Given recent press coverage of Mexico, an outsider could easily assume that the Mexican government has not prepared for the crisis at all. The center-left President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — known by the acronym “AMLO” — is depicted as ignoring expert advice and taking no action against the pandemic.
Bloomberg recently published an article, “Coronavirus Is Killing Lopez Obrador’s Big Plans for Mexico.” The Federalist claimed, “Mexico Is Dangerously Unprepared For The Inevitable Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak,” while the Washington Post affirmed, “Mexico is not ready for the coronavirus. Just look at AMLO’s behavior.”
Much has been made of the fact that the President was seen shaking hands and hugging supporters in March (although European leaders engaged in similar behavior, without the same outrage.) When AMLO presented a Catholic scapular at a press conference, the foreign press pretended that this was his only plan for fighting the virus, as illustrated by the Los Angeles Times headline, “Amid growing coronavirus threat, Mexico’s president says he’s putting trust in good-luck charms.” (No such claims were made; the Mexican President was simply appealing to the value of faith in hard times.)
This myth of “careless Mexico” — like all myths and legends — reveals much about the (non-Mexican) people who tell it. The reality on the ground in Mexico, however, is an entirely different story.
Mexico’s approach has already been praised by the World Health Organization, whose representative stated that “Mexico is on the right path” and is “benefiting from the experience of other countries.” (El Financiero, March 25) Mexico’s team of Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins-trained medical professionals have been planning the long-term strategy since January, based on the country’s previous experience fighting the 2009 flu pandemic. Under the leadership of epidemiologist Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, Deputy Secretary of Prevention and Health Promotion with the Mexican Secretariat of Health, the government has taken extensive measures: closing schools, universities, and key institutions, closing the border to all but essential travel, and instituting expansive quarantine measures.
Furthermore, these measures were implemented much earlier than in other countries. Italy and Spain implemented them when their confirmed infections were already in the thousands; Mexico did so when their number still hovered around 50. Only time will tell, but the government may well have flattened the curve before it ever spiked.
AMLO’s administration has taken a decidedly progressive approach to the pandemic. They have focused resources on maintaining and expanding the social safety net for workers, unemployed, disabled, and elderly citizens. Despite a probable economic downturn (the peso’s exchange rate has already suffered from the current situation), they have cut back on excessive government spending over the past year, in order to avoid any new IMF loans. The government has issued a moratorium on credit card payments (to the chagrin of finance companies), and has forced private gas stations to adhere to gas price controls (to the chagrin of Big Oil).
Oddly enough, many progressive US media seem intent on ignoring these facts. Vox recently described the Mexican President as “coronavirus-skeptical,” claiming that he “is setting up his country for a health crisis.” (Alex Ward, March 28) The article cites the conventional wisdom of a nebulous crowd of unnamed “experts.”
Other liberal voices have echoed this message. Mexico City-based author David Lida — whose writing I respect and admire on all other topics — recently wrote, “it’s hard not to fall into the black hole of apocalyptic scenarios” regarding the future of the capital. All this, despite the fact that, as of this publication, the official coronavirus numbers nationwide show just 5,847 cases and 449 deaths in all of Mexico. Meanwhile, 5,751 murders took place in Mexico during the first two months of the year alone, 632 of which were femicides — gender-based murders of women. Faced with such violence, pandemics take a backseat.
It is especially interesting that so many foreign critiques of Mexico are based on mere conjecture. Rather than looking at the current facts of COVID-19 in Mexico, foreign journalists focus on what the future might look like, on what hidden information could be out there. So why has so much of the international media stuck to this version?
One reason is a very general tendency: the news that sells is news that confirms readers’ and viewers’ pre-existing biases. When coverage of Mexico in the English-speaking world appeals to images of “carelessness” and “irresponsibility,” it is clear which ugly stereotypes are being invoked.
More importantly, we cannot ignore the economic and political interests that are highly invested in presenting a distorted picture of Mexico’s approach. AMLO is a center-left president who has challenged the hegemony of the IMF and the World Bank. Like many other Latin American leaders before him, he has expanded the social welfare state and discontinued certain neoliberal policies of his predecessors. In early March, corporate and government representatives from six foreign countries met in Mexico City to express their concern that AMLO might threaten their private shareholding in the oil industry.
It becomes clear which international parties have a vested interest in misrepresenting his administration’s approach to the pandemic, when we look at who else has been parroting their discourse — the country’s own conservative opposition. Mexican right-wingers have been plugging the same line as the foreign media for several months: Mexico needs an IMF loan; the president is ignoring the crisis; Mexico is headed for disaster. They reached shameless levels of disinformation on March 16, when two conservative journalists published the false news that Mexican businessman José Kuri was the first to die of the virus. In the words of The Simpsons’ Kent Brockman, “His status was later upgraded to ‘alive.’”
It doesn’t take many history lessons to see the pattern — this is exactly how the domestic opposition and the international corporate world treated center-left leaders across Latin America, from Jacobo Arbenz to Evo Morales, over the past century. In many cases, the story ends in a violent coup d’etat, with the tacit support of the CIA and the US State Department.
There is a clear irony here. Inasmuch as US liberal voices join in the chorus of condemning AMLO’s administration as “careless,” they are playing harmony to Trump and his corporate cronies. And neoliberal capitalism is a virus that will be around long after COVID-19.
David J. Schmidt is an author, podcaster, multilingual translator, and homebrewer who splits his time between Mexico City and San Diego, California. He is a proponent of fair and alternative forms of trade.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2020
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