On March 21, 2020, the first case of the coronavirus was recorded in Puerto Williams, a small Chilean town that is famed for being the southernmost settlement in the world and which has been home for the past 7,000 years to the Yaghan indigenous people. Two days later, the authorities closed maritime entry points and airspace, limited economic activity to essential business only and ordered a strict lockdown. According to
Maritime Studies, one of the leading social sciences and humanities publications in the world, the quarantine measures had the effect of reviving some ancestral cultural practices that had been in danger of disappearing for some time, including traditional artisan work and use of the Yaghan language. The lockdown also strengthened intergenerational links in the community and led children and young people to once again feel identified as indigenous people.