'The heart of darkness': neighbors shun Brazil over Covid response

Latin American countries scramble to protect themselves from a country where nearly 60,000 people are expected to die in March alone

It has long been regarded as a soft power superpower, the sun-kissed, culturally blessed land of Bossa Nova, Capoeira and Pele.

But Brazil's shambolic response to coronavirus under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has cast Latin America's largest country in an unfamiliar and unpleasant role: that of a Covid-riddled, science-shunning, politically-unstable outcast on whom many regional neighbors are now shutting the door.