Latin America, the most desperate continent

At the start of the 19th century, Simon Bolivar dreamed of unifying South America. He bitterly concluded slightly before his death that he had "only plowed the sea". Far from bringing together the continent’s countries, the epidemic has instead led them further apart, playing a negative role in accelerating divisions. 

Of course, even before the coronavirus epidemic, the continent already seemed to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Argentine president Alberto Fernández had threatened to pull out of Mercosur in 2018. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro responded by threatening to expel the country from the bloc. Venezuela, "frozen in despair" under Nicolás Maduro and Colombia under Iván Duque give the sense of being ready to fight it out militarily. 

"The Trump of the Tropics"

In this populist galaxy, there exists nevertheless a man unique in his category in Latin America: Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil. Recalling Gabriel García Márquez and his masterpiece Love in the Time of Cholera, one is tempted to make the comparison of "Madness in the Time of Covid-19". The problem is that he is the president of the most important country in South America by far. 

In this period of pandemic, "the Trump of the Tropics" is outdoing himself. As with Donald Trump, we can observe in Bolsonaro the same underestimation of the virus’s severity, which he has called "a little flu," and the same willingness to prioritize the economy over health. However, they also both increasingly have reason to worry facing losses in their respective popularity. President Bolsonaro has only a 20% approval rating, whereas 50% of Brazilians do not approve of his choices in handling the pandemic. 

In law, these forces depend on state governors, the vast majority of which are anti-Bolsonaro. However, these "armed militias" are much closer to the ideas of the current president than to their supervisory authorities of the state governors. What would the military police do if the legislative and judiciary powers managed to implement an impeachment process against Bolsonaro for corruption or incompetence, as with the previous case against Dilma Rousseff?

The Latin American "backyard"

Brazil’s weight in Latin America is so significant that when this giant struggles, everything struggles. "Brazil is the country of the future and always will be," said the general de Gaulle with both pessimism and humor in the 1960s. In Brazil today, fear has replaced the hope that had existed during a short period from the Cardoso years (president from 1995 to 2003) to the beginning of the Lula years, who seemed, at least initially, to expand and extend the work of his predecessor. 

There is another question for Brazil which also applies to the continent as a whole. It is, of course, that of relations with the United States. It is certainly difficult to see that Trump’s America is giving lessons in responsibility to Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

The paradox is that after having done far too much for decades, if not centuries, North America may not be doing "enough" with South America. The former has taken its distance from its Latin American "backyard," allowing China to partly take its place. 

Largely alone and divided against itself and its demons – extreme violence, corruption, social and racial inequalities, and without forgetting the basis of everything: poverty aggravated by the falling prices of hydrocarbons and raw materials in general – the continent seems to be sliding.

There is more poverty in Africa, but there is also more hope there than in Latin America, perhaps the most desperate of all continents in the time of Covid-19. 
 

Avec l'aimable autorisation des Echos (publié le 22/06/2020)

Copyright : MICHAEL DANTAS / AFP