“Money sent home by Mexicans working abroad fell by 19.9 percent in May, the biggest monthly decline on record as the U.S. recession slashed jobs.

“Remittances dropped to $1.9 billion from $2.4 billion in May 2008, the central bank said on Wednesday. The amount of money sent home in the first five months of 2009 fell 11.3 percent to $9.2 billion compared with the same period last year.

“Remittances are the second-biggest source of foreign currency after oil exports in Mexico, and their decline has contributed to the country’s own economic downturn.”

The recession in the United States and related job cuts, combined with the crack down on illegal immigration
might tempt some migrants living in El Norte to head home. But things are just as bad if not worse in Mexico. Even on a normal day, if there were so many great jobs in Mexico then there wouldn’t be12 million Mexicans living illegally in the United States, where they go looking for better job – el Sueno Americano.

But the recession up north is causing the demand for exports to drop. The U.S buys around 80 per cent of Mexico’s exports, so it’s a serious blow for the country. The knock on effect here? More job cuts. So if there already weren’t enough jobs, now it’s only getting worse for Mexico. Swine flu earlier this year didn’t help, and neither do the steady reports of drug related violence from around the country.

The City Government’s modest program of subsidised soup kitchens and unemployment cheques shouldn’t just be confined to the city. As the informal system of social security that migrants have provided to their families living in Mexico starts to fall away, the pressure on the Government to help out it’s poor and unemployed will only grow.

So far, it’s efforts have largely been limited to the left-leaning city government. So what comes next?

Visits to some of Mexico City’s museums have fallen by as much as 90% since the outbreak of the H1N1 virus last month that prompted a near shutdown of numerous facilities, according to reports in the local media.

Owners of some of the privately owned museums in the capital are seeking financial help from the government  and say that if attendance doesn’t pick up, they may be forced to take “drastic measures,” such as cutting staff by half and opening for only three days a week.

Carlos Phillips, owner of the Dolores Olmedo Museum, which houses a collection of paintings by Frida Kahlo and the largest private collection of works by Diego Rivera, told the Notimex news agency that before the H1N1 virus hit Mexico City, visitors to his and other museums had risen over the last 12 months.

But he said that government measures in reaction to the virus, which included shutting schools, museums and cinemas and restricting restaurants to take-out service only, “put various sectors in a precarious situation, among them the cultural sector.”

He referred to museums – such as his own – that don’t receive governmental support and depend on entrance fees for their survival.

Phillips, who is also the owner of the Frida Kahlo Museum and the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Museum, told Notimex: “We’ve decided to wait for May and June to go by before taking drastic measures like reducing the number of staff we have or only opening our doors for three days a week.”

Last week, La Jornada reported that five of the city’s non-government-owned museums, including the three mentioned above as well as the Soumaya and Franz Mayer museums, were petitioning the government for help and accusing it of ignoring the cultural sector’s needs after the influenza shutdown.

“They treat us like a pending problem,” Alfonso Morales, head of the Soumaya museum, told the newspaper.

“They don’t think of museums as part of the economy, or they regard them as subsidized entities that have other means of existing.”

Both Phillips and Morales want to create an association of non-governmental museums with the aim of improving their access to the media as well as reduce the taxes they’re required to pay.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Image: Kahlo painted “Self Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States” (1932) while she was in the U.S. with Diego Rivera as he worked on murals. Credit: Jennifer Szymaszek / Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes

Not one to sit around watching paint dry, Able made use of her time “inside” and fueled her cabin fever into some pretty entertaining creative writing, which she’s been kind enough to share with us. 

An inexpert mull over a bunch of random alphabeticised phenomena that have occurred since the outbreak of Swine Flu in Mexico City.

Apocalyptic doom scenarios and conspiracy theories (available for discussion with any of the city’s taxi drivers, who invented most of them)

-The world’s gonna end! We’re all gonna die! We’re all gonna die! The world’s gonna end! 

-The government here in Mexico is covering up a whole bunch of stuff, including hiding the true figures of the amount of dead and infected, which most likely stretches into the thousands.

-The flu was actually an attempt to assassinate President Barak Obama during his recent visit to Mexico City, during which he shook hands with the director of the Anthropology Museum who died from Swine Flu days later. 

-This wave of the flu is just one of several that will evolve to be increasingly aggressive and lethal, eventually killing us all in one even bigger epidemic in November.

-It’s all a ruse by the government to display their dexterity in handling crises.*

*My favourite so far.

Bootleg Tamiflu

Unlike just about every other drug available to buy with a nod and a wink over the counter from your friendly pharmacist, Tamiflu cannot be purchased in Mexico without a prescription. Probably because there’s only a million or so doses to go around a population of 110 million (compare that with the UK which has stockpiled enough treatments for half its population), and because the sick here frequently prefer self-diagnosis and self-treatment to visiting a hospital. But like all drugs in Latin America, if there’s a demand, they will make it onto the streets by hook or by crook. The latest offer I had was from a friend of a friend of a friend coming back from a holiday in Guatemala with a small consignment of about 4 packs of the anti-viral. Hardly Pablo Escobar, is he?

