In the midst of the epidemic, 66 percent of Mexicans believe the country is regressing. Seventy-five percent of crimes are not reported because of mistrust toward authorities and 98 percent of crimes are never resolved or punished. Public opinion seems disenchanted with a democracy incapable of offering tangible solutions to problems, the flu crisis being the most recent example.
Saddled by a viral infection, drug-related insecurity and rising crime, Mexico feels like a besieged place. The noted columnist Miguel Angel Granados Chapa wrote last week: “All that’s missing is for Mexico to get peed on by a dog.”
Mexico’s bad health is a symptom of problems that run deeper and are more widespread than swine flu. Over the past ten years, political and economic actors intent on preserving the status quo have blocked further democratic change and economic reform, condemning Mexico to move sideways, even as other emerging markets surge ahead.
Lately, political battles among key actors have not been about how to build a more effective representative political system or a more equitable, dynamic economy, but about how to maintain control of accumulated power or distribute it among allies. Political parties appear far removed from citizen demands, beset by internal divisions, incapable of addressing deep-rooted inequality and lawlessness, and prone to populist or authoritarian leadership that promises quick fixes to entrenched problems.
Mexico’s current quandary is the flu, but it faces more important challenges than a mutating microbe. With more than 40 million people living in poverty and 7,000 killed in drug-related violence last year, Mexico will need to reform quickly to address what the virus has brought to light: a government far removed from the suffering of ordinary people and too frequently insensitive to their plight.
In this national crisis, Mexico’s people have closed ranks, collaborated and shown that they are capable of working together to achieve common goals in the public interest. But their political and economic elites frequently seem incapable of doing so. That is why home seems far, far away.
Denise Dresser is a professor of political science at the Technological Institute of Mexico and a columnist for the newspaper Reforma.
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