Brazil and the “Bolsonaro Phenomenon”: Politics, the Economy, and the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2019–2020

Abstract

From a document corpus taken from leading journals recording the discourses and actions of President Jair Bolsonaro and his team in managing the economy, politics, and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more than clear that this administration refuses to play by the rules of the democratic game. There is a close relationship between the authoritarian administration and the naturalization of a logic that prioritizes market interests above all, producing an ultra-neoliberalism that not only operates within the economic and financial sphere but also produces antidemocratic modes of social subjectivity.

Segundo um corpus de documentos proveniente dos jornais principais que registravam os discursos e ações do Presidente Jair Bolsonaro e seu equipe com respeito a sua gerência da economia, da polítca e da pandemia do COVID-19, fica muito claro que este governo se recusa a cumprir as regras do jogo democrático. Ademais, existe uma relação íntima entre o governo autoritário e a uniformização de uma lógica que prioriza os interesses do mercado sobre todo, produzindo um ultra-neoliberalismo que não somente opera dentro da esféra econômica e financeira mas também gera modos antidemocráticos de subjetividade social.

We have elsewhere (Oliveira and Veronese, 2019) reflected on how it was possible for Brazil to elect Jair Messias Bolsonaro—a mediocre politician with a violent far-right discourse—as president of the country with Latin America’s largest economy. We pointed to unresolved historical issues such as the nation's transition from colony to empire, intertwined with a history of slavery and racism, patriarchal oppression, and homophobia, a military dictatorship that ended without any transitional justice, and a long-standing class struggle in a country that legitimizes the existence of brutal inequalities. These historical problems present themselves today in the form of a colonial subjectivity and the absence of a national identity. Other continuing issues include structural racism (Almeida, 2018), institutional sexism, and homophobia, a culture of “fair violence” as long as it is “for the good of the nation,” and violent rejection of the poor (Cortina, 2017).

These unresolved problems created conditions ripe for manipulating the fear and frustration of the nation's citizens in the face of economic crisis. The dissemination of fake news (Wellen, 2019) and Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) (Intercept, 2020) have contributed to impairing the proper functioning of regulatory institutions (Avritzer, 2020). Economic crises like the one that Brazil has been going through since 2015 proved fertile ground for fear. Poor living conditions and insecurity made a considerable part of the Brazilian population susceptible. “Material fear” combined with “immaterial fear” provoked a kind of idolatry revolving around a “savior leader,” a populist who was allegedly capable of fixing all the country's problems with a mere snap of his fingers, someone who could supposedly bring together a country that lacked a true feeling of being a unified nation. Fear is a fundamental element of authoritarian politics with fascist characteristics (Santayana, 2016).

All of these facets came together in the 2018 elections, with manipulation of such feelings and the dissemination of fake news about the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party—PT) and its candidates and the figure of Lula da Silva and all sorts of lies about Bolsonaro's political opponents (Wellen, 2019). Meanwhile, Brazilian institutions allowed Operation Car Wash to continue despite its many violations of due process, eventually imprisoning then-candidate Lula and wiping him from the election scoreboard. All this consolidated into a favorable climate for electing a political apologist for the use of violence.

Our interest in writing this article stems from the desire to verify what we predicted in our earlier one and look to ways to overcome the situation. In 2019 we were living in Bolsonaro’s Brazil without the COVID-19 pandemic. Today we are talking about a Brazil that combines catastrophic government action with the devastating global pandemic. In the final reflections of our previous article, we argued that the Bolsonaro administration was characterized by the following dynamics: “the institutionalization of proto-fascism and the government's inability to lead democratically, ultra-neoliberal policies, the criminalization of social movements, and violence against social minorities” (Oliveira and Veronese, 2019: 262). In this article we add a reflection on the national consequences of the pandemic crisis. What are the characteristics of management seen in the first two years of the Bolsonaro administration? What are its economic policies? What are the narratives and actions employed to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic?

To answer these questions, we turned to public documents and news published in the national media about government actions. We used only sources that were not suspected of publishing false content, and many of the president's statements are recorded on video, meaning that there is no doubt about their veracity and authenticity. With the support of a specialized literature review (Dagnino, Olvera, and Panfichi, 2006; Avritzer, 2020; Ventura and Bueno, 2021; Santana, 2021), we intend to produce a critical interpretation of the first two years of Bolsonaro's administration.

