Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Shopping for a television these days means swimming in a sea of letters.

LEDs, OLEDs, QLEDs, each of these core technologies is improving.

We go behind the acronyms to find out how a better generation of goggle boxes is being developed.

And a look back on the life of Nikolai Antoschkin, a Soviet Air Force general who,

when confronted with a huge but unknowable danger, saved an uncountable number of lives.

But first, on Sunday, Ecuadorians will head to the polls to elect a new president and legislature.

It's the start of what will be a busy political year across Latin America.

Chile, Haiti, Honduras, Peru and Nicaragua are all due to hold national elections.

Argentina, El Salvador and Mexico will have legislative and regional votes.

This frenetic election year comes at a delicate moment.

In 2019 and 2020, mass protests erupted in several of these countries,

over corruption, inequality and price rises.

Since then, the pandemic might have quieted the streets,

but it's also raised the stress as economies contracted and poverty rose.

This year, all those strains may come to bear on the region's political systems.

Latin America is about to have sort of a bumper year of elections.

Brook Unger is our America's editor.

And these are taking place in a region that's been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic,

if not the hardest hit in terms of cases and deaths per million people.

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