Pandemic techno-politics in the Global South

1. Introduction

At the time of writing Brazil has exceeded 660,000 deaths from COVID-19 and 30.7 million people infected. This is the second highest number of total deaths (Fig. 1) and the fifth highest in terms of deaths per million inhabitants. As in other countries, measures for prevention of the virus have been the subject of political debate. But Brazil has standed out for the level of the central government’s denialism and refusal to adopt the solutions most recommended by scientific knowledge, during the pandemic. On the one hand, this has meant weak adoption of more invasive surveillance technologies directly related to the health problem. On the other hand it has exposed the population to a collection of ineffective responses that have led to higher death rates and directed the attention of technological systems towards other activities (Meijer et al., 2020). It would be no exaggeration to assert that ineptitude in dealing with a humanitarian crisis of this scale is deliberately incorporated into a broader context of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2003) marked by a sequence of measures and actions that increase the population’s difficulties of accessing public services, vaccination, or obtaining relief from conditions of suffering and extreme precariousness. We show how, within a context of economic austerity measures, the provision of social assistance that enables the survival and well-being of the population during a global pandemic might run counter to the prevailing political logic. We discuss a set of political attitudes towards the global health crisis and consider the political reality of a Global South country in analysing how those attitudes impact on the practices of use, non-use or misuse of certain knowledge and technologies of control that sustain specific dominant groups in power. This involves how deaths, policies and control technologies are produced, justified and employed based on power strategies that can be related to the targeting of different territories and populations.

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This paper offers a political background to the actions developed for combating COVID-19 in Brazil, between 2020 and 2022, highlighting measures based on digital technologies and socio-technical arrangements unfolding into materialities and actions that give shape to such measures. We shall then discuss possible repercussions of the widespread adoption of surveillance technologies as a quick fix to the effects of the pandemic. Our focus is to explain how the materiality of the virus and its political as well as territorial effects are combined with digital technologies as responses (or lack of them) in a context of a country of the Global South. In line with the findings of Maria Alexandra Cunha and Erico Przeybilovicz in Meijer et al. (2020) about the tragedy of the pandemic management in Brazil, we expand the analysis on the techno-political arrangements that shaped a disastrous scenario in terms of service provision, decision making and political responses to COVID-19. By looking at the categories of education, labour, territorial management, public service provision and the role of different governmental levels in reacting to the crisis (or worsening it), we offer an overview of how the spread of the virus has manifested itself in the country, the possible scenarios in terms of technological responses used by the government and the private sector, as well as the ethical and political repercussions of such socio-technical arrangements. In terms of methodology, this study can be divided into three main elements. The first establishes a picture of the Brazilian political-institutional structure and the limits of its action at times of crisis, describing the federal government’s erratic policies towards the various phases of the global health crisis. The second seeks to develop an interpretative framework for the unequal material and territorial conditions in the country, using secondary data from other specific research, in which we consider the historical asymmetries of countries of the Global South. The third also draws on secondary data and information to suggest some techno-political repercussions of the pandemic in relation to control of movement in the city, and also of labour and the educational system.

In addition to this brief introduction, the paper is divided into five other sections, and a conclusion. First, we explain the complex scenario of Brazilian politics in terms of its governmental structure, together with the impact of COVID-19 in general. Then, we explore the differences in dealing with the virus and the techno-politics of the pandemic in a country that is extremely divided in terms of social class and access to basic rights. We argue that understanding the territorial manifestations of the pandemic in a country marked by asymmetric relations of power, social justice and human rights might help to demonstrate the different ways in which the health crisis unfolded across cities in a country of the Global South. The next three sections describe and discuss the adoption of technologies and tactics of surveillance and monitoring for controlling movement in urban spaces, education, work, and eGovernment strategies – as a collection of measures for preventing a collapse of the healthcare system – as responses to the pandemic.