The Policy Perspective

The political history of Jair Bolsonaro, in his 29 years as an elected official (2 as an alderman for the city of Rio de Janeiro and 27 as a congressman for Rio de Janeiro), revealed two characteristics: authoritarianism and mediocre performance. There are campaign speeches on record in which he discusses annihilation of his opponents as a method of political management. His remarks in a video released just days before the second round of the 2018 elections are symbolic (Poder360, 2018):

They lost yesterday, they lost in 2016, and they will lose again next week. And this time, the overhaul will be much wider reaching. To this gang [the Workers' Party, social movements], I can say that if you want to stay here, you'll have to be subject to the same law as the rest of us; if not, you go to jail. These outcasts, socialists, will be banished from our homeland. . . . No one is going to escape from this homeland, because it is ours; it does not belong to that gang of socialists with their red flag. . . . Here there will be no more room for corruption. You petralhada [pejorative way of identifying PT supporters], all of you will be sent to Ponta da Praia [a place used for arrest, torture, and murders during the military dictatorship]. Your time of living the high life in this country is over because I'm going to cut off all your perks. You will no longer have the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations]. . . . This is going to be an overhaul like one never seen in the entire history of Brazil.

Bolsonaro has struggled to fulfill this “promise” ever since his first months in office back in 2019. The “overhaul” he announced would begin with the attempt to extinguish the main form of social participation at the federal government level— the national councils that manage public policy. These groups were created under the Constitution of 1988 as a strategy for democratizing public policy. They were conceived as consultative and/or decision-making bodies involving civil society, public officials, and specialists. As Silva (2009) has shown, the increase in this form of participation by civil society in the institutional life of the state was undeniable.

Former President Dilma Rousseff (2010–2014, 2015–2016) proposed the institutional legitimacy of the different forms of social participation in Brazil through Decree 8,243, dated May 23, 2014, establishing the national social participation policy. On April 11, 2019—with only three months in office—Jair Bolsonaro decreed the elimination of several of the national councils (Decree 9,759). In an arbitrary and unilateral decision without any dialogue with the citizens and social organizations that occupied those spaces, Bolsonaro performed his first authoritarian act in Brasília, overhauling a good part of the civil society organizations that had been engaged in society-state comanagement. National policy management councils relating to labor relations, social security, indigenist policies, transport, and the rights of the elderly and the LGBTQI population all lost voices in national politics (Folha de São Paulo, 2019).

The statement “You petralhada, all of you all are going to be sent to Ponta da Praia” points to the idea that Bolsonaro hoped to have military support for some kind of self-induced coup. Statements to this effect by the then-candidate were often echoed during the first two years of his administration. Several things that he said suggested that he could make a coup happen, especially beginning in April 2020, when it seemed possible that the political regime could be shut down during his term. Outraged by the measures for combating the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning in March 2020 progovernment protesters started a wave of demonstrations, especially in Brasília, supporting the president's discourse. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Bolsonaro has positioned himself against the guidelines of both the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO).

A clarification is needed here for non-Brazilian readers: the Ministry of Health determines national health actions and campaigns in Brazil, and its minister has the highest authority, reporting directly to the president as a cabinet member. However, state and municipal governments have the opportunity to take specific actions and pass legislation that responds to regional needs and particularities provided that they do not violate ministry regulations. Brazil is a country of continental dimensions and has immense climatic, ethnic, and populational variation, which means that certain policies need to be locally oriented. Bolsonaro did not hesitate to try to play the population against the governors and mayors, as on April 29, 2020, when he said that “the death count” had to be attributed to the local governing figures¹ who had mandated social distancing and the shutdown of nonessential activities (BandNews, 2020).

