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The article deals with the latent crisis situation that has existed in Latin America for several decades. Average per capita growth rates over a long period of time in most Latin American countries are between 0 and 2%. Since the 1980s and 1990s, the trend towards stagnation has not been explained in the same way in the large Latin American countries. While there are common causes, the weight of each factor differs. This article sets out the various theories on the trend towards economic stagnation. Its originality is that not only does it underline the role of inequalities in income and wealth and deindustrialization, but it also stresses the causes of economic volatility and its consequences on the low average per capita growth rate, which is particularly pronounced in some countries. Contrary to a relatively shared idea, these economies have been little or not emerging from 1990 to now, except between 2000-2012 more and less. They have therefore not converged, or only to a limited extent, towards the per capita income level of the advanced countries, unlike many Asian countries. Latin American countries are experiencing several crises at the same time, which feed of each other. The crisis is deep. It is structural as it calls to question the very modes of expansion of capitalism in recent decades. Therefore, only responses at this level can make it possible to overcome the obstacles to sustainable development, to the inclusion of those, the majority, who are rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]