loreto Salgado, head of the Los Molles Neighborhood Association, said some government entities and vacation home owners struggled to accept the measures at first but ultimately have respected them. Chilean police even took to staffing the checkpoints alongside residents _ once they stopped using the flaming barricades.
"They know we are doing this to protect our right to live," Salgado said. She says the measures were necessary in a community with a large elderly population and little access to health care. The nearest hospital is 26 miles away in Ligua, but for an emergency and ventilators, Salgado said residents would need to drive almost two hours to Vina del Mar.
Some residents of Santiago who own vacation homes support the measures taken by Los Molles, even if it means they can't enjoy them for awhile.
"What they did in Los Molles is a success on a global level," Karen Gotschlich said. She lives in Santiago but owns a home and a business in Los Molles. "But you need to understand that they live on tourism, they can't maintain those measures for long, and they need to find new ones."
"This is the constant dilemma, we have to choose between protecting our health and protecting our livelihood," Salgado said.
Other towns have not been able to hold out and ended their isolation well before Los Molles.
In early June, Sayulita businesses began operating again and the town opened up to tourism. Antonio Echevarria Garcia, the governor of the southwest coastal state of Nayarit, posted a video telling residents to "prepare for the worst," adding that new cases are surging and hospitals are full. He blamed citizen indifference to social distancing measures. Cumulative cases have spiked from 634 to 2,861 in Nayarit since the beginning of June, when quarantine measures relaxed and the governor announced that businesses could reopen at 30% capacity.
Salyulita's municipality, Bahia de Banderas, now has the second-highest number of cumulative cases in the state, at 401. Residents report rumors of cases in town but no official numbers have been released.
Tourists can now visit the town of Puerto Penasco if they can get through the "health barriers" erected by the municipal government and they don't mind that beaches are closed. According to new protocols posted online, tourists entering Puerto Penasco will have their temperature checked under a large white tent on the side of the road. They will be given a COVID-19 rapid test if they have a fever. Only those who pass can enter. The government is releasing videos of tourists and of buildings getting disinfected in Puerto Penasco to promote the reopening.
Nonessential travel _ which does not include tourism _ remains prohibited across the U.S.-Mexico border until Aug. 20, but Enrique Clausen, health secretary of the state of Sonora, still called for tougher restrictions in early July due to Arizona's outbreak.
In Mexico the number of daily confirmed cases continued to increase throughout July, while it has dropped slightly in Chile.
In Los Molles, the neighborhood association plans to continue guarding the community as long as local quarantine laws allow.
Salgado said that as soon as all of this is over, "everyone will be welcome in Los Molles."
