Brazil’s so-called invisibles will need more than resilience to redress the unequal impacts of COVID-19

Brazil’s 13 million favela dwellers have often been asked to show resilience in the face of the country’s sharp inequalities. Getting through the coronavirus crisis, however, will require more than the ability to make ends meet. Community-based initiatives have done much to protect local people from the most damaging impacts of the Bolsonaro government’s deficient response and toxic rhetoric. But now as in the long term, the deep inequalities revealed by coronavirus must be kept visible and properly addressed, write Aiko Ikemura Amaral (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre), Gareth A. Jones (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre), and Mara Nogueira (Birkbeck, University of London) as part of a series of blogs linked to their British Academy-funded project Engineering Food: infrastructure exclusion and ‘last mile’ delivery in Brazilian favelas.