Thursday, April 30, 2009

From Crisis to Suspicions

Another translation from the Mexican media. The internal conflicts are starting to emerge. A translation of Ángel Vivero's De la emergencia al sospechismo:
From Crisis to Suspicions – by Ángel Viveros .
La Crónica de hoy. 30th of April 2009
From a health crisis we've moved onto being swine suspicious. The messy reporting of the number of suspected, probable, or accurate cases of swine flu has generated distrust amongst the population. Although WHO raised the alert level to 5 out of 6, there seems to be no political agreement on the number of deaths that have actually occurred due to the virus. First it was 150, then the numbers that had lost their lives specifically due to the swine virus went down to 28, but then it turned out that it was really only 7 cases. There is also no agreement on where the source of the outbreak is, is it in the Perote farm or in Texas?

More suspicions. The emergence of the virus is highly worrying, on one hand because of its lethal and real existence, but on the other hand because it has had the power to change the face of the national and international media. Even the films and photographs that were going to be released about the Bush administration's permission to torture Guantanamo prisoners have been forgotten. In Mexico, we have lost track of the US$47 billion granted by the International Monetary Fund to help us deal with the economic crisis. The 8% fall in economic growth in the first three months of the year announced by the Banco de Mexico seems to have gone unnoticed. Congress is passing laws on security almost by the minute. Even the polls –this however is justifiable– carried out by the Interior Ministry and other companies on the present electoral scenario have been dispersed or hushed down.

The lack of trust in the government due to the inconsistent nature of the information released is being seized by some as an opportunity to speculate, sensationalise, and relive past events that other governments have tried to conceal. For example, as the north American writer William Bloom tells us in his book Matando la Esperanza (Killing hope), in 1971 the CIA infiltrated an African swine flu virus into Cuba which forced them to slaughter half a million pigs in the hope that it would induce the need to purchase from outside the country. Or, as other journalists in the US, such as the radio host Ralph Schoenman, have reported, the existence of military laboratories throughout their country that are working on biological weapons using the swine flu virus.

Beyond the distrust that this health crisis has brought about, it has also revealed the poor budget set aside for the health of Mexicans. In 2009 Mexico will set aside 134 billion pesos (around US$9 billion ) for health, while in the US Obama created a US$634 billion 10 year fund. The Treasury Department has just barely released enough funds to start the investigations, through Conacyt, into this virus and the long bureaucratic process that will accompany it. First there will be a call for proposals, then the presentations of these proposals, and only after UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) scientists, the technical institutes and other organisations have agreed on how to proceed with the investigations into this virus will there be another requests for funds. But to this day they have even been denied the pathological samples. On the other hand Barack Obama will ask for US$500 million to deal with the health crisis, and his predecessor, George W.Bush, requested US$600 million from Congress to tackle the avian flu, although he only spent US$80 million of that.

The way events are unfolding you would think we are living Herbert George Well's war of the worlds, or a horror story. But what really sounds like fiction is the long road Treasury has decided to take to investigate the outbreak of swine flu, or perhaps this is just the screen behind which the multinational pharmaceutical business companies, who have the drugs and vaccines, force government to replenish stocks.

It would be a criminal offense to cash in, politically as well as economically, on this health crisis. However, the PAN and the PRD* are already inside the fighting ring. We already know that for the former everything goes, all strategies are equally valid in order to steal votes from their opponents, and this flu, which has affected Mexico City's population the most, is the perfect scenario to win one over the PRD, who currently governs the state. It would seem that PRI* is the only consistent party. Then again, the spokesperson for the tricolour party at the Chamber of Deputies announced a special package, for the grand total of five billion pesos (about US$360 million), to deal with the health crisis in the whole country.
  • Words in italics are my own clarifications.
     * The PAN, PRD, PRI are the three main political parties in Mexico.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Stinky Mexico

A new day, a new opinion. Today's translated opinion article delves into the fear of Mexico's alienation from the rest of the world, as well as the animosity towards infected people that is emerging within its borders. Salvador García Soto is the director of the national newspaper Crónica, and has been a politics critic through his column Serpientes y escaleras (Snakes and ladders) in El Universal for the past ten years. Here is what he had to say:

Stinky Mexico - by Salvador García Soto.
El Universal, 29th of April 2009.

The same thing that is happening to people and whole families infected by the swine virus here, who on top of the disease are becoming victims of rejection, segregation and social discrimination, is happening to our country in the world.


The creature that has caused what now is being talked about as a global pandemic, is damaging Mexico's image abroad, and we will have to pay a high price for it.


