Many of us have spent hours following the events in Washington DC, trying to make sense of the violence unleashed by a sitting President unwilling to accept his electoral defeat. This kind of behavior has not been uncommon in the Western Hemisphere. In both Latin America and the Caribbean, we have had our fair share of personalist dictators, military juntas, hegemonic parties and autogolpes from democratically elected leaders. But I am troubled by facile comparisons and frankly offensive comments that have emerged in the press and social media discussing whether the U.S. is a “banana republic” or talking about the…
Loss
So much personal loss, empty chairs at dinner tables, and so much waste and material squander in this terrible year of the pestilence, 2020. Lives cut short by a disease that should not have caught us by surprise. Preventable deaths, not because medical knowledge had an available cure for patients becoming critically ill — we still do not have it-, but because non-medical-interventions could have stopped the outbreak, and were readily available. Initially those measures were perhaps not well understood, but after a few weeks it became pretty obvious. Nations that adopted timely controls on personal movement, universal mask wearing…
“Lamentable”. “Que merece compasión o lástima.” El sentido original de la palabra deporable viene de la raíz proto-indoeuropea ploro que significa llorar. Con esta frase lapidaria Hillary Clinton se refirió a los seguidores de Donald Trump en su fallida campaña electoral de hace cuatro años. No sólo estaba diciendo que quien apoyara a su contrincante era una persona lamentable, pero también que muchos de los votantes que apoyaron a quien todavía es Presidente en los Estados Unidos eran víctimas, que merecían nuestra simpatía por la condición humana que los llevó a simpatizar con alguien como Trump. En la polarización que…
Managing or mitigating risk often depends on asking relevant questions and on having timely and reliable information that can measure the relative frequency of catastrophic events one is seeking to avoid. Whether Mexico can contain the SAR-CoV-2 virus infection and the tragedies of countless deaths associated with it remains a highly controversial question. From the very beginning the strategy followed by the health authorities in Mexico was unusual, due to the mixed messages by the President regarding the severity of the epidemic; a generalized perception that the federal government was overconfident in its reliance on its sentinel epidemiological surveillance model…
Mexico has chosen an ambitious strategy for the containment of COVID-19. After seeking to delay the closing down of economic activity and social contact for as long as possible, it is now preparing for the surge of cases that is to be expected, once community transmission has taken hold. The approach has been criticized as too much of a gamble. It has also been dismissed as a horrendous mistake from a president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who seems less keen on following advise from science than following his gut feelings, continuing to give hugs, kiss babies and attend rallies. However…
Pongo a su disposición esta cronología que he venido preparando, que seguramente omite eventos importantes, pero ojalá pueda ayudar a los analistas a entender mejor la estrategia de contención y mitigación seguida por el Gobierno Federal en México. Incluye algunas notas de aspectos que considero particularmente importantes, así como ligas a algunos documentos fundamentales. Por favor envíen comentarios si encuentran errores e imprecisiones (que seguramente los hay), o piensan que hay algún aspecto relevante que no he incluido.
Enero 10. Se emite el primer comunicado de la Secretaria de Salud sobre Wuhan, por una “neumonía con agente causal no identificado…
Like many residents in California, I am living through the COVID-19 epidemic, learning as we go along on how to best protect ourselves and our communities. We are also concerned about how to protect strangers, outside our friends and neighbors, whom we may be putting at risk by spreading the disease. My University took swift action, moving to an online learning model, avoiding travel, promoting simple guidelines of personal hygiene, and practicing social distancing. Our School District, instead, followed CDC and County protocols, keeping our children attending school for two weeks, on the grounds that they were not susceptible to…
En estas fiestas, con un poco de tiempo libre, escribo con una modesta proposición. Recomiendo a los luchadores/as infatigables de la lucha contra la corrupción en México, que busquen un nido de ratas, y lo destruyan. La experiencia no es muy recomendable para todos los demás, pero les permitirá entender mejor la cruzada en que están embarcados. Ayer me tocó descubrir y eliminar un nido de ratas, en la pequeña bodega del jardín donde guardamos las luces de navidad. Un verdadero nido de ratas resulta tan ilustrativo para entender la manera cómo opera la corrupción, de por qué es tan…
A war is raging in Mexico, but a deaf silence in newspapers, international fora and political discourse has prevented most US Americans, and in fact, many concerned publics around the world, from taking notice. The war is not dissimilar from the ones raging in the Northern triangle in Central America. Debates regarding immigration flows have provided greater visibility to the plight of countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, mired in the clash between governments and drug traffic organizations and criminal gangs. A combination of an explicit foreign policy by the Government of Mexico that seeks to deny in every…
Las olas acudían, se abrían, para rozar nuestra eslora; se cerraban, tras de nosotros, con tan continuado y acompasado rumor que su permanencia se hacía semejante al silencio que el hombre tiene por silencio cuando no escucha voces parecidas a las suyas. Alejo Carpentier. El Siglo de las Luces. 1962.
I have always been interested in the Caribbean, but had not been able to visit, think, or learn about this region until the past few years. My entry point was not a beach resort or a cruise ship, but research I have been doing for an USAID project on youth…
