Covid-19, inequity and necropolitics in Brazil; the first year of the pandemic

Abstract

This article analyzes the responses of the Jair Bolsonaro government to COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic in Brazil (March 2020 to February 2021). The central argument is that in the authoritarian and irrational official policies were the final stage of an historical period marked by social inequality and a case of necropolitics, a concept designed by Achille Mbembe to explain the sovereignty of the State in deciding death and life. Bolsonaro´s necropolitics meant the trivialization of the death of the poor and the discriminated, such as Afro-Brazilians and the indigenous people of the Amazon, the destruction of dialogue between civil society and the State, as well as the transfer of power from the Ministry of Health to the central government. These characteristics were part of an effort to intimidate the population and make the poor accept that preventable diseases are the result of an unpredictable fatality.

ARK CAICYT: https://id.caicyt.gov.ar/ark:/s16688090/n6uc8696a