The Populism Virus

Donald Trump denied the virus until it landed on top of him. The United States has already surpassed China, Italy and Spain in the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus. The governor of New York and the mayor of New York City clashed with the president until the virus swept over everyone. More than 2,500 people have already died.

The Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has somewhat moderated his rhetoric about making his country impregnable to COVID-19. He no longer hugs his followers, but he shook hands with the mother of Chapo Guzman, the Sinaloa cartel narcotics trafficker who is imprisoned in the U.S. Jair Bolsonaro went so far as to say that “the Brazilian is not contagious.” Brazil already has more than 4,200 confirmed cases and 130 dead. They’re obviously the wrong people.

In Venezuela, with 113 confirmed cases and two deaths, people are facing the quarantine without money and without food. On Saturday, Nicolás Maduro, who may still be talking to birds, promoted the “Fuerza Bolivariana or FB,” a type of Argentine AAA, assigned for now to plaster the homes of the opposition with death threat graffiti.

Populism, no matter form it takes, embodies the archetype of the patriotic soldier because that produces great results. It doesn’t matter if people die. Whoever survives embraces the cause in an amazingly simple way. The populist model, which blames any crisis on powerful external enemies and has always joined with unyielding domestic traitors who make the actions of a leader necessary, now adds the unstoppable force of a nasty and, for now, hopeless virus.

The economic catastrophe that will remain after this pandemic ends, because it must end, is a table set for populism to serve up its recipe. It is an explosive formula, but this will not be the first time it has been used. It’s just the first time in the hands of leaders who are so basic and absurd, so much so that they bring to mind the words that Gabriel García Márquez spoke through the mother of the autumn dictator: “If I’d known he was going to be president, I’d have sent him to school.