Opposite Directions: Mexico and the U. S. Respond to Swine Flu

     My friend Jim Ellsworth, a permanent resident in San Miguel de Allende, was the first to introduce me to this old parable about Mexicans. "Two men -- one American, one Mexican -- try unsuccessfully to catch  a departing bus.  The American says: 'Damn, I missed the bus.' The Mexican says: 'The bus left without me.'" This popular portrayal of Mexicans as people who do not take personal responsibility, who do not admit their failings, or do not acknowledge that they need to correct something that has gone wrong, is becoming increasingly inaccurate. But even when it resonates with accuracy, it is just a reflection of a country in which great wealth held by a few overwhelms the great mass of people who have very little. The parable of not being responsible is the parable of a people with limited personal agency. They cannot be the author of their destinies since those are controlled by a system of class and wealth that is nearly closed. So, why should they assume personal responsibility when such a claim of agency (responsibility) can only be taken in the negative -- applied against their failings, and never taken in the positive -- never applied to their advancement and advantage.

     Americans, by contrast, see themselves as possessing nothing but personal agency, from colonial Puritans (ironically) to modern day marketing majors. Each one of us, it is presumed (often inaccurately), are the agents of our own future and of our own success and wealth. Unfortunately, when a sense of agency is exaggerated -- as it invariably is in the United States -- the consequences can be grotesque. First, if someone or some group of people are the necessary human agents behind a turn of events, then when bad things happen on a broad scale, someone has to be responsible for inflicting these bad consequences upon us. Historically, if Americans have not been able to identify the villain(s) clearly, this psychology leads to conspiracy theories. Secondly, if the villain(s) who have inflicted bad things cannot be identified early on, and the bad things persist and grow (e.g., the recent swine flu "pandemic"), Americans react with fear and suspicion. Both of these tendencies were historically revealed most fully and clearly in the Red Scare of 1919, and the Communist Conspiracy scare of the early 1950s.

     I watched with perverse interest, therefore, when the "swine flu" emerged from Mexico last month. I say "perverse" interest because, although I was residing in Mexico at the time, I got almost all of my "news" from CNN (the only English language news channel available in our casita). The grotesque appeal to fear and panic by CNN (an appeal offered in the face of the testimony of the "experts" they interviewed, who counseled calm attentiveness), would have been humorous, if the CNN appeal had not been so cravenly driven by the pretty girls and pretty boys who pose as serious journalists on CNN's broadcasts. After a few days of watching

CNN, we clearly understood only two things:  that we were learning precious little of value about the swine flu, and that 90% of what we heard and saw was the moral equivalent of brainwashing.

     The message was two-fold:  first, there was the thinly veiled accusation

that Mexico and Mexicans were the responsible agents (which fit well into the CNN and Lou Dobbs's vision of the Mexican threat); and, secondly, that Mexico had been and continued to be so irresponsible that the lives of Americans, well, of most of America actually, were threatened, and that we had much to fear.

     Because we watched a lot (too much) of CNN for that first week (April 21-28), it came as a surprise when, overnight, CNN decided this story of responsibility and fear was no longer selling too well, and suddenly pushed it off the headlines. They moved on to evaluating (read "judging") President Obama in his first 100 days -- another comical and exaggerated exercise in applying human agency and responsibility to one person (a person who was not the agent of what he was trying to fix, for that matter).

     In the end, we found out two things about the "swine flu" by living in Mexico:  first, Mexicans did not panic, partly out of a sense of fatalism (there are benefits to not believing that human agents stand behind all things good or bad), and partly out of common sense.  Mexico City alone has more than 20 million people (maybe 22-23 million); if we

triple the number of swine flu cases identified or suspected, from 2,000 to 6,000, we are still left with a very miniscule percentage of cases in Mexico City (you do the math). How much can you do about the spread of "swine flu" in a congested population like Mexico City's in any case? Secondly, Mexico City did respond quickly. They were transparent about the disease. They did get on it right away. Mexico took extraordinary measures to cut down on the spread of the disease (shutting down public events very early on; preaching public caution through hand cleaning, masks, etc.; sharing information readily with WHO and other countries). They punished their economy, especially small businesses in Mexico, probably much more than they should have.

     In short, Mexico shouldered the burden in this matter. They should be applauded for their responsibility. Americans, especially CNN, should be castigated for their fear-mongering and attempt to arouse hysteria. But beyond that, as Mexico shows itself to be an increasingly modern democracy with a sense of global responsibility, the United States continues to be ethnocentric and inward looking. While Americans prefer to wallow in fear (FDR should have said:  "All you have . . . is fear itself"), while they make a psychological hobby out of fearing those things that are beyond human control, Mexico has made the best of its sense that some bad things just happen, and no one is responsible, while at the same time, at an official government level, accommodating the world at large in every way possible to check the disease. Mexico seems to have succeeded in both ways, and they are the better country for it.