Chihuahua social assistance organizations cry out for Support

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“Pandemics and other unfortunate events won’t do anything to us,” Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) stated on Sunday, March 22 in the southern state of Guerrero. Stubbornly resistant to the dangers of the coronavirus, he has continued to appear in public and mingle with crowds.

He has also failed to intervene on the weekend of March 14-15, when his protégé, Mexico City’s Mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum refused pleas to cancel the Vive Latino fiesta, a huge two-day rock music festival that attracted over 100,000 people. Isn’t the danger from crowded situations now obvious to everyone?

Mexican response

Look at the February 19 soccer game that is believed to have started the terrible spread of this virus in Italy, or the huge crowds that gathered, despite health warnings, in cities like Madrid, Spain on March 8 for the International Women’s Day, or the always-crowded daily life of New York City, or Mardi Gras.

Mexico’s response to the coronavirus pandemic is also growing evidence that AMLO is walking away from the commitment that got him elected president in 2018 – his commitment to all Mexicans, not just to the elites.

Throughout his long political career, he has talked about protecting those working-class Mexicans who have none of the medical or social protections available in the United States. Why then has his government taken the following steps?

Without assistance

In mid-March, officials cut off food assistance to Vision in Action in Juárez, a privately run mental health facility. Almost simultaneously, officials reduced by fifty percent the stipends for students at La Casa de Amor in Palomas and cut off their “despensas.” ( oil, flour, beans, rice, lentils, canned tuna and other food).The lunch program for seniors that Esperanza Lozoya had provided in Palomas was closed by government officials.

At Siguiendo los Pasos de Jesús (SPJ) on the west edge of Juárez, government officials have provided tiny “dispensas” with food for residents, telling them that this miserly allotment has to last them for a month. In my nine years of visits at least monthly to Juárez and Palomas, I have only seen government social workers out in the community on one occasion.

Most medical care is provided not by the Mexican government but by non-profits like the monthly clinics in Juárez organized by groups like Colorado-based Missions Ministries using medical volunteers from the US. AMLO ran on a campaign of refocusing efforts to assist the millions of poor in his country. What has happened?