Covid-19 threatens to shake democracy around Latin America

On Sunday, April 19, Brazil celebrated Armed Forces Day. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro organized motorcades in cities across the nation, defending their embattled head of state and praising the military. Some even pleaded for “intervention” from the Armed Forces, asking for a repeat of a notorious decree from the 1964-1985 military dictatorship which dissolved Congress, suspended constitutional rights, and led to the institutionalization of the state-sponsored torture of the regime’s opponents.

As if in blatant disregard for the democracy that elected him president in 2018, Jair Bolsonaro decided to join one of the quasi-putschist rallies, delivering a short speech atop a pickup truck, declaring that it was “time for people to take power” and that there would be “no negotiation” with Congress.

With the International Monetary Fund predicting The Great Lockdown will thrust Latin America into a near-unprecedented economic crisis, there are concerns about political stability in a region where not all democracies are created equally.

According to The Economist’s 2019...