At the center of the discussions created by the president was a “conflict” between the economy and public health. Bolsonaro insisted on opening up nonessential sectors of the economy, arguing that otherwise “the economy would die” and declaring members of Congress and the Supreme Court his opponents in this [false] conflict. This resulted in pro-Bolsonaro demonstrations calling for the closure of Congress and the court. Insisting on the need to keep the economy running, promoting mass gatherings, and recommending drugs with no proven effectiveness such as chloroquine and ivermectin, he deliberately provoked the spread of the virus and, in turn, the death of thousands of Brazilian citizens (Ventura and Bueno, 2021). During the campaign, he would often cry (Poder360, 2018):

These lazy people will have to work and stop rabble-rousing with the Brazilian people. . . . You will see a proud armed forces collaborating with the future of Brazil. You, petralhada, will see civil police and a military police with legal backing to enforce the law on you. MST [Landless Movement] bandits, MTST [Homeless Workers’ Movement] thugs, your actions will be defined by law as terrorism. You will no longer bring terror to the countryside or the city. Either you conform and submit to the laws, or you will keep the cachaça producer drinker [a reference to Lula] company down in Curitiba.

On April 19, 2020, the president echoed calls by prodictatorship protesters in Brasilia for the return of Institutional Act 5, which called for heavier penalties on those who had opposed the civil-military dictatorship in 1968 (El País, 2020). Two weeks later, on May 3, Bolsonaro would again support acts against Congress and the Supreme Court. In addition to endorsing battle cries like “Weapons for Good Citizens!” the president said (Folha de São Paulo, 2020),

I am sure of one thing. We have the people on our side, we have the armed forces on the side of the people, for the law, for order, for democracy, and for freedom. And most important, we have God with us. . . . I pray to God that we don't have any problems this week. We have reached the limit. We are done with talking. From now on we will not only demand but enforce the Constitution; it will be complied with at any price, and it is a two-way street.

The statement “We are done with talking” was clearly directed at Congress and the Supreme Court, but “We have reached the limit” pointed to a possible self-incited coup. After many threats by his supporters of storming Congress and the court (Congresso em Foco, 2020), Bolsonaro supported another antidemocratic and unconstitutional demonstration in Brasília on May 31, 2020. The calls to shut down Congress and the court continued, along with a call for “military intervention with Bolsonaro in power” (G1, 2020a).

More than seven months later, in January 2021, a new event would return attention to the president's threats. When asked about Nicolás Maduro’s (Venezuela) support for the crisis that had taken hold in the city of Manaus, Amazonas, which resulted in a lack of oxygen cylinders in hospitals, Bolsonaro fired back: “The people who decide whether a nation lives in democracy or in dictatorship are its armed forces. There is no dictatorship where the armed forces do not provide support. In Brazil, we still have freedom. If we don't recognize the value of these men and women who are there, everything could change!” (O Globo, 2020a).

As for defining the actions of “MST bandits, MTST thugs” as terrorism, several bills seeking to criminalize social movements have been proposed in Congress in recent years. The novelty with Bolsonaro's rise to power is that members of Congress who are enthusiastic about criminalization have found in him someone with a no-holds-barred perspective on the matter. The “antiterrorism law” in force in Brazil, Law 13,260, dated March 16, 2016, and signed by Dilma Rousseff, generated heated debate, since PT had always identified with social movements. Since the law was passed, two events in Congress have been noteworthy. The first of these was passage of PL 10,431/2018 (Law 13,810, dated March 8, 2019, signed by Bolsonaro), which “makes it possible to freeze the assets of persons and entities under investigation or accused of terrorism” (CNTS, 2019). The second was the proposal by Edson Moreira of PL 5,065/2016, which would amend Article 2 of the antiterrorism law to remove the section providing that the following were not classified as terrorist actions: “Individual or collective behavior of people in political demonstrations, social movements, trade unions, religious groups, class or professional categories, organized for social purposes or other demands, with the goal of contesting, criticizing, protesting or supporting, focused on defending rights, guarantees, and constitutional liberties” (Presidência de la República, 2016). This would establish a precedent that would lead to the criminalization of social movements, classifying them as terrorists.

How are we to categorize a government that, whether through its discourse or through its actions, attempts to extinguish forms of social participation, supports and promotes antidemocratic demonstrations, and criminalizes social movements? Inspired by the work of Dagnino, Olvera, and Panfichi (2006: 48), we frame Bolsonaro's experience as a neoliberal project with something that borders on authoritarianism— “bordering on” because they do not fully categorize it as authoritarian:

To begin with, the authoritarian model completely nullifies or limits the operation of liberal-democratic institutions. Elections and competition between parties are either prohibited (Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay during dictatorships) or lack political significance as options are limited and the power of elected representatives is also stifled by structural factors (Mexico until 1997; Brazil between 1964 and 1980). They are characterized by a strong and centralized state and frequently assume personalistic features in which the figure of the president or dictator is placed above that of any other political actor.

