Explaining Brazil #147: What to make of South America’s Super Sunday

This week Explaining Brazil podcast gives you something of an appetizer for our Latin America Weekly newsletter — including coverage of elections in Ecuador and Peru, which was an electoral “Super Sunday.” 

Citizens from Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia voted for candidates at the presidential, congressional, and municipal levels this weekend. Results in Bolivia are yet to be determined, so this week we will concentrate on what the ballots tell us in the other two countries.

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Guest:

• Lucas Berti is a journalist and Latin American expert, covering international affairs for The Brazilian Report.

Background reading:

• Ecuador’s first-round elections went down to the wire. At that point, Andrés Arauz seemed poised to win.
• Anti-China conditions attached to a new loan from the U.S. Development Finance Corporation underscore Ecuadorian candidates’ international leanings ahead of Sunday’s election.
• Bloody prison riots in Ecuador earlier in the year highlighted the safety crisis in Latin American jails. The region’s prison system became a coronavirus hotbed. Human rights advocates say countries should reduce inmate populations.
• Peru’s presidential merry-go-round turned several times in November, when the country had three heads of state in the space of a week.
• Faced with a generational crisis, many Latin American governments are resorting to short-term measures that could create massive long-term crises.
• Mexico, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Chile will be the next Latin American countries heading to the polls.
• One political scientist believes Chileans are being too optimistic about the benefits of creating a new constitution, without realizing the risks. Francisco Ricci interviewed Patricio Navia, a political science professor at the Diego Portales University in Santiago and the New York University Center for Latin American Studies.

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