ABSTRACT
Bolsonaro’s foreign policy has adopted an anti-South American view and an anti-cooperative regional behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrary to his predecessors, who actively constructed South America’s most important regional organisations (UNASUR and MERCOSUR) and sought Brazil’s regional leadership, Bolsonaro’s administration aimed to destabilise these same institutions and decrease the country’s participation. In this chapter, we describe two aspects of Bolsonaro’s foreign policy towards South America that characterise Brazil’s regional antagonism. First, we show Bolsonaro’s negative view of South America and its leading regional organisations by focusing on his cabinet speeches and discourses about the region from 2019 to 2021. Second, in the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that Brazil censured the PAHO and the WHO and harshly criticised health policies from Argentina and Venezuela, opting for a nationalistic stance that rejected regional cooperation.