In this vein, we consider the Bolsonaro administration potentially authoritarian because (again quoting Dagnino and colleagues)

political authoritarianism was always correlated to social authoritarianism (Dagnino, 1994), involving the existence of a culture that legitimizes social differences, internalizes the codes that rank classes and social groups, organizing them into categories based on their class, race, gender, region, and country. This social authoritarianism, with a long-standing historical presence in Latin American culture, has not changed substantially in the current democratic wave. As a result, it could be said that no end point has been placed on the underlying basis that is authoritarianism.

There are precedents for hybrid models that lie somewhere between authoritarianism and neoliberalism in Latin America, among them that of Fujimori in Peru and, to a lesser extent, that of Gutiérrez in Ecuador. The Chile of the post-Pinochet coup was the scene of both a dictatorship (explicit authoritarianism) and the first experiment with neoliberalism in Latin America. Fujimori was democratically elected and, as did Bolsonaro, developed an antipolitical discourse, created an alliance with corrupt sectors of military intelligence, concentrated most of the resources destined for social programs in the Office of the President of the Republic (thus giving himself the resources needed to establish patronage dynamics), and went so far as to shut down Congress. As a result, he developed characteristics of an authoritarian regime while implementing neoliberal policies and reforming the constitution to allow him to be reelected twice (Dagnino, Olvera, and Panfichi, 2006).

Finchelstein (2019) lists the shared characteristics of “populist” and “authoritarian” leaders such as Donald Trump (United States), Maurício Macri (Argentina), Sebastian Piñera (Chile), Sebastian Kurz (Austria), Mark Rutte (Holland), and Jair Bolsonaro. He considers all these leaders inspired by Donald Trump to a certain extent. Bolsonaro even said “I love you” to Trump during a meeting of the UN General Assembly in Washington in September 2019 (IstoÉ, 2019), declaring his unconditional support for and total subordination to his U.S. counterpart. Maurício Macri was more discreet, but he too came to be identified with the “authoritarian populism” of the tycoon-turned-U.S. president (Finchelstein, 2019: 5).

Brazilian liberal-democratic institutions are still standing, and there is still partisan competition and political maneuvering taking place. All of that said, even 15 years ago Dagnino and colleagues seem to be describing the current Brazilian political situation when they point to the risk of a return of political authoritarianism in contexts of ongoing social authoritarianism. In the light of all this, who would be surprised if Bolsonaro ended up repeating the Fujimori playbook?

The Economic Perspective

The economic policies of the Bolsonaro administration, under the command of its “superminister” of the economy Paulo Guedes, coincide with our forecast in 2019 of a probable ultra-neoliberalism. (The use of the prefix “ultra-” is intended to highlight Guedes's inflexible commitment to the guidelines of the Washington Consensus.) Focusing on the economic events of the past two years, the following points deserve attention: (counter)reforms (social security, tax, and administrative), privatizations, inflation, currency exchange, and the minimum wage. As we predicted, Bolsonaro and Guedes have intensified their defense of neoliberal policies.

Setbacks for the most vulnerable populations in Brazil are nothing new. In the Temer administration, following the 2016 coup (Freixo and Rodrigues, 2016; Moretzsohn, 2016; Perissinotto, 2016), the outsourcing law and the labor reform made working conditions precarious (Oliveira and Costa, 2018). However, Bolsonaro assumed the presidency with a clear objective for his first year of government: pension reform removing labor and social security rights for good. There were many discussions on the subject in Congress, in the media, and in academic debates. The issue was one in which consensus was difficult to reach given the technical scope of the discussion: those criticizing the reform were treated as being ignorant on the issue. An appeal to “economic realism” (the argument always used in moments of austerity) was opposed to the view that the reform would make the lives of the poor even more precarious. Following a long series of negotiations and after Bolsonaro had paid out more than R$3 billion in campaign funds to congressional representatives in an explicit vote-buying maneuver (Brasil de Fato, 2019), the pension reform ended up passing in Constitutional Amendment 103, dated November 12, 2019.

