Mexico’s Reopening Drive Runs Into Wave of Fear Among Small Towns
AMLO’s Reopening Drive Runs Into Wave of Fear Among Small Towns
(Bloomberg) -- Hundreds of towns in Mexico that were given a green light to reopen are refusing to lift their lock-downs for fear of a virus spike, hurting the president’s grand plan to put the country back to work.
The towns are turning down President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s request to resume activity even though they haven’t registered any virus cases. Many of them are located in poor, remote regions, including indigenous communities in the southern state of Oaxaca, where medical services are limited.
Lopez Obrador presented his May 18 reopening with much fanfare, just as new virus cases have been hitting daily records, causing some health experts to warn it’s too soon to return to work. The president says Mexico is close to overcoming the pandemic, but local governments are second-guessing his projections amid low Covid-19 testing rates across the country, and reports of cases and deaths being undercounted.
As of Monday, schools and businesses have been allowed to reopen in more than 300 towns the president calls “municipalities of hope” as part of his plan to jump-start an economy that is expected to contract 7.5% this year, worse than the devastating Tequila Crisis of the mid-1990s.
But one problem with that list is that 67% of those towns haven’t administered a single test for the virus, according to Valeria Moy, an economist at Mexico’s Technological Autonomous Institute, who ran public numbers on testing in each of the towns.
The president “wants to send a signal that everything is all right, despite what the data says,” Moy said in a telephone interview. “It’s a gamble, where he prefers to reopen and then see what happens.”
During his Tuesday daily press conference, Lopez Obrador said local authorities in these municipalities can decide whether they want to reopen or not. “It’s not mandatory,” he said.
On Tuesday, Mexico registered 2,713 new cases, a daily record, bringing the total to 54,346. Deaths rose by 334 to 5,666.
Before finally ordering a shutdown at the end of March, Lopez Obrador hugged and kissed supporters at rallies around the country and resisted closing the economy, saying it would hurt the poorest. Even once he declared a health emergency, it stopped short of border closures or flight limits.
Most of the governors who have rejected reopening their towns are from opposition parties, raising questions of politics in their decisions, but not all of them.
In the state of Puebla, the number of municipalities that are allowed to reopen has decreased after cases were confirmed in some of them, according to Governor Miguel Barbosa of the president’s ruling party. He’s said he’d like social distancing to last longer than federal guidelines.
Separately, Mexico also decided to include mining, construction and auto manufacturing on its list of essential activities, allowing those industries to start up their factories once safety protocols are put in place for workers. Mexico has come under increasing international pressure to reopen global supply chains, including auto parts for U.S. carmakers.
Other activities and areas of the country can return starting June 1, according to the federal government. But Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor of Mexico City, which has become the epicenter of the virus, said on Wednesday she’ll wait until at least June 15. There are some exceptions: beer production in the capital can resume June 1, she said.
Cautious Oaxaca Town
On Sunday, Oaxaca governor Alejandro Murat said there won’t be a return to school or a reopening of non-essential activities in the more than 200 municipalities free of Covid-19 in his state. He said he had met with town officials who decided to wait. The governor of Guerrero, Hector Astudillo Flores, called on people to stay at home and claimed “no municipality of Guerrero” would return to activities.
The mayor of one of the towns in Oaxaca, Artemio Norberto Jimenez, told Bloomberg News that Santiago Apoala in the mountainous Mixteca region is a prime spot for local and international tourism, which is why it won’t be reopening early.
“Our municipality is very marginalized,” he said over the phone. “Our health system is unstable. Our doctor is only present on some days, and we don’t have basic equipment in the clinic.” The town of about 1,000 people closed its borders to all outsiders on April 7.
The majority of these municipalities are in areas where levels of poverty run high. Guerrero and Oaxaca are among the states with the highest poverty rates in the country, reaching about two thirds of their population.
In the northern state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas, governor Javier Corral said he would not reopen municipalities on the list due to their proximity to Ciudad Juarez, where there have been several deaths of assembly-plant workers.
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