The Wretched of COVID-19 in Brazil: Colonial Spectres of an Announced Crisis

Abstract

This article discusses the epidemiological indices of COVID-19 infection and mortality in Brazil, as well as the responses of the public health authorities, based on an analysis of the structural relationship between capitalism, colonialism, and racism. The economic, social, and political reflexes manifested in the pandemic crisis must be situated in Brazil’s ‘colonial path of capitalist concretization’. Racism was and remains the element without which the peculiarities of capitalism in Brazil cannot be understood. It is argued that colonial path of Brazilian capitalism and the current dismantling of the social and political rights that were previously obtained by the subordinate classes—the wretched of Brazil—created a social and political environment favorable to the accelerated dissemination of COVID-19 and a very high mortality in the country.