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Since its appearance in 2020, Brazil and Mexico have been among the most affected countries in the world by covid-19. Their respective presidents, Jair Bolsonaro and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO), have played a leading role in specific policies during the pandemic. Their choices were both singular and counter- intuitive. On the health front, AMLO initially underplayed the seriousness of the situation, and the Brazilian president, Bolsonaro, defended a frankly negationist attitude, with a dramatic balance sheet, without his popularity being seriously affected. On the economic front, they have chosen policies that contradict not only each other but also their own supposed ideological stances. Bolsonaro, who is ranked on the far right, has implemented an emergency transfer program on a scale comparable to those of developed countries and the most massive the country has ever seen. Conversely, AMLO, considered a progressist, provided just a minimum policy package, maintaining his previous electoral program. By adopting a comparative approach and mobilizing a unique and diversified set of data, the objective of this paper is to explore these apparent contradictions. After having established the precise diagnosis of the policies implemented to deal with the crisis and the economic and health situation in the two countries during the 2020-2022 period, we propose an original interpretation grid of the central role played by the two presidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to expose the forces of structural transformation unleashed in the process of extractive capitalist development in Brazil and the rise of right-wing populism in the form of Jair Bolsonaro. The methodology employed might be described as a the political economy of capitalist development. It is employed within the framework of historical materialism and a Marxist theory of capitalist development. Within this framework it is argued that Bolsonaro's populist and right-wing regime, and his environmentally destructive extractivist regime, represented an attack on the working class and a fundamental assault on the territorial rights of the country's indigenous peoples as well as more broadly the rights of nature, with particular reference here to the Amazon as one of the world's greatest repositories of resources needed for confronting the global environmental crisis. The interlude of the short-lived Bolsonara regime is used to draw out the implications of the global rise of populism and authoritarianism in the early 21st century in the context of a multidimensional social and environmental crisis on a global scale. Under Bolsonaro's policies Brazil was very much part of the problem, whereas Brazil could be an important part of the solution. Whether Lula's policies will take us there is an open question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]