Not only Covid, what happens in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico
The in-depth study by Livio Zanotti, author of " ildiavolononmuoremai.it "
The caution with which international news broke the news and comments on Donald Trump's declared intention to question his eventual (but indicated as probable by the polls) defeat in the elections on November 3, is perhaps even more alarming than the unheard-of ones. words of the President. Nor is it the alteration of a moment, much less of humor, albeit warlike. The open refusal presents itself as the consequent outcome of a subversive attitude of the constitutional order, of which Trump has shown since the assumption of his mandate and even earlier in the course of his first electoral campaign. This one in progress, however, is already seriously disturbed.
It is an unprecedented threat, so much so that it worries the press, radio, TV, the entire media system as a whole, to the point of inducing them to prefer to appear distracted or intimidated rather than amplify the apocalyptic scenario wide open by the possibility that Trump really poses. the express purpose in action. It could immediately cause bloody clashes in the United States, irremediable crises in the hottest parts of the world, dramatic tensions and global economic upheavals. We are speaking not only of the first economic and military power in the world, although no longer completely hegemonic; but also of the reference model of the capitalist democracies of our entire planet. Talking about irresponsibility sounds reductive.
In a sudden gasp of unusual reasonableness (also due to the approaching electoral exam), Donald Trump had previously said that he had always known that the coronavirus was malignant, but that he had deliberately underestimated it so as not to create alarmism. “We could not have done more”, he immediately added to acquit himself at the same time canceling himself. Certainly, not only possible and desirable, but due (to the responsibility of a head of state if not simple common sense) to do less, less demagogic and bizarre authoritarianism, so that the enormity of the grief produced to the country by the adventurism of the President, from your unscrupulous gambling on public health.
The irresistible inclination to opportunism, to casual speculation, marks the entire existence of Donald Trump, from the not always transparent real estate deals to the entrance (also far from clear) to the White House. Denial is the other side of his cultural figure, of which he has become a champion since the moment (June 2017) he denounced the Paris Agreement for the reduction of global warming, signed by his predecessor, Barak Obama. The procedures envisaged make the release from the agreement effective only at the end of this year; but as early as 2018, the United States has intensified its carbon dioxide emissions between 2 and 3%. Certain pollution in exchange for a few, poor and ephemeral jobs.
Over 6 and a half million infections have caused more than 200,000 deaths in the United States in less than 6 months (they add up to one million worldwide). Without sparing – in the opinion of authoritative specialists both Democrats and Republicans – dramatic damage to the material economy as well as to the financial one (business closures, unemployment, stock market crashes previously contaminated by full-blown speculative bubbles). The fumes of the fires that burn tens of thousands of hectares of woods, fields and settlements from California to Oregon fly over the country to cloud the air of New York with low pressure. In the south, storms devastate entire areas of Alabama. Hoping to revive investment, employment and consumption, the Federal Reserve freezes the interest rate at zero until 2023.
It is perhaps no coincidence that after the USA, the western country most painfully affected is Brazil (over 133 thousand dead), whose president – Jair Bolsonaro – is the one who most blatantly went so far as to imitate Trump's attitudes, also inflating his more grotesque aspects. Neither is the economy any better: to the point that the President, surrounded by criticism and swooping in the polls, in open war with the governors of the states of Rio and Sao Paulo, former allies, now accuses his minister of inefficiency Economics, Paulo Guedes, credited as neoliberal and trustee of the big national capital in the government. But that in fact has so far failed to carry out any of the promised reforms. As the criminal trials against Bolsonaro's children advance, despite his illegal interventions to protect them.
Mexico follows (and at a short distance Bolivia, Colombia , Peru, Ecuador, Argentina), where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), although animated by the best and tirelessly proclaimed intentions (every morning, from his paternalistic radio pedagogy), succumbs to its own nationalist rhetoric, gangrened by the metastases accumulated over the past decades of conservative governments (PRI), corruption and drug trafficking. It was a short step from glory (of electoral triumph) to vainglory (of unrealized programs). A strong and dangerous instability ensues for the second largest economy in Latin America. The massacre carried out by Covid is reflected in production, employment and consumption. And they do not stop the violence of large-scale organized crime against institutions and individual citizens.
It is true that these are very large countries, with enormous populations, in large parts concentrated in urban areas. Therefore, in proportion to the number of inhabitants and their distribution on the territory, the victims of Covid appear less huge. However, this is not the only parameter to be taken into account, in order to get a balanced idea of the human and material damage inflicted on the various socio-economic realities by the pandemic, which has not spared any corner of the planet earth. And the respective possibilities of better defending oneself. Brazil and Mexico, despite the heavy internal contradictions, are not fully developed countries, but far from poor. They constitute the major industrial realities of Latin America and are in the top 15 economies of the world.
Although of incomparable scope compared to those of the United States, other significant consultations are approaching in the subcontinent, from one end to the other shaken by tensions and crises, all accentuated by the Covid pandemic: on October 18, the general elections in Bolivia will decide the institutionalization of the coup of last November or more probably – if the predictions are true -, they will reaffirm the popular condemnation, leading to the Presidency Luis Arce, the former minister of the economy of the defenestrated Evo Morales, candidate of his party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS); a week later, on the 25th, the Chileans will go to the polls to decide whether and how to give themselves a new Constitution, replacing that imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship. In December, Venezuela will also vote to renew Parliament, an extreme possibility for Nicolas Maduro to bring the exhausted country back on the path of acceptable coexistence.
Without ever failing, political polarization has been inflamed by the deepening of the inequalities that prevent Latin American societies from emerging from the perennial emergency. With unique effects even if you learn. In Argentina, they brought together the opposition to neoliberalism, bringing a Peronist center-left to the government. The decline of Sebastian Piñera, who knew so little about the conditions in the country that he was forced to change the Constitution to face the unprecedented protest against the rise in public transport, brought a neo-communist candidate to the fore in Chile. Is the first time. His name is Daniel Jadue and although he appears divisive in the center-left coalition, pisa fuerte , according to polls. Covid seems to have shifted the perception of needs towards issues of collective interest, accentuating their urgency.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/argentina-brasile-messico-cosa-succede/ on Sat, 26 Sep 2020 06:00:50 +0000.