Compulsive news checking

As if the internet’s siren draw wasn’t enough of a distraction during peacetime, the hyperbolic high-drama ‘journalism’ of news companies vying for readership in times of so-called crisis has the rather effective consequence of keeping our attention glued to the screen. Website stories branch off from one another with such graceful ease that it’s hard not to jump from one story to the next video, to a photo gallery and to a blog. It’s the well-crafted melee of scientific fact, expert opinion and political analysis that excel in distracting us from pressing tasks and lunging us into the dark forest of fear and paranoia.

Domestic Bliss? 

Since Friday 24^th April, we’ve all been warned by the government to stay at home as much as possible and to only leave the house under pain of necessity. Initially, the prospect of a few relaxing days off work was rather appealing given the warm summer weather and the Mexican penchant for taking it easy. But once restaurants, cafes, bars and shops began to close down, our homes took on a darker, more penal hue. We were no longer indoors by choice but by obligation. Families were suddenly flung together in the confines of their houses and apartments and forced to face up to the often grim reality of kinship, while most couples I know, rather than lolling in a pool of romantic rapture, have reported an upsurge in stress-induced squabbles and arguments over heavyweight subject matter like which movie to watch next.

Economy

Screwed. The businesses that will hopefully be re-opening at the end of this week will have been closed for a fortnight, which for some will deal a fatal financial blow. The mayor of Mexico City has estimated that the city has been losing $88 million per day since the start of the crisis, and businesses have reported a slump of 80%. One of the worse hit industries will be tourism, which brings an annual $14 billion into Mexico’s national coffers. In a climate of global recession and with the peso already weak against the dollar, things ain’t looking up.

Friends

Potentially hazardous carriers of Swine Flu, friends were to be avoided at all costs during the first few days of news of the outbreak. As time wore on and we all realized we were fine and not in fact dying of the deadly scourge set to wipe out humanity in one fail sneeze, things began to get more intimate. My first venture into the outside world was a trip to a girlfriend’s house for lunch four days into the lockdown and we ate pasta and complained how bored we were. Another friend came round to my place the next day, and another, and another, and before I realized it we were a drunken party, united under siege and happily sharing our trusted saliva on the tip of a Turkish water pipe. On reflection perhaps not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but during a tipsy, six-person game of scrabble with Monty Python animating the background, it seemed like a great idea and a thumbed nose to the authorities that had tried so hard to isolate us from one another.

God

Apparently not protecting worshippers from Swine Flu. All masses in Mexico City have been cancelled or re-located to open-air spots like outside the massive Basilica de Guadalupe in the north of the city. Oh ye of little faith…

Hypochondria

Inevitable: sniff, sniff; is that a runny nose? I wake up and feel a tickle somewhere in the back of my sinus. Is that a pain when I swallow? Is that an ache in my joints? I sneeze. Oh my god I just sneezed. Call the hospital, call the undertakers, call the priest; it’s the beginning of the end. Or is it? A bleary cup of coffee and a vitamin drink later and sanity is returning. Morning respiratory hiccoughs are par for the course for residents of Mexico City. It is, after all, one of the most polluted places in the world. A breath of fresh air here is inextricably laced with frightening levels of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. The fact is that I feel like this every morning; I’m just never that aware of it unless there’s a killer epidemic on my doorstep.

Information (and lack thereof)

Never a global trailblazer in bureaucratic efficiency, the Mexican authorities excelled even their own standards in their erratic response to the swine flu crisis. Official death counts have peaked and troughed with all the stomach-turning turbulence of a roller-coaster ride, from 7 to 158 and back down again, depending on which organization you choose to believe, while details of victims and how they might have contracted the disease have remained flimsy, as has information about the behaviour of the virus itself, and indeed any sense of how this is all going to pan out in the future.

Jitters

Easy to succumb to, important to keep away from. It is my profound belief that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, and since the start of the outbreak, humanity appears to have divided into two sections: freaked-out harbingers of extinction with far too high a backlog of Hollywood doomsday imagery to kick start their already fear-ridden minds, and the other lot, the ultra-pragmatic, ultra-denialists who think that anything more than a raised eyebrow in the direction of a possible global pandemic is an act of extreme over-reaction and alarmist nonsense. Already, people have begun leaving Mexico City in their droves, heading for outlying towns and villages, the United States, Europe, usually under the influence of mothers and fathers scared to their wits’ end by the black armband-rhetoric of international news stations, while others refuse to so much as cover their mouths in an orgy. Could it be that a sense of balance is the first thing to go in national crisis.

