I took a walk this morning for the first time since the “Sana Distancia” (Healthy Distance) initiative commenced in Mexico on Monday. I hadn’t showered in three days but wasn’t worried about being unfit for public consumption because, I reasoned, I’ll just keep sweating in this heat and who’s going to get close enough to smell me while I’m sana distancia-ing and single anyway.
Schools and universities are closed for the next month, so the lack of uniformed munchkins with backpacks didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that 90% of the businesses were also closed. Sure, the federal Ministry of Health had issued its guidelines, but the dumbass currently serving as Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – or AMLO, as people call him – as recently as Sunday had been contradicting his own government’s guidance, telling people “[w]e’re going to keep living life as usual. I’ll tell you when not to go out any longer…[C]ontinue taking your family out to eat…because that strengthens the economy.” From The Guardian:
[AMLO] has responded to the coronavirus crisis with nonchalance – never missing an opportunity to contradict the advice of public health officials or paint the pandemic as a plot to derail his presidency. In recent weeks, AMLO has routinely avoided social distancing and organized campaign-style rallies…AMLO’s supporters, meanwhile, speak of coronavirus in almost conspiratorial terms. One person at a recent morning press conference called it ‘a fad disease.’ Analysts say AMLO’s apathetic response stems partly from concerns over Mexico’s economy – and partly from his conviction that his political foes are behind calls for him to take more drastic action.
Sound familiar?
I’m not gonna lie: it’s been extremely triggering.
Fortunately, as in the U.S., some states, municipalities, businesses and individual Mexicans have taken matters into their own hands absent guidance from and coordination by the federal government. Oaxaca, for example, is on strict lockdown, which explains the hundreds of shuttered stores. The mayor, Oswaldo Garcia Jarquin, has deployed around 1,500 officers to the city streets to break up groups of people and tell them to go home. The police are also restricting access to parks and public spaces. Likewise, the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo,* on Sunday ordered the closure of the city’s museums, bars, nightclubs, movie theaters, zoos, saunas and gyms and banned events with more than 50 people. Some smaller cities and towns in the State of Oaxaca have even banned all tourists.
As of yesterday, Mexico has 367 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and four deaths attributed to the virus. Oaxaca has three cases and no hospitalizations (yet).
My guess: they are going to blow it, just like we did in the U.S. The country’s path to date has been alarmingly similar to that taken by the U.S. I pray I’m wrong because the impact on a country with so many people living in extreme poverty is likely to be catastrophic and long-lasting.
______
*Sheinbaum, born in Mexico City to a secular Jewish family, jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN body.