Brazil is a federation in which state governments exercise relative autonomy from the central government for some aspects of public administration. State governments are responsible for administration of local healthcare systems, for example. But the central government is responsible for distribution of resources, approval of medications and procedures, and overall coordination of the system (Machado & Silva, 2019). Brazil has one of the largest universal public health systems in the world, which does not however receive sufficient funding and whose quality varies greatly according to region – internationally referenced procedures can be found in major urban centres, while there is a lack of doctors for basic treatment in less populated regions of the interior (Szwarcwald et al., 2016).

When the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the pandemic in the first months of 2020, the political situation in Brazil was already unstable. Election of state governors occurs at the same time as the presidential election. In the 2018 general elections, governors of the most populous states in the country, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, were elected with the support of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. But political circumstances led the president to break with the two governors in the course of the following couple of years. The pandemic later revealed and expanded this rift (Meijer et al., 2020). Another important region of the country, the Northeast, had already elected governors opposed to Jair Bolsonaro. The first lockdown measures were taken by the state of São Paulo, as one of the states with the greatest international flow and also one of the first epicentres of the disease.

Rapid actions by the governors pressed the central government to signal measures for national coordination. These measures were hampered by a president preoccupied with the actions of his new opponents, while at the same time an orthodox economic policy focused on caps on spending showed signs of central government paralysis in the face of prospects of one of the biggest recessions in its history, with a record GDP contraction of 4.1% in 2020 (Cucolo & Pupo, 2021). Actions related to the disease would mean more national spending on health measures and increased resources for hospitals, as well as financial assistance for workers having to avoid social contact.

Data from the same period of the pandemic points to unemployment rates of over 14%. However, according to the 2020 National Household Survey (PNAD) published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the employed include more than 40% in the informal sector or self-employed (Garcia, 2020). These workers have no form of security, and many are dependent on digital delivery and mobility platforms. Before the pandemic, half of the country’s workforce already consisted of workers who left their homes each day looking for work, or who were self-employed, dependent on movement in the economy and on the cities. The president then insisted on the impossibility of halting the economy, stating that reduction of activity would bring more deaths than the disease itself, that COVID-19 would not be so serious and would sooner or later affect the entire population. He also stated that only the elderly and those with some comorbidity should stay at home, so that the country would not come to a standstill. A dichotomy was established between the health of the population and the economic health of the country.

Evangelista and Firmino (2020) commented on three viewpoints being sketched out at that time, which would lead to different ways of confronting the disease. One, which they termed exception, indicated that nothing should significantly change in political terms because the virus would be a passing phenomenon. Another, that they called acceleration, saw the pandemic as offering an opportunity to bring a more dynamic approach to processes of digitalisation and virtualisation currently in progress, consistent with the idea of a new normal. The third, which they named rupture, considered that deaths and uncontrolled spread of the disease were an escalation of historical inequalities, such as lack of access to healthcare and decent housing. Diagnosis based on this last viewpoint suggested that the necessary approach would involve deep institutional reforms as a way of confronting social inequality, not just the virus. According to this view, the pandemic amplified structural problems in the country, which leads to questions about more complex social arrangements and demands new forms of organisation after the pandemic.

Central government actions in the fields of both health and economics can be said to fit perfectly into the idea that the pandemic is a temporary moment of exception. Health ministers who have outlined actions that recognise the gravity of the times or who refused to endorse false quick-fix solutions supported by the president – such as publicly supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine (Fig. 2) or adoption of the infamous herd immunity – were removed from their posts. From May 2020 to March 2021, the Ministry of Health has been headed by an army general, initially as an interim solution for the then sacked minister, and then as de facto minister. From March 2021 until the end of Bolsonaro’s term in office, Brazil’s Ministry of Health was led by its fourth minister since the begining of the pandemic. In this context, actions for combating the disease using surveillance technologies were the focus of state governments rather than federal authorities.

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Beyond the serious problems caused by the health crisis worldwide, which was magnified in Brazil due to its chaotic political scenario, the techno-political repercussions of the pandemic around the globe can be looked at in another way, recognising the various manifestations of the disease (and the policy strategies designed to reduce its impact) across asymmetric territorial settings.

