“Pandemics and other unfortunate events won’t do anything to us,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said March 22 in the southern state of Guerrero.
Stubbornly resistant to the dangers of the coronavirus, he has continued to appear in public and mingle with crowds.
He also failed to intervene on the weekend of March 14-15, when his protégé, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum refused pleas to cancel the Vive Latino fiesta, a two-day rock music festival that attracted over 100,000 people.
Isn’t the danger from crowded situations now obvious to everyone? Look at the Feb. 19 soccer game that is believed to have started the terrible spread of this virus in Italy, or the huge crowds that gathered, despite health warnings, in cities like Madrid, Spain, on March 8 for International Women’s Day, or the crowded daily life of
New York City, or the Mardi Gras throngs in New Orleans.
Mexico’s response to the coronavirus pandemic is also growing evidence that López Obrador is walking away from the commitment that got him elected president in 2018 — his commitment to all Mexicans, not just to the elites.
Throughout his long political career, he has talked about protecting those working-class Mexicans who have none of the medical or social protections available in the United States. Why then has his government taken the following steps?
In mid-March, officials cut off food assistance to Vision in Action in Juárez, a privately run mental-health facility. Almost simultaneously, officials reduced by 50 percent the stipends for students at La Casa de Amor in Palomas and cut off their dispensas (oil, flour, beans, rice, lentils, canned tuna and other food).
The lunch program for seniors that Esperanza Lozoya had provided in Palomas was closed by government officials. At Siguiendo los Pasos de Jesús (SPJ) on the west edge of Juárez, government officials have provided tiny dispensas with food for residents, telling them that this miserly allotment has to last them for a month.
López Obrador ran on a campaign of refocusing efforts to assist the millions of poor in his country. What has happened?
In my nine years of visits at least monthly to Juárez and Palomas, here is what I have seen.
In more than 100 visits, I have only seen government social workers out in the community on one occasion.
Most medical care is provided by nonprofits like the monthly clinics in Juárez organized by SPJ and Colorado-based Missions Ministries using medical volunteers from the U.S. Both have been halted because of the coronavirus.
Mexico is the largest per capita consumer of Coca-Cola in the world, resulting in a soaring level of diabetes. But what options do Mexicans have when there is no reasonably priced clean water?
Vision in Action is the largest mental-health facility in Juárez, with roughly 120 patients, but, unlike in the U.S., it receives no per-patient support, just some food — which has been cut off.
Crime has soared. According to the newspaper El Diario,
there were 156 murders in
Juárez (population 1.5 million) in March 2020. That compares to 42 murders in New York City (population 8 million) and 39 in Los Angeles (population
4 million) but those U.S. figures are for the first three months of 2020.
In other words, violence is more of a threat than the coronavirus in Juárez, explaining why there has been little social distancing to date. The only decent housing in that area of Juárez is that which has been built by nonprofits, especially SPJ.
Countries are asking themselves: What is the most basic obligation we have to our citizens? The answer is obvious. Their health and safety. That includes not only future pandemics, which we know will occur, but also basic day-to-day obligations such as providing clean, affordable water; having medical clinics; assuring safety from violence; and decent housing.
López Obrador and his Morena party won an overwhelming victory in the 2018 elections precisely because this is what they promised. Sadly, these promises have not been turned into reality. That is a tragedy for our neighbor to the south.
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An ongoing tragedy is occurring in Mexico | My View - Santa Fe New Mexican
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