******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
NY Times, March 26, 2020
As Latin America Shuts Down to Fight Virus, Brazil and Mexico Are Holdouts
By Ernesto Londoño, Manuela Andreoni, Letícia Casado and Azam AhmedVideo
RIO DE JANEIRO — Most leaders in Latin America reacted to the arrival of
the coronavirus in the region with speed and severity: Borders were
shut. Flights were halted. Soldiers roamed deserted streets enforcing
quarantines, and medical professionals braced for an onslaught of
patients by building field hospitals.
But the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, who govern more than half of
Latin America’s population — Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and, to a lesser
degree, his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador — have
remained strikingly dismissive. They’ve scoffed at calls to shut down
business and sharply limit public transportation, calling such measures
far more devastating to people’s welfare than the virus.
In a region with high poverty rates, where hundreds of millions of
people live in close quarters, without access to proper sanitation or
health care, experts say their approach could create an ideal breeding
ground for the virus, with devastating consequences for public health,
the economy and the social fabric.
“This is a recipe for social implosion in a region that was already in a
state of social upheaval,” said Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the
Peterson Institute for International Economics, who is originally from
Brazil. “In a situation like this, things can break down really fast if
there is a lack of trust in government and people feel very vulnerable.”
Mr. López Obrador, a leftist, has continued to wade into crowds and kiss
babies. Ruling out travel restrictions, business closings or quarantine
orders, last week Mr. López Obrador suggested Mexico would be spared by
divine intervention as he held up two amulets he called “my bodyguards.”
“Do not panic, and please do not stop going out,” he said in a video
Sunday night. “If you have the economic capacity, keep taking your
families to restaurants, because that means strengthening the family and
popular economy.”
It was not until Tuesday that his government closed schools, prohibited
gatherings of more than 100 people and told Mexicans to stay at home. By
then, the Mexico City government had already moved to shut down much of
public life.
But Mr. Bolsonaro, a far-right leader who has been in office a little
more than a year, has remained defiant, continuing to dismiss the virus
as a “measly cold” that does not warrant “hysteria.”
In a national address Tuesday night, Mr. Bolsonaro dismissed measures
taken by governors and mayors as a “scorched earth” approach. Mr.
Bolsonaro, who is 65, also said that if he were to get the virus, he
would recover easily because of his “athletic background.”
While he spoke, Brazilians across the political spectrum banged pots
outside their windows in what has become a nightly protest of his
cavalier attitude, with some crying, “Out with Bolsonaro!”
As of Wednesday morning, Brazil had 2,271 confirmed cases, a sixfold
increase from a week ago, and 47 deaths.
Most leaders in Latin America had regarded the new virus as a faraway
problem — one unlikely to raise havoc in the region during the austral
summer — until the first case was diagnosed in Brazil in late February.
Since then, the coronavirus has spread briskly in the region, with
Brazil, Ecuador and Chile having the most diagnosed cases.
As the pandemic guts the global economy and jams supply chains across
the world, Latin America is uniquely vulnerable to an economic collapse.
The region was already struggling to absorb a diaspora of millions of
Venezuelans who fled the country’s humanitarian and political crisis.
Economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean last year was a
dismal 0.1 percent, dragged down by the low price of commodities and a
wave of social upheaval that roiled Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia
and Chile.
The public health impact will also probably be devastating. A large
share of the population in Latin America lives in the type of dense
urban enclaves where the virus appears to spread with the most ease. An
estimated 490 million people lack proper sanitation.
While the outbreak is not expected to peak in the region for at least
another month, already there have been jarring signs of strife.
In Colombia, at least 23 inmates were killed over the weekend during
riots staged by prisoners who said the authorities weren’t doing enough
to shield them from the pandemic. In Brazil, meanwhile, hundreds of
prisoners broke free last week during a coordinated mutiny across four
prisons in the state of São Paulo. Many were later recaptured.
In some poor Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods, drug trafficking gangs, which
hold more sway there than the state, this week announced strict curfew
orders that were relayed by text message and loudspeakers.
“We want the best for the population,” said one order, distributed by
text message. “If the government doesn’t have the capacity to handle
this, organized crime will.”
As the first confirmed coronavirus cases in Brazil’s poor neighborhoods,
or favelas, were reported over the weekend, residents who earn meager
wages and contend with rampant violence, lack of sanitation and cramped
quarters braced for new and terrifying circumstances.
Daniela Santos, a 32-year-old maid who lives in the Vila Paciência
favela in western Rio de Janeiro, is doing her best to take shelter in
the single-room home she shares with her three daughters and
granddaughter. Her fear of the virus is compounded by a more ordinary
threat: keeping the girls fed.
Last week Ms. Santos’s bosses told her to stop going to work until
further notice, without offering to keep paying her salary.
“When I run out of food, what will I do?” she asked. “I don’t have work
or savings. I have nothing. We are abandoned.”
Mr. Bolsonaro has spoken with exasperation about the coronavirus since
January, calling it a “fantasy” that was being blown out of proportion
by political rivals and the press to weaken his government.
Even after several of his top aides tested positive for the virus after
traveling to Florida on an official trip that included a dinner with
President Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Bolsonaro continued to argue that
public “panic” posed a bigger threat than the virus.
As medical experts at home and abroad were urging social distancing,
particularly among the elderly and other vulnerable people, the
president encouraged mass rallies by supporters on March 15 — and even
greeted several dozen people outside his home in Brasília, shaking hands
and taking selfies.
As counterparts in Peru, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela
took radical steps to limit the contagion last week, Mr. Bolsonaro went
to war with the governors of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the country’s
two largest states, who were taking unilateral action to sharply limit
people’s movement.
“Life goes on,” Mr. Bolsonaro said last Tuesday. “There’s no need to be
hysterical.”
Three days later, his health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who is a
doctor, warned that the country’s public health care system would
“collapse” by the end of April at the rate the virus was spreading.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s actions have set off a withering political backlash —
even from former allies. Janaína Paschoal, a state lawmaker who was on
Mr. Bolsonaro’s shortlist for vice-presidential candidates, last week
called for his removal from office.
Last week, a few lawmakers presented an impeachment request over the
president’s conduct.
Sâmia Bomfim, one of the legislators pressing for his impeachment, said
Mr. Bolsonaro’s handling of the crisis had been deeply confounding.
“Sometimes I get the impression that they’re setting in motion social
chaos so they can impose a state of siege and deploy repressive force,”
said Ms. Bomfim, a leftist from São Paulo. “I have doubts about whether
this is incompetence or a deliberate strategy, but I’m afraid of both.”
In Mexico, health care experts say Mr. López Obrador’s attitude is
reckless and warn that failure to take swift steps now will deepen the
humanitarian and economic toll of the virus.
“Our health system could be overwhelmed, like what is happening in Italy
and when you reach that point, you have an uncontrollable situation that
could lead to social chaos,” said José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, a
former health minister who led the efforts to fight the 2009 H1N1
pandemic in Mexico, which were widely seen as a success.
Mr. López Obrador, a populist firebrand who rose to power by appealing
to Mexico’s poor, appears reluctant to take the kind of steps his
counterparts have adopted, fearing the calamitous impact they would have
on informal workers and others who are barely getting by now.
But analysts warn that drastic steps will be required eventually.
“It is a dangerous bet to postpone this as much as possible,” said Jesús
Silva-Herzog, a professor at the School of Government at the Tecnológico
de Monterrey university. “Maybe when they decide to do it, it will be
too late.”
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com