In the light of all this debate related to the pandemic and its techno-political ramifications it is necessary to discuss the materiality of the new coronavirus that is not confined to a microscopic composition formed by a fragment of DNA surrounded by a layer of protein. Nor can understanding of the materiality be restricted to the interaction of this biochemical structure with (infected) host cells and the body composed of these cells. The fact that we are experiencing what is considered to be a global pandemic has much to say about this materiality and its territorial manifestations. Similarly, Latour (1988) has unveiled the role of materiality of microbes to what he calls the Pasteurian revolution, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Latour analyses the ways in which the revelation, by Pasteur and Pasteurians, of microbes as actants in the network of relations involving farmers, industrialists, politicians, and much of the scientific establishment, have influenced microbiology, urban public health and the understanding of diseases by the French society of that period.

An important aspect of the virus’ materiality is expressed by its spatial manifestations. Revelation of the new coronavirus’s territory of action is one way of understanding the relationships established between the possibilities of control of the pandemic through monitoring of the movement and proximity of people in space. A large portion of the technologies implemented directly for containing the virus are related to the possibility of containing its spread spatially – while part of the solution involves isolation of those carrying the virus.

A process of contamination that began in one province in China, as far as is known, and spread to every continent within a few months, is connected to chains of techno-political and cultural relationships so complex that they cannot be explained solely by the biological engineering and composition of the virus and epidemiological reasoning. The techno-political materiality of any virus can in different proportions be explained by its biochemical characteristics, but also by forms of contagion, measures for containment, prevention and treatment, specialist explanations (as well as the production of fake news and denialism), research networks, healthcare systems, the pharmaceutical industry, contingency strategies for effects of the pandemic, declaration of the state of pandemic itself, possible relationships with other viruses, other diseases and, consequently, other forms of treatment, technologies for detecting contagion and controlling those infected, immunological responses and many other networks of relationships. But the biochemical materiality of the virus itself is affected by its movement through bodies and territories. Efforts to contain the virus also became efforts to contain mutation of the virus. New variants began to emerge due to the behaviour and relationships of several of these networks and their techno-political configurations.

If the idea of territory involves some degree of sovereignty (Foucault, 2007; Elden, 2013; Santos, 1996; Firmino et al., 2018) – of who defines its borders, who is seen as a constituent part of this portion of space, who exercises power and imposes ways of being and existing –, we might ask if one could speak of a sovereignty of the virus that disregards other, older, consolidated and permanent territories (such as the nation-state, for example). It seems possible to consider a multiscale viral territoriality, for instead of disregarding other spatial formations of power it recomposes itself according to them, adapts and extends its bases of formation. The virus is not in a network, it is a network. And as an elementary part of a chain of relationships, the virus imposes its territoriality and constructs territories with a variety of time scales, challenging legal and material boundaries together through its presence and its absence.

It is interesting to note how various layers of techno-politics establish movements of de-re-territorialisation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Holland, 1991; Haesbaert, 2007), or processes of constant redefinition of boundaries and power disputes in the constitution of territories. One clear example of this territorial behaviour of the virus at the level of nation-states is the constant clashes between different levels of government and autonomy of management of circulation of people and goods, and the possibilities for use of spaces and services in the cities, the states and the country as a whole – as we have indicated in the case of Brazil in the previous section, these power disputes were clearly visible between the federal government represented by the figure of Bolsonaro, and his political adversaries in the state governments.

The processes of de-re-territorialisation can be seen in the transformation of a football stadium into a field hospital (Fig. 3); the closure of beaches, parks and squares, together with bars and restaurants – and then through establishing zones of contact and distancing in these places –; access and behaviour protocols in places with greater movement of people, etc. Presence and absence are also decisive in these cases, so most of the techno-political approaches to dealing with the virus and its effects have some degree of relationship with confinement and containment. The virus is in the hospital, and it is desirable to restrain its actions in that kind of space. But the virus is not necessarily present in the park where people try to keep their distance from each other, and it is desirable that the virus be kept away from these spaces.

