Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The WHO estimates that 626,000 people have died from Covid-19 in Mexico, in contrast to the 324,334 corresponding to the government’s count. There is a difference of 301,666 people dead between the WHO estimate and the Mexican government’s. Is the figure irrelevant? It is almost double the number of deaths that the Mexican government does not recognize. What does it reveal about our government when it is unable or unwilling to adjust its figures to reality?
Mexico would have to explain its data, justify them, or offer an explanation that would allow it to adjust its data closer to reality. At the very least, one would expect the government to react to the announcement of such a challenge by the world’s highest authority on health and, specifically, on Covid-19. This is not the first time the subject and the “excess mortality” numbers have been discussed. Not only is the subject mentioned. It is included in data published by different official bodies, such as INEGI, without being taken as valid data by the Ministry of Health.
Or is it simply that, following the tone of this government and its style of fabricating partial data, others correct and others completely false, we discover an authority that refuses to recognize a situation that does not correspond to its ideological narrative?
What is this reality that it cannot and will not acknowledge? To begin with, the pandemic that came to break its governance scheme and the narrative of a government that showed how easy it is to govern with honesty and many achievements. The announcement that 60 thousand deaths would represent the catastrophic scenario of the pandemic speaks of ignorance and lack of knowledge. Or the spirit of talking for the sake of talking. That figure was exceeded centuries ago (well, it seems like centuries). We don’t even want to remember that absolute ignorance about pandemic phenomena in the modern world. It was preferable to say easy that it was better for everyone to go out to eat with family and friends and share without worries.
Hiding reality has become the favorite method of the 4T rulers to manage their policies and assets. Their motto seems to be: “if reality does not conform to what I say, well, woe to reality… it’s her loss!”.
Claudia Sheinbaum has taken deception-self-deception to a new level of aberration. To silence the foreign technicians who reveal the technical, legal, and political responsibilities of her administration regarding the tragic accident of Line 12 of the Metro System that she does not want anyone to know about, she decides to sue them so that an apparently incriminating document will not be made public. She thinks that this way, she will hide the apparent truths that the paper points out about her performance as head of government, showing that both she and the hated Ebrard are equally responsible for the collapse of Metro Line 12. This Metro line may be the political grave of the 4T in Mexico City. I suspect that the Dos Bocas, AIFA, and Tren Maya projects will progressively give Andrés Manuel López Obrador himself a final burial.
They all make the same “mistake”. Namely, they rush the construction works to cut the inauguration ribbon before leaving their posts to go to other campaigns. They sacrifice quality and safety in the construction to favor the political clock. They are also rushing the construction work to collect that “extra” they consider entitled to because if it is not done, how will the next campaign be financed? Hence the accidents that have caused the closure of Metro Line 12, only to reopen it and suffer more tragedies.
The effort to rewrite Mexico’s history is vast and persistent. It touches almost all spheres of national life. Textbooks aim to turn children into Cuban-style “pioneers”, capable of being activists but not thinkers. Social programs that focus on making people blindly dependent on government handouts so that they forget the desire to be independent. These programs seek to create an uncritical social mass. The economic crisis is an objective ally in this purpose of bending people to their weakest side: hopelessness and despair.
The media must cease to be independent, according to the logic of the 4T. The wave of assassinations of journalists with total impunity makes sense; it is an objective way for the State to control the media. Thirty-five journalists have been murdered so far this administration. Nine of them in the first three months of this year. Impunity in these acts is a conscious instrument of State intimidation against freedom of expression.
The deliberate permissiveness of the security forces in the face of the growing wave of criminal violence in the country is also a State policy. There have been more intentional homicides in only half of López Obrador’s six-year term (119,625) than in the entire six-year term of Calderón (53,319) or Peña Nieto (74,737).
When looking at this terrifying figure and recognizing Morena’s alliances with criminal groups in various states of the Republic, it is not surprising the growth of internally displaced people in the country. 63,000 frightened citizens have abandoned their homes, property, and localities to flee to safer areas. They often fled, leaving behind loved ones who criminal groups kidnaped. They feed the camps set up on the northern border and join the masses seeking to cross the border any way they can to find employment and, more importantly, a refuge from crime. At least, that is the illusion.
Poverty continues to be used by the 4T to strangle the libertarian spirit of the Mexican people. Since the beginning of this government, informal employment has grown to represent almost 60% of the country’s employed workers. While formal employment is growing slowly and hesitant, informal employment is growing by leaps and bounds.
On his tour through Central America, López Obrador swears at every stop he makes that the program “Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro” (Youth Building the Future) has kept Mexicans away from organized crime. Will Central Americans believe such nonsense?
To solve Mexico’s problems, the data used in consensus must match reality. It is necessary to prevent using data to project that we live in an imaginary country. If this objective of having consensus data is not achieved, the country will be, day by day, more violent and more dissociated from reality.
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