The history of a country is unfolding in an unexpected way.
In a Twitter message, in the brutal arrest of a black man on a Minneapolis street or in an unknown virus first detected in a distant city in China.
This 2020 in which everything happened began with the third trial of a president since its foundation;
it continued with the worst pandemic in a century, with the sharpest recession since the Great Depression of 1929 and with the largest wave of racial protests since the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. This unusual period was to be closed on 3 November, the most anomalous and transcendent elections in recent history, in which the men and women of this great power turned to vote as they had not done in 120 years.
They did it to oust Donald Trump from the White House, who does not recognize the result and is saddled with unfounded accusations of fraud.
Kamala Harris, hope.
In a country where acts of police violence against the black community have pushed the level of popular outrage to the limit, the appointment of Senator Kamala Harris as Vice President emerged as the symbol of a new political and social time.
In the image, Harris, during an electoral event in Fort Worth (Texas) on October 30.
Montinique Monroe Getty Images
Washington has been under his mandate like a washing machine spinning, a mechanical bull, so the
impeachment
, the gravest institutional process in American politics, happened in the midst of a strange calm, as one more chapter in this long bustle.
Despite two years of investigation into a Russian plot, it was the maneuvers in Ukraine, in search of electoral benefit, that brought Trump to trial in the Senate, a procedure that only Presidents Bill Clinton had previously been subjected to, in 1998 , and Andrew Johnson, in 1868, both Democrats.
Trump was tried for pressuring Kiev, even using military aid as a bargaining chip, to damage the image of his Democratic rivals, by demanding that the Ukrainian justice announce investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter (for the latter's business in the country when his father was vice president), and on a hoax of electoral interference.
Rudolph Giuliani's dribbles.
The former mayor of New York and personal lawyer for Donald Trump has led the failed judicial offensive of the US president to denounce the alleged fraud in the elections.
His resources, like his hair dye, have been crumbling over the days (this photo was taken on November 19).
On December 6, he tested positive for coronavirus.
Jacquelyn Martin AP
Wrapped up by the Republican majority in the Senate, which had the verdict in its hands, on February 5 Trump was acquitted of both the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
His popularity improved in those days.
Democrats were immersed in those same weeks of trial in the search for the right candidate to defeat the New York tycoon and overcome the trauma of the 2016 defeat. Up to 20 candidates had run in primaries that disseminated the vote and did not help to shape to a unifying name.
Joe Biden, who had been a favorite in the polls, played in the first races in Iowa and New Hampshire, but after the victory in South Carolina, boosted by the African-American vote, his rivals on the moderate flank disappeared and left him in a duel against the leftist Bernie Sanders who ended up winning with ease.
But the Democratic primaries went to the bottom line.
The covid-19 crisis had exploded before the eyes of the Americans.
The country had been suffering from infections for months and receiving worrying news from Asia and Europe, but if a turning point in the collective imagination were to be pointed out, that would be March 11: the World Health Organization declared the pandemic;
Trump addressed the nation and announced the ban on travel from Europe;
the NBA suspended the League;
the Democratic campaign was canceled.
Life stopped.
Eight minutes and 46 seconds.
The video went around the world.
May 25, Minneapolis, Minnesota (United States).
Police officer Derek Chauvin immobilizes George Floyd with his knee against the asphalt for almost nine minutes.
Floyd, who says several times that he cannot breathe, died of suffocation.
Darnella Frazier Facebook / AFP
The economy entered the worst recession since the Depression of 1929. In four weeks, 22 million jobs evaporated.
The death toll began to climb and Trump, powerless in the face of a crisis that derailed any electoral plan, settled into denial, questioning the guidelines of his health authorities.
But this year he had another script twist in store.
On the afternoon of May 25, on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, a police patrol detained George Floyd, suspected of having tried to pay at a store with a false bill, and lit a fuse that arrived at the same polls on May 3. November and it hasn't been turned off.
One officer pressed Floyd's neck to the ground for about nine minutes while the African American claimed he couldn't breathe and multiple cameras recorded him.
Floyd died and the wave of protests against police brutality turned into a great mobilization against racism, a national catharsis, which crossed borders.
In Washington, the streets once again filled with people to mourn progressive Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a feminist icon who passed away in September and was replaced by a conservative lawyer by Trump.
President Biden
.
The gesture is unequivocal.
The picture was taken on November 7 in Wilmington, Delaware: Joe Biden is the new president of the United States and shows his happiness.
Angela Weiss AFP
In the November 3 elections, a monumental wave of rejection of Trump spurred Joe Biden to 81 million votes (51%), seven million more than the Republican (47%), and overturned conservative strongholds like Arizona for Democrats and Georgia.
In a record vote-by-mail election due to the pandemic, the New York tycoon has launched a judicial crusade, unsuccessfully encouraging the idea of fraud.
Biden is scheduled to take office on January 20.
A difficult panorama lies ahead.
The economy is slowly recovering, but the number of infections and deaths has shot up again at the end of the year.
In total, nearly 280,000 people have lost their lives to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to cling to his account of the stolen elections and spurs the rank and file by hinting that he will run again in 2024. He wants his year to never end.
The street explodes.
A taxi driver raises his fist in New York's Union Square, in Manhattan, on November 7, after the results confirming Joe Biden as the winner of the US presidential election were made public.
Andrew Kelly Reuters