In general terms, taxpayers began paying more to the National Social Security Institute, waiting longer to be able to retire, and receiving less in their pensions than they had received as active workers (G1, 2019a; Valor Investe, 2019). The government explains this in terms of the need to contain public expenditures. At the same time, we have seen financial conglomerates offering private pension plans, which is certainly no coincidence. As for the tax and administrative reforms, none of which have yet passed but that are fixtures on the agenda, the argument is the same: financial austerity and fiscal responsibility. “Fiscal imbalance” has been used again and again as the basis for economic policy decisions. Bolsonaro denies any possibility of increasing the Brazilian tax burden for the richest. The gridlock arising from the debates in Congress have stopped any progress on the bills in question. The wording that the government sent to the legislature makes no changes in the rules for magistrates, members of Congress, military personnel, or prosecutors, the categories of public servants that receive the highest remuneration and benefits—a play clearly made to win their support. In other words, the difficulties of political articulation surrounding the agenda are based on an essential contradiction of the liberal thinking that Guedes had defended ever since his days at the University of Chicago, when he was part of the “Chicago Boys”²—that it maintains the privileges of the highest echelons of the civil service while penalizing the lower echelons.

It is with this logic of diminishing state capacities and the individualization of collective responsibilities that Guedes and Bolsonaro intensified tensions in their efforts to advance privatization. In October 2019, 119 bills had already been brought forward by the Bolsonaro administration, 56 of which were concessions, 16 privatization projects, and the rest “leasing projects, PPPs [public-private partnerships], cross-investment, contract extensions and partnerships for the completion of unfinished works” (G1, 2019b). Not having produced the results expected in 2019 and compromised by the pandemic in 2020, the state's fiscal reduction plan has not yet achieved the success expected.

The failure of economic policy with regard to inflation can be explained in part in terms of the exchange rate and the lack of an increase in the minimum wage. In May 2020, the dollar stood at R$5.90; in August 2021 it was around R$5.20. This devaluation of the national currency manifests itself, among other things, as inflation. This type of exchange rate was attractive only to domestic heavy industry and to transnational companies that, in addition to the high dollar, were seeking a country with lax labor laws. Given the decline of confidence in Brazil in the world economic arena, the skyrocketing dollar, the high cost of imports because of deindustrialization, and the absence of an industrial policy and action to generate jobs and income, the result was uncontrolled inflation and massive impoverishment of the population's lower classes, all further intensified by the pandemic (Antunes, 2020).

This economic standstill is also explained by the stagnation of real growth in the minimum wage. With the purchasing power of the “great masses” compromised, demand was reduced and prices rose, leading to higher inflation rates. Ever since 2007, the annual increase in the minimum wage has been based on the previous year’s inflation plus the variation of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the past two years when those numbers are positive. This formula guarantees a real increase in wages in the context of increasing GDP. The last congressional action on the subject dates to 2015, with the approval of Law 13,152 on July 29 of that year, when the preexisting rules were maintained and 2019 was chosen as the new deadline for updating them. This left the president with the annual task of determining the increase via a provisional measure. So far, the guidelines of Guedes and Bolsonaro have made the updating of those figures dependent on inflation, which results in no real wage increase.

Turning to the economic consequences of the pandemic for the lives of Brazilian workers, despite the restrictions imposed by governors of states and municipalities, such workers find themselves forced to work in order to be able to eat. However, employment contracts are becoming increasingly precarious. Delivery companies such as Ifood, Uber, Rappi, and Amazon, which were already growing at a steady rate, expanded even further in a context of social distancing (Antunes, 2020). According to Santana (2021), in an attempt to deal with the impacts of the pandemic the government was forced to grant emergency aid, initially proposing a meager R$200, an amount that was later increased to R$600 under pressure from Congress. The national distribution of aid was chaotic and generated long lines at the Caixa Econômica Federal public bank, which paid out the money. Between March and September of 2020, the country lost 897,000 jobs. The service and trade sectors were the most affected, with 181,000 jobs disappearing from stores and markets. In education, 36,000 teaching jobs simply disappeared with mass layoffs. Domestic workers suffered perhaps the biggest blow: 1.4 million lost their jobs. In other words, the pandemic intensified the precariousness of work and the uberization of the economy (Antunes, 2020).