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The specific context of the Global South is a crucial aspect for understanding the unequal material conditions of the viral territory. The use of monitoring technologies or imposition of restrictive measures in neighbourhoods like Leblon (Rio de Janeiro) or Jardins (São Paulo) – two of the wealthiest areas in these cities – establishes a territory in which acceptance of the rules or disobedience takes place in a context in which most people live in conditions of material privilege and comfort, in apartments with several rooms, an abundance of communication equipment and infrastructure, which enables de-re-territorialisations that strengthen survival and reduce risks. Use of the same restrictions of movement in the favelas of Maré (Rio de Janeiro) or Paraisópolis (São Paulo) involves conditions of existence – insufficient or non-existent sanitation and mobility networks, precarious living and working conditions – that produce de-re-territorialisations that limit possibilities for survival, with higher rates of infection and death.

Expanding the report on the management of the sanitary crisis in Brazil provided by Meijer et al. (2020), we argue that the manifestations of the pandemic go beyond issues of privacy, transparency and the digital divide, and result in de-re-territorialisation processes that are selective and racist. The viral territory of black people and the poor is different from the viral territory of white people and the rich. The three different viewpoints proposed by Evangelista and Firmino (2020), mentioned earlier, also have specific repercussions on different segments of the population. To see the pandemic as a short period of exception has more appeal in territories where the poorest populations circulate, given the lack of resources for a prolonged period of isolation. The idea of acceleration, on the other hand, is more appealing in territories where populations have privileged residential spaces and can isolate themselves in comfort and without significant loss of work capacity in relation to what might be considered a “normal life”. The rupture viewpoint indicates a medium-term political horizon, which requires social groups to engage in struggles aimed at fundamentally questioning the asymmetries that involve inequality, including territorial issues.

A study by Instituto Polis2

Attempts at identification and control of viral territory in Brazilian states have involved unusual partnerships between governments (municipal, state and consortiums of more than one local government) and technology companies. During the first weeks of the pandemic one private company began to offer social-isolation monitoring services to city councils free of charge. This was a Brazilian start-up called inLoco backed by international capital, which until March was selling location marketing services. In March 2020 the company arranged a contract with the first city council aimed at monitoring social isolation. At that time the company revealed a database that it would monitor: consent given in third-party applications would be used in a search to determine the percentage of people in a particular neighbourhood who were isolating at home. By May 2020, when it announced the change in its field of activity from geolocation to security, it declared that 14 states and three city councils would be using its system free of charge.

Furthermore, several states have begun to announce social isolation data based on information from mobile phone companies. The isolation index is based on location provided by mobile phone towers (Radio Base Stations – RBSs), which mark a reference for the place where the mobile phone slept between the hours of 10 pm and 2 am.4

One of the first and most important initiatives in relation to the use of smartphones in control of the movement of healthy and infected bodies, was Monitora COVID-19 (Fig. 4). Launched initially by the government of Bahia state, and produced by a private company, it was eventually adopted by a consortium of states in the Northeast of the country (those opposed to the government of Jair Bolsonaro). Monitora COVID connects public guidance about the disease with an interface for sending information about personal data and symptoms to the platform. Although the application collects data that can reveal user location (requiring permission for reading SMS, for example), it uses no form of contact-tracing technology. A study into Monitora COVID and its privacy design by Lemos et al. (2022) has shown how complex and multifaceted the implementation of so-called surveillance technologies can be within the techno-political context in Brazil.

