LAUSR

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have hit Latin America's economy and social sphere more than any other crisis in the last hundred years. Coexistence with the virus caused a wave of restrictive measures, destroyed normal mechanisms of supply and demand, collapsed production and foreign trade, dramatically worsened the financial situation of the majority of Latin Americans, exacerbated domestic political problems. The article shows that the extreme severity of the corona crisis was caused not only by its specific features but also by the pairing with other social ills inherent in Latin America: fatal miscalculations of ruling populist regimes, deep-rooted corruption, a huge informal sector of the economy. At the same time, the author attempts to understand the reality of the countries of the region in the post-COVID-19 period, what can be done to mitigate the negative effects of the epidemic. And the main thing is whether Latin American states have the resources and opportunities to get out of the crisis with a more advanced technological structure of the regional economy. As a matter of fact, in international business and expert circles it is recognized that in recent years new and extremely important economic and social phenomena of the positive order have been born in the leading Latin American states: the modernization of the business community and the strengthening of the role of tecnolatinas, the improvement of the educational level of young people and, on this basis, the qualitative improvement of human capital, the deployment of modernization processes and technological renewal of the production apparatus. The consolidation and development of these trends create unique chances to overcome the extremely unfavourable situation in which the region found itself as a result of the epidemic of coronavirus.