Who communicated with the public and how?

As mentioned, the first thing to establish are the actors who communicated the outbreak of the virus and measures to manage the health crisis, the type of discourse they adopted and the channels used to convey the information. In this context, it should be noted that all governments have operated in a situation of confusion, improvisation and a rapid depletion of available resources.

As a result, in the first few weeks of the pandemic a sense of fear was generated, which governments had to counteract by means of communication policies aimed at reassuring citizens. Table 11.2 shows how governments fared in the area of communications.

Table 11.2 shows how, in all cases, the president appealed to and asserted the ‘nation’ with a strong emotional content. All the heads of states embraced their national flag in an attempt to close ranks in the face of an unknown and invisible enemy coming from outside. Only in this way can the patriotic rhetoric deployed with reference to ‘unity’ be understood. However, this does not mean that all presidents have been equally active in the media. It is true that most have taken centre stage, and the fact that some of them were infected with the virus has added to the emotion of their media appearances.

Exceptionally, however, in some countries, presidents have delegated communications to other political figures. In others, heads of state have only occasionally made an appearance because of their provisional status or because of the weight acquired by other government figures (vice-presidents, ministers of health, government and social protection), technical staff (epidemiologists, health managers, economists) or members of the armed forces. In this sense, including military personnel in the mise-en-scène was consistent with the construction of a patriotic discourse to which a military and, in some cases, religious discourse was added in many of the countries.

Which institution has taken the leadership role?

Once identified as communication policy, it is important to indicate which institutions and actors have assumed leadership in the crisis, noting the relevance (or not) of the head of state, the prime minister (or similar position if there is one) and the legislative or judicial authority. In order to reflect on political leadership, it is worth noting the (high, medium or low) intensity of the level of activism deployed by the president of the republic, the executive, the legislative authorities and the judiciary in each country. This task is summarized in Table 11.3.

From the data shown in Table 11.3, a recurring theme emerges: the central role of the executive, both of the head of state and of their governments. It could hardly be otherwise given the presidential nature of the region’s political systems. This is reflected in the fact that presidential activism was high in almost all countries, with few exceptions. But besides the role of the president, it is worth noting that government involvement was also high, with the exceptions of Nicaragua and Bolivia.

Another very different matter is the role played by the legislative authorities or the judiciary, which was generally of medium or low intensity. Only in four countries did the legislative authority play an intense role, namely in Brazil and El Salvador, to counter the hyper-leadership of their presidents – in the case of Uruguay, due to a solid opposition and in the case of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies due to existing social mobilization. But even more lax than the legislative authority was the judiciary, which was only active in El Salvador in order to keep President Nayib Bukele in check, and in Brazil where it acted as an arbiter between institutions.

It is clear from the foregoing that the executive’s involvement has been overwhelming in relation to the rest of the authorities and actors. The virtual elimination of press conferences with unscripted questions, the permanent use of direct presidential and governmental briefings to the nation and the quest to promote a presidential image have been instruments in constant use.

Has anyone objected?

After pointing out the actions taken by the authorities, it is also necessary to highlight the role played by political and social actors in the crisis, be it the opposition, the media, organized civil society or community initiatives. The positioning of actors that have supported or challenged governments, such as opposition parties, civil society, private media and community networks, also needs to be discussed. In order to assess this, Table 11.4 has been constructed to provide an overview of the level of involvement of opposition forces, the private media, social and community networks.

For a democracy to function effectively, it is important that opposition parties and the media play their part. In periods of crisis, these actors can play either an oppositional or consensus-building role and, depending on the strategy adopted, one can see how the political arena works in each country. The data shown in Table 11.4 indicate that during the COVID-19 crisis there have been countries in which the opposition – following the first few weeks after the outbreak of the pandemic – opted for consensus and support for the government, and others in which it maintained a strategy of confrontation, continuing with the previous dynamics that this crisis has only served to reinforce.

However, political opposition to the governments was not only experienced by the parties represented in the legislature but was often manifested from the territorial power. In countries where there has been territorial tension historically, differences have always existed between the central power and the power of large municipalities and states, provinces or departments. In some cases, these differences have stemmed from confrontations of a strictly political origin, as these entities were being governed by opposition parties. The need for some regional leaders to counterbalance the political strength of the president has much to do with their quest to improve both their own and their political parties’ electoral prospects in the next elections.

On the other hand, there is the role played by the private media, which has sometimes worked intensely against the government, such as in Venezuela or Nicaragua – where the media have substituted the role of a political opposition, albeit with great limitations – or in Argentina, where confrontation between the private mass media and justicialismo (the political establishment) is commonplace. In other countries, the media has strongly supported the executive, such as in Bolivia, Colombia and Honduras, as a result of the close relationship between the media system and political power, while in others, the media system has played a more diversified role – some groups being pro- and others anti-government – as has been the case in Mexico and Brazil. It should be noted that in none of the countries have the media played a minor role – as is the case with civil society, community networks or some parties – thus reflecting the fundamental role of the media in today’s world. Another point to note is that in all countries without exception there has been an abundance of fake news and hoaxes circulating on social media.

The role of civil society and, of course, community initiatives should also be noted. Within this field, in Venezuela and Nicaragua, where institutional opposition is repressed, civil society actors and community initiatives have been very important and take a prominent social and political role. The case of Chile, which has seen the Chilean Medical Association play an exceptional role in managing the pandemic, also stands out. However, in most cases, civil society actors – pressure groups, trade unions, professional associations and so on – have taken on an active, though not crucial, role.

On a different note, we must not forget the ongoing presence of organized crime, as well as successive outbreaks of rioting, generally in peripheral urban areas or remote places. To this must be added the state’s inability to manage certain territories over which a number of informal and illegal groups exert their control.

What kind of public policies have been promoted?

It is also important to highlight the public policies related to health, the economy and security that have been promoted to combat the COVID-19 crisis. It has been pointed out (Malamud and Núñez, 2020) that, despite their heterogeneous nature, almost all of these policies were similar and were aimed at the same goal: to prevent infections, isolate the infected and preserve the – often meagre and weak – public health systems. To this end, emphasis was placed on personal hygiene, social distancing and reducing mobility (both by monitoring and transferring incoming cases). Polymerase chain reaction testing and track-and-trace policies for the infected were also implemented, but these last two measures were less widespread due to their cost. In the end, all these measures were deployed on the basis of similar strategies (whether they were called quarantine or not). It is worth noting that these measures were adopted in 15 of the 18 countries within a minimum time frame (see Table 11.1). Likewise, in May 2020, almost all the countries started implementing very similar quarantine extension policies.

Taken together, this shows that beyond the ideology of governments and leaderships, most executives acted very similarly with regard to nominally deploying substantial policies. The most significant differences between governments were in the budget available and the state’s capacity to implement the measures in question. The question needs to be asked of how it was possible that governments so different from one another could have implemented such similar policies. The most plausible answer is not that convergence in policy decision-making has resulted from reflection on best possible practice, nor from a unilateral imposition, but because policies implemented in some countries have been taken as a reference, thus influencing the decisions of others and resulting in the same measures being adopted (Meseguer and Gilardi, 2008).

Another aspect that deserves attention is the effectiveness of such measures on a country-by-country basis. And this – in addition to ‘government will and capacity’ – has depended on structural factors, such as investment in the health sector and ‘stateness’, and also on certain conditions, such as population density, the level of informal employment and the relative isolation of the country (Martí and Alcántara, 2020). In this sense, the pandemic has ‘understood’ very little about ideologies and charismatic leaders. Yet, one can see that the worst strategy was to deny reality, which was the tactic chosen by President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.