The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating in Peru, which suffered a high death rate and severe economic disruption. These results occurred despite ambitious response measures, revealing widespread institutional weaknesses across the country's levels of government. We analyze responses across the four levels of government, with emphasis on local governance in rural areas, to understand how institutions and contexts shape crisis management outcomes. We focus on the Arequipa region, drawing from 44 interviews with officials and community members. We found that the crisis provoked a reversion to the norm across multiple scales, though with significant differentiation. The national government fell back on a centralized, militarized approach that effectively reclaimed power but was ineffective in confronting the pandemic. Counter the overarching recentralization trend, in rural peripheries where state power was always partial, norms of informal local governance were reinforced and intensified. The de facto autonomy in rural areas elicited a mix of paralysis and improvisation, with outcomes that varied widely from place to place and over time. These bifurcated results in the face of crisis reveal important weaknesses in Peru's governance structures and institutions and show how pre-existing habits and norms were reproduced in the face of crisis, rather than reformed or transcended.

Introducción: El artículo analiza dos procesos de presupuesto participativo, uno virtual y otro presencial, en dos zonas rurales peruanas similares, reflexionando sobre las características prevalentes tras 20 años de la ley de elaboración obligatoria del presupuesto participativo en condiciones de crisis, y el impacto de la virtualidad versus la presencialidad en la realización de talleres. Metodología: Se realizaron 25 entrevistas en profundidad con participantes y autoridades, procesadas con el software Nvivo. Resultados: Indican que, independientemente del formato, la participación se ve limitada por la falta de credibilidad, confianza y legitimidad, ya que los acuerdos no son legalmente obligatorios. Discusión: Sugiere que la presencialidad es preferible incluso en contextos de lejanía territorial, debido a las limitaciones de acceso y uso de internet. Conclusiones: Destacan que la falta de credibilidad en el cumplimiento de los acuerdos y la legitimidad de las autoridades afecta los procesos tanto presenciales como virtuales. Además, la implementación de un modelo generalizado, sin considerar las disparidades territoriales y la virtualidad, ha dificultado la adaptación en zonas rurales, concentrando decisiones y limitando la participación efectiva.

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has led many states, in an attempt to control the spread of the virus, to decree social immobilization, which meant the introduction of restrictions on the free movement of people and the opening of shops. This led them to seek new marketing channels for purchases. Among these, ICTs have been important. This is the focus of the analysis in this document. Through surveys and interviews, information was obtained, divided into four age groups, which showed that an important part of the population has had to resort to ICTs to acquire goods and/or pay for services. This change in the way of acquiring had different particularities according to the age group analyzed, with a greater change in the oldest group (56 to 74 years old). It can be concluded that the massification of these tools has generated a change in the ways of acquiring products, and this is likely to transcend the pandemic and these channels will be maintained and strengthened in the future.