Bolsonaro fostered chaos and attempted a coup during the pandemic, studies show

By Lucas Ferrante – From Cenarium

Scientific studies published between 2019 and 2022 reveal a deliberate pattern of actions by former president Jair Bolsonaro that not only contributed to the public health catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic but also undermined democratic institutions and endangered Indigenous peoples, the environment, and public health. These scientific studies were published in high-profile journals such as Environmental Conservation (Cambridge University Press), Nature Medicine, Journal of Public Health Policy (Springer Nature), DIE ERDE (Geographical Society of Berlin), and Preventive Medicine Reports (Elsevier), forming a technical dossier that exposes Bolsonaro’s attempt to destabilize the country and consolidate an authoritarian project.

Even before the pandemic, Bolsonaro had already demonstrated contempt for environmental protection, Indigenous rights, and science. In the article “Brazil’s new president and ‘ruralists’ threaten Amazon environment, traditional peoples, and global climate” (Environmental Conservation, 2019), INPA researcher Philip Fearnside and I showed how Bolsonaro, backed by the agribusiness caucus, sought to weaken IBAMA, dismantle environmental policies, and transfer Indigenous land demarcation authority to the Ministry of Agriculture, controlled by ruralist interests. These measures already foreshadowed the institutional dismantling that would intensify with the arrival of the pandemic.

During the health crisis, Bolsonaro adopted a denialist stance, promoting ineffective drugs such as chloroquine and ivermectin, attacking mask use, and sabotaging social distancing measures. In the article “How the president of Brazil made the country a global epicenter of COVID-19” (Journal of Public Health Policy, 2021), seven other researchers and I demonstrated that Bolsonaro weaponized the public health chaos to seek exceptional powers, even proposing a “national mobilization state” and pressuring the Armed Forces to support his anti-scientific measures. The Defense Minister’s refusal to support these proposals led to his dismissal and the collective resignation of the commanders of all three branches of the military, clearly revealing an attempt to capture the military apparatus for authoritarian purposes — a clear first attempt at a coup!

The use of the Army as a tool of domination and disinformation was also denounced in the article “Military forces and COVID-19 as smoke screens for Amazon destruction and Indigenous rights violations” (DIE ERDE, 2020), where we warned that the militarization of environmental policy and the creation of the “Amazon Council,” led by General Hamilton Mourão, served as a smokescreen for dismantling environmental regulations and enabling land grabbers to advance into Indigenous territories.

One of the most emblematic cases of criminal omission by the federal government occurred in Manaus during the second wave of the pandemic. In the article “COVID-19 dynamics in the Amazon: a tale of governmental denialism and the risk of a third wave” (Preventive Medicine Reports, 2022), eight other researchers and I showed that the collapse of the healthcare system — including oxygen shortages — could have been avoided with proper planning. Instead, the federal government used the episode to promote the BR-319 highway as a supply route, despite knowing that river transport was faster and more efficient. The study also shows that the premature reopening of schools in Manaus — coordinated between President Bolsonaro and Amazonas governor Wilson Lima — was a deliberate strategy to provoke mass contagion in order to achieve “herd immunity,” a strategy widely condemned by experts and one that led to thousands of preventable deaths.

Wilson Lima’s alignment with Bolsonaro’s ideology is made clear in these studies. In 2020, while numerous researchers were calling for lockdowns to contain the virus in Amazonas, the governor sided with the business sector and filed lawsuits to block closure attempts, as detailed in the scientific study that warned of a second COVID-19 wave in Nature Medicine. Recently, governor Wilson Lima publicly supported, alongside Jair Bolsonaro, the amnesty for those involved in the January 8 coup attempt, as reported here by CENARIUM MAGAZINE.

The studies are unequivocal in showing that by ignoring scientific evidence, sabotaging containment measures, militarizing environmental management, persecuting researchers, and weakening democratic oversight mechanisms, Jair Bolsonaro implemented a project of misgovernment aimed at institutional erosion and the consolidation of an authoritarian regime. By endorsing this strategy in Amazonas, Wilson Lima became complicit in a policy that caused thousands of preventable deaths and threatened the future of the Amazon rainforest and its peoples. As the Journal of Public Health Policy article concludes: “The chaos created by the pandemic contributes to his effort to weaken democratic institutions (such as the National Congress, the Judiciary, state governments, and the Ministries of Education and Environment), just as the chaos Bolsonaro provoked in various ways throughout his presidency creates a constant sense of ‘state of exception’ and serves as a ‘ladder’ to expand his power at the expense of hard-won social progress.”

Translated from Portuguese by Gustô Alves

(*) Lucas Ferrante holds a degree in Biological Sciences from the Federal University of Alfenas (Unifal), and a master’s and PhD in Biology (Ecology) from the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA). He was the first author and leader of the research group that predicted the second wave of COVID-19 in Manaus, with widely cited studies published in international journals. He is the Brazilian researcher with the highest number of first-author publications in the two leading scientific journals in the world, Science and Nature. He is currently a researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of Amazonas (Ufam).