Liberalization, expansion of the role of the market and competition, and reduction of the role of the state, a discourse of “fiscal discipline,” the reordering of public spending priorities, tax reform, an attractive exchange rate for the international market, privatizations, elimination of social rights, discourse on the elimination of privileges in the public sector (but, in practice, only for low wage earners), the individualization of life based on the promotion of the market instead of the collective responsibility of the state—all this, in addition to the comparison of economic policies before and after the beginning of the pandemic, confirms that the Bolsonaro administration operates in an ultra-neoliberal framework.

Bolsonaro and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The country's failure to manage the pandemic reveals not only the inability of its president to implement political articulation but also an “institutional strategy for the propagation of the virus, promoted by the Brazilian government under the leadership of its president” (Asano et al., 2021: 6). The government operates under a rationality that despises life, trivializes death, and denies science. This constitutes the “umbrella” of speeches, actions, and policies in everything related to the health emergency. Under this umbrella is an endless supply of irresponsibility and indifference to the families of the nearly 600,000 (as of August 2021) victims of the disease in Brazil.

Since his first appearance on national television to comment on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro has challenged the guidelines of the Ministry of Health and those of the WHO. The first months of the pandemic were filled with uncertainty around the world. In Brazil, around March 15, 2020, several municipalities began enacting various forms and degrees of social distancing in order to reduce the proliferation of the novel coronavirus. While, under pressure from business, many municipalities and states were engaged in the fight against the virus, Bolsonaro began his saga of scientific denialism and his proeconomy narrative as part of this supposed life-vs.-the-economy dilemma.

On March 18, 2020, he said, “There is this issue of the coronavirus, which, in my opinion, has been blown out of proportion with regard to the destructive power of this virus. So maybe it is being leveraged even for economic reasons” (O Globo, 2020b). Six days later, on March 24, in an official statement, he said, “For me particularly, given my athletic background, if I were to get infected by the virus, I wouldn't really have to worry about it. Either I wouldn't feel it or maybe at the most have a little cold or flu” (UOL, 2020a). At the end of April, when asked about the escalation of the number of victims, he said, "What about it? It is too bad. What do you want me to do about it? I am not a gravedigger!” (G1, 2020b).

Time passed, and the president continued minimizing the consequences of the pandemic, continually exerting pressure on states and municipalities to keep them from preventing the opening of nonessential sectors of the economy. In June, he said, “The WHO has already said that each case is a case in and of itself. We shouldn't be taking away people's rights to go out and earn a day's work. Hunger kills, and if the world continues to adopt this type of isolation, the number of deaths will be greater than from the virus itself” (UOL, 2020b). The following month, after being diagnosed with the virus, Bolsonaro implied that he had no responsibility for the deaths in Brazil: “There is no way to avoid the issue of the pandemic, except to be isolated in some corner. One way or another anyone living in society will catch it sooner or later. Death cannot be avoided in that way” (UOL, 2020c).

In August 2020, when Brazil had already seen more than 120,000 victims and after replacing the minister of health twice (of an eventual four times), he said, “In my opinion, keeping the due proportions, I have not seen any other country in the world that has tackled this issue better than our government. This makes us proud” (IG, 2020). Bolsonaro had two ministers of health who, despite being politically conservative, were doctors and wanted to follow the WHO pandemic recommendations. This resulted in their removal from office, bringing in a general lacking any connection or experience in the health sector, Eduardo Pazuello, who was appointed merely because of his being servile to the president.

Bolsonaro's fantasies had no end; without any commitment to measures to combat the crisis, in September he considered the pandemic basically over: “We have practically overcome the pandemic. . . . The government did everything to minimize its negative effects” (O Globo, 2020c). In October, the month that Brazil would reach 150,000 victims, Bolsonaro continued with this same tactic. At the beginning of the month, when asked by a civilian about not wearing a mask, he responded, “I didn't tell anyone to stay home. I didn’t give that order” (Valor, 2020). And days later he said (O Globo, 2020d),

2020 began and we had the problem of the pandemic, which, in my understanding, was blown out of proportion. From the beginning, I said that we had two problems ahead: the issue of the virus and unemployment, and that they should be treated with the same responsibility and simultaneously. If we, and part of the business community, had embarked on the "stay at home and we'll worry about the economy later" movement, we would certainly be in a very complicated situation today.

