The Fragile also fades away into the Air. Social Setbacks because of the Pandemic after the Post-Neoliberal Cycle

Abstract

This article presents a synthetic balance of the social advances in terms of income, labor, health, education and housing, as well as their setbacks, in Latin America in the post-neoliberal cycle. It then focuses on how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted such trends. Our argument is that the pandemic has an amplifying effect on inequalities and in particular has produced and is likely to produce social reversals in different dimensions. Indeed, Latin America is one of the epicenters of the pandemic because of its structural conditions of inequality and exclusion and, in turn, the pandemic will produce an increase in inequality and very particularly social setbacks in indicators that have been improving in recent decades. In this way, the pandemic highlights how difficult it is for our societies to achieve progress in social terms and the fragility of several of these achievements. Thus, not only does the solid fade away, but also the fragile does so, but before.