A Mexican man was found dead from blunt trauma to the head after being detained by the police for not wearing a mask in public.

MEXICO CITY — Several prominent killings by police officers and thousands of arrests over violations of measures intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus have roiled Latin America.

It’s a region familiar with police brutality, but many people feel the pandemic has become a new excuse for security forces to crack down violently.

In Argentina, officers beat up and detained Luis Espinoza, a 31-year-old day laborer, during an operation in May to ensure quarantine measures were being followed.

“The police feel that there is another good pretext for them to be rash, to do some social control and enforce aggressively in the name of a pandemic,” said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch.

Last week, protesters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, called for an end to police brutality after João Pedro Matos Pinto, 14, was killed during a police raid.

Among the thousands of arrests for quarantine and health violations — in Peru alone, more than 33,000 people were detained during the first two weeks of a state of emergency decreed by President Martín Vizcarra — some appear to have been unjustified and at times violent.

In Peru, police dragged a man into a police van after he crossed the street in front of his building to throw out the trash.

Some officials have waved off critics of police abuse and protesters, saying they were trying to politically destabilize their cities or countries

In an echo of the claims of some US governors that protests have been led by outside agitators, the governor of Jalisco state, Enrique Alfaro, said protests had been planned from Mexico City

A banner reads "Stop racism in USA and Mexico" outside the US Embassy in Mexico City

Karla Zabludovsky is the Mexico bureau chief and Latin America correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based in Mexico City