As the coronavirus pandemic tears through Latin America and the Caribbean, killing more than 180,000 and destroying the livelihoods of tens of millions in the region, it is also undermining democratic norms that were already under strain.
There are now five Latin American and Caribbean nations with recent democratic histories — Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guyana, Bolivia and Haiti — where governments weren’t chosen in free and fair elections or have overstayed their time in office. That is the highest number since the late 1980s, when the Cold War receded and several countries in the grip of civil war or military dictatorships transitioned to peace and democracy.
In Bolivia, a caretaker government has used the pandemic to postpone elections, tap into emergency aid to bolster its electoral campaign and threaten to ban the main opposition candidate from running. By 2018, only 1 in 4 people in Latin America said they were satisfied with democracy — the lowest number since Latinobarómetro, a regional polling company, began asking that question 25 years ago.
It has also put a strain on the region’s struggling health care systems. Latin America has become a global hot spot for the virus, with Brazil, Mexico and Peru among the 10 nations with the highest numbers of deaths. And according to the United Nations, about 16 million people in Latin America are expected to fall into extreme poverty this year, reversing nearly all of the gains made by the region this century.
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