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One application released by the federal government, Coronavírus SUS, does use this approach. Launched in March 2020, it initially simply provided information and offered data about the disease in Brazil. After Google and Apple released an API for contact monitoring, the application incorporated that technology in July 2020. Adoption was quite low, however, and insufficient for monitoring to be effective. Reasons for this extend beyond concerns about privacy or data protection. The application seems to have been the target of the same denialist approach to the virus on the part of the government as are other measures.5

Technologies for individual monitoring and surveillance in the Brazilian context therefore raise a specific order of problems. Although presenting the same vulnerabilities and deficiencies of those used in countries in the North (see, for example, Padeiro et al., 2021), adoption of these technologies is linked to local political disputes and hindered by a narrative of denial of the virus and its seriousness. Brazilian viral territory thus demonstrates its own particularities in how it is formed by relationships between the virus (through belief or doubt about its existence and power of influence), the use of monitoring technologies, governmental actions, and different effects across the national territory.

The context of the pandemic accelerated uncritical adoption of a set of platforms connected to surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019). Large technology companies like Google and Microsoft were already making contact and offering their services free of charge to education secretaries and public and private universities throughout the country. Google, for example, established contracts with 65% of federal universities in early 2021, compared to 27% in late 2019 (Cruz et al., 2019). The pandemic, and demands for distance learning, consolidated and standardised adoption of these platforms. The term educational platforms has been used to referrer to a set of tools such as video conference solutions, web email servers, collaborative office applications, online storage space, and teaching systems, offered by Big Tech companies to universities and schools. Companies start offering a basic plan free of charge, which depending on the importance of the targeted institution, can include even more advanced tools in the basic packages offered.

Sectors that are critical of these companies, concerned mainly with issues of privacy, surveillance and domestic technological development, have been intensifying their research and activism (Cruz et al., 2019; Parra et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2020). They seek to point out the limitations of distance learning as a whole, the need for adaptations to teaching practices and the possible infeasibility of applying some teaching methodologies in these platforms. They have also sought to provide information about alternatives to major market players, which use open and free software and allow installation on local servers and development by local programmers.

Although efforts of dissemination have intensified during the pandemic, success has been small compared to the expansion of the major platforms. Data from the Educação Vigiada (Portuguese for Surveilled Education)6

Criticism of the large educational platforms is generally linked to what we call the viewpoint of rupture, claiming that instead of hasty adoption of ready solutions produced by companies engaged in surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019), the pandemic means that it is even more necessary for investments in open technologies to be adapted to local conditions. This period demonstrates the importance of deeper discussions of distance learning. The technologies employed need to be developed in the light of the specific and local needs of education rather than through poorly adapted borrowings from social media and platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017).

In the world of work, the pandemic in Brazil has followed global trends and led to rocketing levels of home working. At the same time it has driven demands for another part of the population to leave the home, working on delivery of ready meals or supermarket items. This trade is almost exclusively performed on motorcycles by workers known as motoboys. The country’s main companies in this field are the Latin American leader iFood (Brazilian with capital investments from Naspers and Innova Capital), Uber and the Colombian company Rappi (with support from SoftBank). iFood had an increase on its registered delivery staff from 250 thousand in 2019 to 645 thousand in June 2020 (BBC Brasil, 2020).

The greater demand and risks inherent to working during the pandemic have increased public awareness of the work of application deliverers. Complaining about lack of assistance from the companies, absence of personal protection equipment, reduced earnings and unfair restrictions, workers organised two unprecedented national strikes (Fig. 5), known as the Breque dos Apps (Portuguese for Apps Stoppage).7

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The movement brought some prominence to the sector, revealing new leaders to the public and stimulating discussion among the traditional parties about platform jobs. Considerable participation and support came from social movements such as MST (the Landless Workers’ Movement) and CUT, the country’s largest trade union organisation. At the same time it revealed the dilemmas of this sector, which wishes to increase earnings and guarantees but is not unanimous in a desire to fit within traditional work-regulation legislation. Many workers argue for freedom and enterprise for platform work and are reluctant to request a recognised framework as platform workers.