In addition to reaffirming the contempt for life and scientific denialism, the president would express his lack of sensitivity: “I mourn the dead, but we are all going to die one day. Here, everyone will die” (G1, 2020c). Then, in yet another speech that was a complete disaster from a health-related point of view, he also once again revealed his homophobic facet: "It's no use running away from it, running away from reality. We have to stop being a faggot country! . . . We must face this with an open heart, and fight. What a generation ours is!" With more than 180,000 deaths recorded and almost 14 million Brazilians in extreme poverty (Folha de São Paulo, 2020), at the end of 2020 Bolsonaro was so bold as to declare, “We are still living out the end of the pandemic. After looking at the other countries in the world, we see that our government was the one that did the best, or one of the best in terms of the economy” (R7, 2020a). Throughout the year, he often went out for “strolls” and greeted everyone without a mask, including the elderly and children.

As for emergency aid, long before perceiving it to be a necessary and important measure, Bolsonaro encouraged supporters, entrepreneurs, and workers to lead normal lives when it came to their everyday economic activities. However, pressured by Congress and by public opinion, at the end of March 2020 he began negotiations to address aid, which consisted of a cash payment for those who had run out of income during the pandemic. Financial aid seemed the only way to get the most vulnerable populations to respect social distancing. For the president, however, the agenda was not clear. How could he pressure people to lead normal lives in the nation's economy and at the same time grant aid to informal workers to encourage them to stay at home?

The president found a way around this inconsistency in his discourse by explaining that the aid was an amount that would force workers to continue working and exposing themselves to the virus because it was insufficient to cover all their needs. His initial proposal of R$200 was increased under pressure from the opposition to R$300 (R7, 2020b), but the opposition was calling for R$600 and R$1,200 for mothers who were heads of households. Put between a rock and a hard place by Congress and realizing that the higher aid amounts had popular appeal, the president ended up signing them into law (Law 13,982) on April 2, 2020. The aid payments were initially slated to continue for three months and then extended to two more and then four more, this time with the amount reduced to R$300 (O Globo, 2021).

From the beginning of his administration, Bolsonaro defended the use of chloroquine, an antimalarial drug that research and tests have proved to be ineffective (WHO, 2020). He actively pushed for use of the drug, showing boxes of it on national television and calling for mass purchases. CNN (2020) reported that, according to the Federal Court of Auditors, materials had been purchased for the manufacture of chloroquine by the army and, in the case of two batches of an imported product purchased through a company from Minas Gerais, the second had cost 167 percent more than the first. Despite a scarcity of personal and collective protective equipment for health professionals and oxygen for critically ill patients, the country has a huge stock of chloroquine with no effective use (Estado de Minas, 2020).

In 2020, when the global race for vaccines was starting, Minister Pazuello prioritized chloroquine as treatment for COVID-19. He derided the vaccine and, at times, mocked it (UOL, 2021). A very serious issue came to light only in 2021, when several media outlets reported that the Butantan Institute, which nationally manufactured the vaccine, had offered millions of doses of CoronaVac to the government on three occasions: July 30, August 18, and October 7. There was never any interest in acquiring the doses or entering negotiations with the renowned institute (Gaspar, 2021). Likewise, the vaccine producer Pfizer tried to contact the Ministry of Health to sell its vaccines but was repeatedly ignored (Folha de São Paulo, 2021).

Such criminal negligence came to light thanks to a congressional commission of inquiry that is still under way (as of August 2021), to investigate government actions during the pandemic that had been the target of suspicion. The results of the inquiry will likely depend on political factors to determine whether the president should be removed from office. Bolsonaro has, however, already been responsible for the departure of Pazuello, who was replaced by Marcelo Queiroga, the fourth minister since the pandemic began.

Brazil’s vaccination campaign against COVID-19 got a late start, with insufficient doses, delays in the arrival of materials to manufacture them, and disputes between political authorities and between politicians and health authorities. On January 22, 2021, Veja (2021) reported that up to that day the total number of vaccines available —6 million—was tiny compared with what was needed. However, in the face of the global race to produce and acquire vaccines and the efforts of São Paulo Governor João Dória (at the time Bolsonaro's probable political opponent in the 2022 elections), the government was forced to get involved.