The travel restrictions and flight cancellations to Mexican territory, including the vetoes by major tourist operators to our main tourist destinations, are only a small example of the ramifications that this illness, now associated with everything Mexican, will have on our country.


The "Mexican" flu, the name that has now flooded the internet, will have extremely damaging effects; internally because of the regrettable loss of human lives, the effects on the social psyche, and the millions in financial losses that we are already starting to experience. The external damages will require months and millions worth of investments in media campaigns to rebuild the country's image and appeal, both in the tourist sector and amongst investors. 


If amongst us we are already getting reports like the one where the family of a twenty-six year old young man, who died of pneumonia in a hospital last week, are being isolated and vilified by their neighbours, it is to be expected that the Mexican identity, and Mexicans, will suffer similar situations abroad.


It happened to the players of the Guadalajara football team, who yesterday described how they were the recipients of mockery, contempt and even derogatory comments when they took a walk around the Viña del Mar shopping centre in Chile, where they had travelled to play a match, as well as having been subjected to strict inspections by the authorities on their entry to the country.


This is an illustrative example of the damage that Mexico's image will suffer abroad, and of all the time, costs and diplomatic efforts that will have to go into making up for it. The financial cost will be felt straightaway, and the decline in investments and tourism will intensify the recession and decrease in unemployment that the country is currently experiencing, but it will also reemerge as a painful hangover once the emergency has passed.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Sickly Mexico

I have been out of Ireland for more than two months now. After spending 7 weeks in the US (6 of them in New York City and 1 traveling to the Mexican border by bus) I find myself right in the middle of Mexico's fear epidemic. Not even a week ago the first reports of swine-flu deaths started coming from Mexico City, by the start of this week the world-wide media is telling us about the possibility of a global pandemic. 


Although in Mexico, I am living this story from the little cocooned apartment the we have rented for two weeks in a remote fishing village of Sinaloa, on the Pacific coast. The idea was to spend these two weeks catching up on pending work projects. However, the swine-drama is keeping me quite distracted and I've been spending many hours reading and comparing how this story is being reported in Europe, the US and Mexico. The area that has really caught my interest are the opinion pieces in Mexican newspapers. They offer a judgement of the situation that you won't find in European or other foreign newspapers. As a translator I feel compelled to provide a little insight into what these journalists are saying to all those who might not have access to Mexican newspapers.  The article that caught my eye today in El Universal newspaper by Ricardo Rocha, one of Mexico's most respected journalists, bares the headline Mexico enfermo. Here is the translation:


Sickly Mexico – by Ricardo Rocha. 

El Universal, 28th of April 2009.


This stubborn swine-flu, that has become psychotic and has revealed the sheer size of our fears, is not the only illness Mexico is suffering. There are many more chronic diseases that have been around for a long time.


If we compare the country to a human body we could say that it has quite a serious bone condition: internal structures that haven't been reinforced because we are always dealing with superficialities. That's why the big pending issues still remain to be tackled: a reform of the State that –amongst other things– restabilises the counterweights between the three powers of the Union, and one that puts an end to outrageous affairs such as having an attorney-general that is the president's humble servant; the design and implementation of an economical model that redistributes income, one that lessens the gap between the many who have little and the few who have much; and a revolution in the education system that is consistent with the age of global knowledge and in line with our own scientific and technological challenges. 


These, among other things, we need so as to avoid embarrassing situations such as having Mr Carstens begging for 200,000 dollars to buy labs that will detect the deadly virus that is now after us. 


Of course, the possible outcome is serious, but it becomes even more so because of our ineffective internal structures, because of our multiple sclerosis and the deep wounds, such as '88 and 2006, that still haven't healed. As a result the impact of the influenza is even bigger. Hence the confused eyes behind the surgical masks that have become part of the landscape in our half-empty cities. 


Even more so if we are threatened to become isolated from the rest of the world now that Mexico has been identified as the source of the virus that has put the US, China, Sweden, Brazil and New Zealand on the same alert. That's the last thing we need. To be declared in quarantine by the World Health Organisation, isolating us, diseased, from the rest of the planet would be the last straw. 


By the way, we have the right to ask the questions: Why Mexico? Is it true that immunology experts raised the alarm on time and no one paid attention? Are there no officials who hold responsibility?


In the mean time, the invisible murderer will keep killing Mexicans across the country. There is no one who can stop it. A fourth plague to be added to the financial, economic and social crisis that we are still suffering. A trial by fire for our governments. An epidemic of devastating consequences, especially for the poor. The truth is that this country has been sick for a long time.