A similar protest took place in the capital last month, when thousands defied quarantine restrictions to demonstrate against corruption and the restrictions on businesses due to the lockdown.
Argentina has seen more than 310,000 Covid-19 cases, with a sharp spike in infections over the last month. Quarantine measures have been extended to the end of the month, and even tightened in some areas.
Argentines have also been angered by the release from jail of associates of former President Cristina Kirchner, such as former vice president Amado Boudou, convicted of corruption, who was granted house arrest because of the pandemic.
Bolivia provides another instance of politics melding with the Covid-19 crisis. Supporters of former President Evo Morales blocked roads across the country for weeks as the interim government twice postponed elections due to the spread of coronavirus cases. For now there appears to be a truce; two labor unions agreed to lift roadblocks last week after President Jeanine Añez signed a law promising elections on October 18.
Demonstrations have ebbed in recent weeks, but could reignite with critical decisions on extending income support are due in the coming weeks.
On Wednesday, Bolsonaro said the monthly emergency stipend would have to be cut. “This is not the people’s money, this is indebtedness, and if the country becomes over-indebted, it ends up losing its credibility,” Bolsonaro said.
Much of the unrest across the region so far has been driven by economic hardship. In Chile, lockdown protests such as the clanging of pots and pans — known as cacerolazo — escalated to street demonstrations in defiance of quarantine in mid-July. There were multiple grievances: poor administration of the “Food for Chile” initiative, a buckling health care system, and demands that people be allowed to withdraw part of their pensions (to which the government acquiesced).
Angelica Sanchez, 22, told CNN she used to sell fruit on the street, but the lockdown took away her income. “Food, accommodation, rent… what are you going to do? Choose between your food and the semester fee?” the mathematics student said. On Tuesday, she and two other students began a hunger strike.
Panama saw a wave of protests in July, largely by the poor and jobless complaining that income support promised by the government was not reaching them. Medical workers there protested shortages of staff and equipment, as they did in Mexico.
And in parts of Central America and Mexico, there is another dimension to unrest: Violence among criminal gangs. The ACLED survey found that in Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala “gangs are competing over a shrinking criminal market, and governments are faced with rising violence as they struggle to address an unprecedented health crisis.”
“Battles between cartels [in Mexico] are becoming more lethal, with a substantial increase in the number of reported fatalities stemming from inter-gang clashes,” ACLED reported. It found the same in Honduras.
‘An escalation of unrest is inevitable’
Across much of Latin America, inequality is high and informal employment widespread — key potential ingredients for possible unrest. What will happen when emergency Covid-19 economic measures end and household funds dry up?
“Reversion to social safety nets for the most vulnerable may further undermine the social contract, and eventually result in more social conflict and division,” he told Eurasia Group clients.
As the pandemic wanes, young peoples’ diminishing fear of Covid-19 could also promote demonstrations, he says. “That could mean a lower threshold to send people to the streets in protest. This dynamic is probably most relevant to places that have been hit hardest by the virus, have governments that responded poorly, are facing a long and slow economic recovery, and were already facing social discontent and previous grievances,” Kazan wrote.
Many Latin American countries tick those boxes. Last month, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the World Health Organization projected the regional economy would contract by 9% this year — adding 18 million people to unemployment rolls.
“The fallout from the pandemic is going to worsen basic inequalities and act as a catalyst for further unrest,” the group’s Latin American analysts wrote in June. “An escalation of unrest is inevitable, while the question over its intensity lingers on.”
Verisk Maplecroft agrees with Kazan that the reduction of food and fuel subsidies would be “a textbook driver of unrest.”
Blanco says another issue is combating unemployment. Jobs lost now may take three to five years — in the best-case scenario — to be recovered.
She says upcoming elections will pose a challenge in countries such as Peru and Chile, “where there is a real risk that anti-establishment candidates will emerge. There’s no clarity as to where this electoral process could go.”
She adds that Chile faces a confluence of destabilizing factors: the economic burden of the pandemic, high levels of discontent and a constitutional referendum later this year. Argentina faces both a deep recession and inflation, with labor unions yet to negotiate contracts for next year, she says.
Much depends also on what sort of unrest develops. Middle class protesters in the region have historically turned out to rail against corruption, while the poor in Latin America’s teeming barrios and favelas, who make up much of the informal sector, are driven more by economic hardship.
The latter could result in more violent protests, says Blanco — not least because of the danger that armed gangs may seek to lead or co-opt the unrest.
“The fallout from the pandemic is going to worsen basic inequalities and act as a catalyst for further unrest,” Blanco and her colleagues wrote in an analysis in June.
“An escalation of unrest is inevitable, while the question over its intensity lingers.”