Brazil has had successful vaccination campaigns for decades, but the current administration seems to be boycotting the mass vaccination of Brazilians. Because of conflicts caused by the Bolsonaro family (Bolsonaro and his three sons, all politicians like their father) such as the attacks on China and the spread of conspiracy theories involving it, according to a report by Veja (2021) domestic producers faced problems with the backlog of raw materials ordered. The social clamor for the vaccine mobilized the WHO, governments, scientists, and industry in a race to produce and distribute vaccines for the global public (Couto, Barbieri, and Matos, 2020). Amid speculation and misinformation—rather, a frank distortion of the truth—the country that was once a global benchmark for mass vaccination campaigns and had developed a “culture of immunization” (Hochman, 2011) arrived late to the global vaccination process. For Caponi (2020), epistemological issues linked to a growing social acceptance of scientific denialism and the disregard of rational arguments are behind these attitudes. The current administration has always shown contempt for universities, scientific research, and multilateral organizations like the WHO. With the pandemic, everything has gotten worse, at the cost of thousands of lives.

Final Thoughts

In this analysis of the first two years of Bolsonaro's government, we have confirmed the predictions we made when he was first elected (Oliveira and Veronese, 2019). At that time, we did not imagine that the pandemic crisis would erupt at the end of his first year in office. We had already predicted, however, that he would go after social movements, reduce the mechanisms of social participation in the management of the state, and deepen inequality with ultra-neoliberal measures; all of this has now been confirmed. To conclude this article, we would like to emphasize the relationship between Bolsonaro's authoritarian style of government and the naturalization of the logic that places the very highest priority on market interests even at the cost of thousands of lives or the descent into misery of large swathes of society. This is an ultra-neoliberalism that not only operates in the economic-financial sphere but also “produces modes of being a subject” (Caponi, 2020: 215). This supposedly autonomous and enterprising subject is a person responsible for his own successes and failures who has nothing to do with others or the state.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of this subjective construction, which denies the universality of the Unified Health System because it is a socially oriented system. During the pandemic, the enormous importance of the system and its programs was tangible, but even so the Bolsonaro government followed its denialist path, not only failing to inform the population but also deliberately misinforming and confusing it, disseminating false and contradictory content. Misinformation generated chaos and conflicts between the people and their local administrators (mayors and governors), as well as with health professionals.

Avritzer (2020) has concluded that the president’s “antipolitical” strategy—his refusal to play by the rules of the democratic game—plunged the country into an instability that will be difficult to climb out of. The pandemic was key to deepening crises and highlighting the complete unpreparedness of the government to deal with it. while scientists and health professionals sought to reinforce scientific knowledge about the disease and its spread, Bolsonaro insisted on denialism, further radicalizing his base of unconditional support, which seems to have stabilized at around 20–25 percent of Brazilian public opinion (Datafolha, 2021). The ideological agitation and bombast cannot, however, be understood without understanding the essential issue, which is an ultra-neoliberal project with regard to the economy and authoritarianism in political management, including the old practices of vote purchase in the legislature that the president had claimed he would not perpetuate (Sakamoto, 2021).

As a result, the path for the near future is not an easy one. Since May 2021, demonstrations have been held calling for the president's impeachment, mobilizing thousands of people in the country’s largest state capitals and some cities in the interior. However, there is still a clear division between supporters of the government and its opponents; only a constant, wide-ranging, and firm mobilization in favor of democracy on the social media and on the streets will be able to defeat the authoritarian project and recover the fragile Brazilian democracy, which is dying while its people suffer the consequences of poverty and disease.

Biography

Gustavo Moura de Oliveira is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Political and Social Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a member of the CLACSO and of the research groups ECOSOL (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos) and GPACE (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul). His work focuses on autonomy, social movements, society-state interaction, Latin American political economy, solidarity economy, and labor. Marília Verissimo Veronese is a professor and researcher in the postgraduate program in social sciences at the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos and a member of the CLACSO and of the research groups ECOSOL (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos) and ECOSOL-CES (Universidade de Coimbra). Her work focuses on work, subjectivity, self-management, critical epistemologies, and the social and solidarity economy. Heather Hayes is a translator living in Quito, Ecuador.