Mexico’s President to Make 20-Hour Road Trip to Cancun as Virus Cases Rise

(Bloomberg) -- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will resume his tours around the country, making a 1,000-mile drive to the beach town of Cancun over the weekend, in a bid to reopen the economy even if virus cases continue to grow.

Lopez Obrador will spend next week touring six Southern Mexico states, including Quintana Roo, Yucatan and Tabasco, where the president was born, making small rallies for as many as 50 people and promoting public works including his landmark Maya train, he said Friday in a press conference.

“I’ll go with time, making stops and staying along the way, until reaching Cancun on Sunday,” Lopez Obrador said. “We have to move toward the new normal.”

The coronavirus outbreak had forced Lopez Obrador, commonly known as AMLO, to suspend his routine of touring the country to hold mass rallies, which has been a feature of his man-of-the people governing style. Now, he says he will be back visiting every state as Mexico is slowly reopening the economy at a time Covid-19 cases grow.

Mexico reported this week a record 501 of daily deaths due to the coronavirus and clocked 3,377 new cases on Thursday. The country is rising among nations with the deadliest outbreaks, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Starting next week, the government plans to slowly open up more parts of the country and the economy if indicators like hospital occupancy are falling, though schools will still be shut.

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Upon taking office, Lopez Obrador put the presidential jet up for sale and flew coach on commercial planes to keep up his perpetual political campaign. On this incoming trip, he said he will go by land, and would either stay at military facilities or the homes of friends on the way, “without causing any trouble and keeping a healthy distance.”

“What I don’t want to do is give a bad example,” he said.

From the National Palace in downtown Mexico City, where Lopez Obrador lives, it’s over 1,600 km (994 miles) to Cancun, in the Quintana Roo state, and would take around 19 hours and 40 minutes to drive straight, according to Google Maps.

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