By Kaaren Fehsenfeld –

Blue and white masks cover the mouths and noses of passersby, bus drivers, street vendors, and even people isolated in their own cars.  Signs reading “closed for health reasons” hang on the iron gates that lock up many of the closed restaurants around the city.

But in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where I am studying this semester, there is a relative calm about the recent outbreak of a swine flu that has taken the world by surprise.  Citizens in this city located just over an hour from Mexico City are worried and taking precautions. Many wear the trademark blue or white cubrebocas or tapabocas (face masks) that since the SARS epidemic have become an iconic image of modern flu outbreaks. Of the few restaurants, bars, cinemas and shops that still remain open, most are empty.

As the days pass, however, the hysteria, fear, and paranoia of the initial news of the outbreak seems to have been replaced with a hesitant resistance and will to weather the storm of this most recent challenge to Mexico and the people who live here. With a will to live through the disaster has also emerged a criticism of the government’s actions throughout the epidemic.

A taxi driver told me yesterday that he supposed that the outbreak was “all politics.”  A teacher friend of mine also commented, “The people have the burden of the disease; we’ll see which political party comes up with the vaccine.”

Elections are coming up in Mexico this July. Mexico is a country that is often cited as one of the most corrupt in the world, and endured what is considered by some historians to be one of the longest dictatorships in modern history (the PRI party dominated for 71 years, while the presidency was handed from one politician to the next without legitimately open elections). Here extreme doubt of the government has become the status quo.
A friend of mine even received a chain email comparing the flu outbreak to the Mexican chupacabra legend, the myth that tells the story of a hairy, fanged beast who at night, sucks out the blood and sometimes organs of livestock in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. The legend is sometimes used metaphorically to symbolize the way that fear and hysteria of an unknown (in this case a flu supposedly created by the government) is used to take advantage of people.

However, the swine flu outbreak is obviously bigger than Mexico and Mexican politics.  The virus is real, and continues to spread rapidly across the globe, causing the World Health Organization to recently raise its  alert  level to five out of six, declaring that worldwide pandemic is “imminent”.  There are currently seven confirmed deaths in Mexico as a result of the swine flu, with an estimated 170 unconfirmed but suspected deaths related to the virus.  The swine flu was also the confirmed cause of one death in the United States, and there are thousands more suspected non-lethal cases in Mexico and across the globe.

But as the epicenter of the influenza outbreak, we must look at the unique ways that Mexico’s political machine has responded to the outbreak specifically, and the new opportunities, created by the aftershocks of fear and panic, available to the Mexican government.  Though a comparison of the current flu pandemic to the chupacabra legend might seem crass and nihilistic, particularly in the face of real death caused by the swine flu, the public circulation of emails comparing the two situations gives insight into the recurrent psychology of deep mistrust of government that exists among many people in Mexico.

The question lies not in whether the Mexican government created the virus, an irrelevant conspiracy theory that some have suggested, but rather in the way in which the Mexican government might manipulate the current state of emergency in the country for political reasons.

The existence of swine flu was first announced to the Mexican public on Thursday, April 23. News coverage of the flu, and with it fear, increased, and by Friday afternoon the flu was one of the only issues being covered by and discussed in the public media.  As an American, the fear created by the media, and particularly by the American media I encountered online, reminded me of a milder version of the free-for-all, 24-7 media blitz that occurred in the weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

On Friday April 24, the Mexican government passed a bill that will legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, mushrooms, peyote, and amphetamines in Mexico. In another news cycle, this decision would have been front-page news in Mexico, but in the country’s current state, the bill’s passing was either barely covered or completely ignored by most media outlets in Mexico. In a country whose economy is supported in a large part by illegal narco-trafficking, and many of whose politicians and members of the police force have been brought up on corruption charges or suspected of corruption based on involvement with drug traffickers, the decision to legalize the possession of small amounts of almost all types of drugs in Mexico is a pressing issue that should be at the forefront of public debate. Instead it was passed under the radar when most of the country was not watching.

The Mexican government has had quick and drastic responses to the swine flu epidemic here.  All schools, from kindergartens to universities, were closed at a national level and restaurants, cinemas, and sporting events were closed down in order to stop further spread of the virus.  While these measures seem dramatic, the Mexican government has encouraged or imposed the closure of public places and events that are most likely to further the spread of the flu, very effectively cutting the risk of increased infection of the population.

But while they are doing a good job of protecting the people of Mexico from further infection, it is also true the Mexican government could harness the opportunity created by the influenza epidemic for their own political gain. It remains to be seen what further political moves, like the passing of the bill that will legalize small quantities of drugs, will rise up in the aftermath of the epidemic. And for this reason, and because history repeats itself, many Mexicans have reason to be skeptical.

While in the United States disease, hunger, violence and manipulation are things that a privileged majority can turn their backs to and ignore, in Mexico these problems make up the legacy of the majority’s past.  In the United States, for many, death by flu and other curable illnesses is the unfortunate but removed problem of developing nations.  But in Mexico the psychology is different. People have been hit hard here repeatedly, by their own government (or lack thereof), by foreign governments, by foreign investors, by poverty, disease, and lack of autonomy.

And as the fear ebbs in many people, an increased criticism of the government and its assumed political manipulation of the epidemic emerges, along with a reluctant acceptance of the fact of being a nation under viral siege, and a will to wait out the epidemic. After the sickness passes, life continues, and Mexico will have increased economic, political and social problems to solve.

Kaaren Fehsenfeld is a Columbia College Chicago student studying in Cuernavaca, Mexico.