More recently, additional demonstrations and strikes by these workers are facing a new organisational challenge. The major company in the market, iFood, is using a legal and organisational arrangement named Operador Logístico (OL, Portuguese for Logistics Operator). By this mechanism, most of the delivery requests are not made directly to drivers, but to several small front-end companies, who are, then, responsible for distributing the task to its partnered drivers. The payments (including tips) are also made to the OL, who manages the drivers’ payments. The OL can be made of a small group of drivers or a sole driver. But besides respecting the terms of service of the app, the OL cannot deny delivery requests and has to obey a minimum set of work hours, among other obligations. If a driver does not want to work as an OL or to be hired by an OL, she/he has to work as Nuvem (Portuguese for cloud) – with more autonomy to decide on taking requests or defining working hours, for instance. However, she/he will not be prioritised by the platform in the allocation of delivery requests.8

Being part of this stricter and less autonomous work arrangement means additional difficulties to decide to be involved in any type of labour movement. Besides that, there are accusations that many of the OLs in major cities, such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, are connected with organised crime groups, which means additional threats of violence if any of them tries to join a strike or demonstration (Liberato, 2021). These arrangements can increase surveillance and control upon workers and their capacity to organise themselves, and are usually unseen or unknown by the ordinary app users (customers), who cannot differentiate between a request that goes through an OL or a Nuvem – an invisibility that harms any type of solidarity with the workers’ struggles. This type of work arrangement resembles, in a more structured and wider strategy, a case previously identified by Firmino, Cardoso and Evangelista (2019), related to an Uber driver. In that case, a private driver was obligated to perform work as an Uber driver by the legal employer, using an account controlled by him. All the earnings go to the employer, who justifies the arrangement as necessary to pay the driver’s full salary. The case of OLs and Nuvem, described above, seems to mimic this type of relationship to exert a similar control on its delivery workers.

Different views about the pandemic period in Brazil have also spread across territories and their populations. The three viewpoints mentioned earlier (exception, acceleration and rupture) can be used for understanding the reactions of different social groups in relation to measures for combating the pandemic.

Even at high risk of death, poorer populations, particularly families in which individuals have no guaranteed employment and who need to go out every day to work, demonstrate low acceptance of confinement policies and even disregard for the seriousness of the virus. Unable to see any possibility for rupture, this part of the population adopted the idea of exception and began to act as if the virus did not exist. This is a population already accustomed to death and violence, which has historically been related to a State that gives little value to preservation of their lives.

An elite of businesspeople and workforce of the creative sector, on the other hand, have in general solidly accepted confinement, and the technological tools for work, study and consumption. Some have welcomed the new normal, which would be a new era of less travel, more convenience and even less pollution, all provided by the new digital technologies. They adopted the viewpoint of acceleration as not only a solution to the pandemic but also for other problems of urban life. Obviously, they ignored that part of the population doing the travelling for them. They also showed no concern about increased surveillance in the context of the pandemic, which could be explained by the fact that this segment of the population is not usually the focus of attention by surveillance policies and police violence, given the social structure of a country in which control measures are concentrated on the black and peripheral populations. Although forbidden by the Supreme Court during the pandemic, violent police operations continued to be carried out in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (Fig. 6).

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Sectors critical both of uncontrolled adoption of information or surveillance technologies and of the structure of social injustice in the country have found themselves somewhat trapped. Initially the commotion caused by the outbreak of the virus led to an indication that reaction to the new global crisis could indicate a rupture. After social pressure, Congress approved emergency aid of around 115 dollars monthly, which is half the minimum wage, for more than 55 million people (a quarter of the Brazilian population) until the end of 2020. But that aid package would benefit the popularity of the denialist president who was initially against the measure.

While much of the country has problems with quality of access to the internet, the adoption of technological platforms in work and education expanded significantly. Poorer populations mainly access the internet via mobile phone, which is already adequate for integrating them to social networks and as workers in platform capitalism. Although teachers have resisted the platforming of education, and distance learning has demonstrated clear operational problems, the technologies continue to be adopted at unprecedented scale and speed, without any critical review.

