Latin American countries are emerging from a country where some 60,000 more people are expected to die in March alone.
It has long been a super force of comfortable strength, the sunny and culturally blessed land of Bossa Nova, Capoeira and Pele.
But Brazil’s chaotic reaction to the coronavirus under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has thrown Latin America’s largest country into an unknown and unsightly role: that of a covid-plagued, science-fleeing, politically volatile pariah to whom many of the region’s neighbors now close the door. .
“The other day I saw a pretty strong article saying that Brazil was beginning to be seen by its neighbors as a kind of leper colony. . . and that’s probably true,” admitted Rubens Ricupero, a veteran Brazilian diplomat who quoted Conrad, not João. Gilberto, to describe the situation in his country.
“The horror!The horror!” lamented the retired ambassador last week, before his country plunged into new political turbulence over Bolsonaro’s unforeseen dismissal of the defense minister. “Brazil is in the center of darkness.
Brazil’s neighbors, now struggling to respond to the cave next door, to agree, with Argentina, Colombia and Peru banning flights to their Portuguese-speaking neighbor and Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro berating his right-wing rival for a calamity that has killed more than 300,000 Brazilians.
“It is alarming, even distressing, to see the reports from São Paulo and Rio. . . and the reckless attitude of the Brazilian Trumpist right and Jair Bolsonaro towards the Brazilian people,” Maduro said last week in ordering a 14-day lockdown. to counter the more contagious P1 variant at the center of global fears about Brazil’s out-of-control outbreak.
“Brazil is now a risk to the world. Jair Bolsonaro,” Maduro proclaimed, pointing his index finger in the air. “It’s crazy. It doesn’t have to. “
Seven thousand miles south of Caracas, Uruguay, there are signs of caution as the government rushes to vaccinate citizens of its border region with Brazil. the first instances of P1 in Uruguay and called for strict restrictions to prevent its spread. “If we start to see that P1 circulates widely, we will have to opt for a general closure of almost everything,” Colina warned.
Nearly 60,000 Brazilians are expected to die in March alone, making it the deadliest month of Brazil’s 13-month outbreak.
In Argentina, too, sleep is lost due to chaos. An organization of Argentine scientists recently wrote an open letter imploring their government to close its 761-mile land border with Brazil.
“Brazil is a mirror in which we would prefer not to have to look at ourselves. That is why it is so vital to impose restrictions without delay because once infections start to increase, it will be too late,” said Humberto Debat, an Argentine biologist who helped produce the appeal, who condemned Bolsonaro’s “irresponsible and denialist” behavior.
Last Thursday, as Brazil recorded for the first time more than 100,000 cases of covid-19 in a single day, Argentina announced it would ban flights from Brazil, Chile and Mexico. : “The concern is that we can start to see the kind of death rate they had in Manaus earlier this year if the P1 variant starts circulating in Argentina. “
The Colombian government banned flights from Brazil in January, as well as domestic flights to the Amazonian border of the city of Leticia, where vaccination efforts target young adults in a bid to block the spread of the P1 variant. Ana Mauad, a foreign relations professor at Bogotá Universidad Javeriana, said Bolsonaro’s “total lack of strategy and mishandling of the pandemic” had surprised the region.
“Bolsonaro has controlled to turn Brazil into a gigantic hell,” tweeted former Colombian President Ernesto Samper last week, as the World Health Organization admitted that the “grave situation” in Brazil now affects its neighbors.
Bolsonaro’s leadership has reacted awkwardly to the refrain of criticism.
“I think it’s . . . extraordinarily unfair,” pro-Trump Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo told the Estado de São Paulo newspaper earlier this month. Foreign reputation, rejected the concept that there is something “out of control” in his country and claimed that Brazil faces “discrimination. “
“It’s as if. . . other people were just dying in Brazil,” Bolsonaro complained last week.
Ricupero said it was undeniable that his South American country had the “absolute epicenter” of the pandemic and predicted that regional restrictions would accumulate in the coming weeks in countries such as Bolivia, Colombia and Peru.
“Right now, Brazil is in a moment of darkness,” he said.