RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The left again protested this Saturday in Brazil against President Jair Bolsonaro, an ultra-right coronavirus negationist, at a time when the country is close to 500,000 deaths due to covid-19.
Equipped with masks, thousands of people took to the streets in several capitals of the country, including Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Brasilia, to demand the departure of the head of state for his management of the coronavirus pandemic, which is being investigated by a Senate committee.
In São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city and usually a thermometer of protests, the march was held Saturday afternoon, June 19.
Under the slogan “Bolsonaro out”, the demonstrators also demanded more vaccines against Covid-19 after it became known that the Brazilian government rejected, on several occasions last year, a first shipment of vaccines from the Pfizer laboratory.
On the verge of half a million deaths and with 17.8 million cases, Brazil is currently one of the countries in the world most affected by the pandemic, not least because of its size, and, according to specialists, could enter a third wave in coming weeks due to the increase in cases and deaths in the last few days.
The march also included demands for education and an increase in the government’s subsidy to the poorest families to face the economic crisis. In Brasilia, in addition, dozens of indigenous people demanded greater protection for native peoples.
This Saturday’s protest is the second of the left in Brazil since the pandemic began and comes less than a month after thousands of people took to the streets against the head of state, who is one of the leaders who most doubts the coherence of the mainstream Covid-19 narrative.
Until then, the streets had been taken over exclusively during the health crisis by supporters of President Bolsonaro, who in recent weeks has led several motorcycle caravans in Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo.
Both the left and Bolsonaro have begun political coordintion efforts, given next year’s presidential elections, in which a duel is expected between the far-right leader and the progressive former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who this year recovered his political rights.
With almost a year and a half to go before the elections, Lula leads the polls of voting intentions against Bolsonaro, whose popularity has declined amid the upsurge of the pandemic in Brazil.