Brazil is considered here as a privileged place for observing the use of techno-political measures (which also include recommendations from the scientific community, the use of surveillance technologies and public policies for social assistance based on economic and social studies) in combatting and containing the territorial developments of COVID-19. Although characterised by a geopolitical position and historical conditions of inequality typical of the Global South, Brazil also has technological and financial resources close to those of the richest countries in the world. In this sense, we consider political-ideological reactions that emerged as responses to the pandemic, as used by Evangelista and Firmino (2020), to discuss the measures applied (or not) in areas such as education, work and health by the Brazilian government in face of the virus’s spread across its vast territory. We show how the material conditions of the techno-political networks of the pandemic are manifested in the inequalities of countries in the Global South, which are asymmetrically distributed in the occupation of spaces, and in ethnic-racial terms.

In contradiction, the most reluctant views towards containing the virus, such as underestimation of its contagiousness and severity, which led to resistance to lockdown measures and the hasty return to work (the temporary-exception viewpoint), found support among the economic elite that controls the agricultural and industrial sectors of the country, which require an available workforce. The exception viewpoint was also supported among the mass of informal workers with no guaranteed income or employment, who need to take to the streets every day to survive. The acceleration viewpoint, on the other hand, was found among sectors of the urban middle class, which occupy privileged spaces in cities, with a greater structure for a fully online life, remaining in the comfort of their homes and feeling more secure through avoiding displacement. These middle sectors marginally supported the rupture viewpoint, demanding more solidarity with the poorest, but never with substantive commitment, limiting themselves to disorganised online demonstrations and advertising-flavoured memes.

The overall picture of the pandemic is one of acceleration combined with maintenance of the economic order supported by the exception viewpoint. The presiding logic in adopting surveillance and monitoring technologies in Brazil follows less a direct desire for controlling speech and political discourse and more the neoliberal and necropolitical reasoning of minimising state spending and fitting the population contingent to the state budget. Mbembe (2003: 40) discusses his notion of necropower by stating, “weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum destruction of persons and the creation of death-worlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead”. The permitted circulation of the virus can be seen as an action similar to the deployment of a weapon.

The populations occupying specific territories (favelas, peripheries) in the particular country in the Global South analysed here (Brazil) have the status of living dead, and may therefore be subject to the sacrifices demanded by a period considered as a “brief exception”, so that the economic system can continue to function or, eventually, be made more “efficient”. Officials from the Ministry of Economy saluted the pandemic’s impact on the national pension system (Lindner & Vargas, 2020). Brazilian Congress hearings showed that calculations made by the Ministry of Economy predicted the end of the pandemic by late 2020 and limited resources in the 2021 national budget to fight COVID-19 (Rodrigues & Castro, 2021).

In the already mentioned overview on the responses of 21 countries to the COVID-19 crisis, Meijer et al. (2020) conclude that the differences and similarities between these countries can be mapped through an analytical framework based on six functions of information management: (1) management of information for crisis management; (2) publishing public information for citizens; (3) providing digital services to citizens; (4) monitoring citizens in public space; (5) facilitating information exchange between citizens; and (6) developing innovative responses to COVID-19. The techno-political arrangements that we have described here provided elements to all of these functions, with the important difference that we have not focused exclusively on government-led actions. Moreover, we also argue that to understand the driving forces in the adoption of control technologies in the context of the pandemic it is important to observe the ideological pressure for budget cuts as much as any will to control the population. It is a complex interplay between neoliberalism and necropolitics (Mbembe, 2003), an ideological pressure for economic austerity that uses technology towards privatisation plus a disregard with the lives of those who do not belong to the elite. In a similar fashion to what Busaniche (2020) points out when she discusses the lack of commitment of Latin American countries regarding data protection of its citizens, negligence also helps to explain how surveillance technologies have been used in the region.

In Brazil, surveillance and control technologies advance inconsistently. Technologies that might eventually help to preserve life and help with caring for the population, even if having controversial aspects, seem to have less progress than those whose affordances are beneficial to the neoliberal normality. Everything changes to be as it was before.