Kissing

In breaking with national tradition, all Mexicans have been warned off kissing and shaking hands when meeting people. By all accounts, it’s been by far the hardest habit to break. Chance encounters with acquaintances on the street have become a minefield of etiquette. They start at a rather awkward distance from which I’ve embarrassed myself several times by crying “air kiss dahhh-ling!” in too-loud Ab-Fab alto if I sensed the other party was cruising for a peck on the cheek. Greeting comportment also depends heavily on alcohol intake: stiff handshakes at the beginning of the night soon meld into hearty embraces and juicy kisses after a few jars of plonk. 

Lassitude

Bored, bored, bored. What’s on TV? Don’t care. How about a game of chess? Nah. Fancy making a dent in that stack of books you’ve been meaning to read? Can’t be bummed. And how about that rapidly growing pile of work? Tomorrow. It appears that tedium breeds ennui breeds lethargy, and indeed what initially seemed to be an opportunity-laden home sabbatical soon became dreary house arrest. Bored with everything being closed. Bored with bad news. Bored with the general negative mental state. Bored by the prospect of another hour spent in my own company. Bored of complaining about being bored.

Metro

The one place even the cynics and pragmatists are steering well clear of. Taxis in Mexico City are relatively affordable, and the gloved, masked taxi drivers offer a service free of the sardine-tin scenario of most metro trains. Plus there’s the additional perk of thrashing through some key conspiracy theories with your driver (see A).

Narco-wars

What the hell happened to them? One minute there’s a raging border conflict with news of cartel killings pasted over the front cover of every broadsheet and tabloid, and the next they’ve been elbowed out of the spotlight in favour of some sickly piggie winkles. How fickle the press… Though if there are any cartel bosses reading this, my top tip of the day is that the world’s drug of choice appears to have changed from Polvo Blanco to Tamiflu, so you could consider adjusting your supply lines accordingly (see B)

Out of Office

With most offices in the city shut down last week, the majority of my friends, acquaintances and colleagues have been ‘working from home’. This has meant a huge increase in Facebook activity as well as larger telephone bills. (See L and C) 

Parklife

With restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, concert venues, small businesses, cinemas, stadiums, gyms, offices and schools all closed, the one remaining recourse for public interaction appears to be the trusty old park. Mexico City’s green areas have taken on a whole new dimension with the new fear of public gatherings in enclosed spaces, as well as providing exercise junkies with a back-to-basics alternative for the treadmill. Parque Mexico, my local, has transformed into some kind of utopian architecture model: scores of ardent joggers run laps of the park, while dogs bark, run, pee and sniff each others’ butts in age-old fashion; children ride bikes, teens play football, lovers kiss in the shade of the giant trees and bohemian students on benches bury their noses deep in library copies of Hegel. 

Quake

As if the panic, hype and sequestration of the Swine Flu weren’t enough, at around 11am on Monday morning, the city was treated to a series of 5.7 tremors that ripped through its infrastructure, forcing masses of residents out onto the streets. It appears that Mexico City has incurred a wrath in our Maker so mighty as to compare with the Ten Plagues of Egypt back in the 1600BC. We are now scanning the skies for clouds of locust.

Resignation

An inescapable part of the lifecycle of any sentient being: the eventual resignation to one’s fate and mortality. Ahhh, quit worrying! If we die, we die, and that’s it. Now, what’s for lunch…?

Superama

The supermarket two blocks from my gaf that seems to be doing pretty damn well from the closure of restaurants and the air of siege mentality in general, as shoppers are turning up in droves to fill their trolleys with everything from long life milk to bottles of tequila. In fact, if appearances are anything to go by, alcohol sales are going through the roof. It seems Chilangos are unanimous in the conviction that only the steady administration of ethanol into the system will get us through this. So we don the masks at Superama, let the security guy at the door spooge our hands with antiseptic gel, and we go forward into the only enjoyable commercial activity that remains open to us: food shopping. On one occasion I back into a masked man by the meat counter, who, after careful inspection of his eyes and hair reveals himself to be my editor. We both laugh though the gauze of our masks at the ridiculousness of it all, before casting a guileful eye into each other’s baskets to check there isn’t something we might have forgotten.

Tapabocas

Literally ‘cover-mouths’ or masks, they’re the new craze sweeping Mexico City. Available in a variety of shapes and designs, from the blue surgical kind that scrunch up small around the mouth, or expand to cover half your face, to the white work-shop models with the thin aluminum strip across the nose that’s meant to be molded to your face for a better fit. My own personal mask comes from the home of public hygiene: Japan. I got a bad hit of flu there during a trip last winter and actually purchased a batch in line with local protocol regarding spreading one’s germs in public. My tapaboca differs from its Mexican cousins in its streamlined Akira-type design as well as its integral behind-the-ears attachment and not via a piece of elastic that goes all the way around the back of the head and thus ruining any chance of a good hairstyle.

USA 

The H1N1 virus looks like it’s spreading from second world bogs like Mexico (where it’s OK if a few people die) to first world civilizations like the USA and Europe (where it’s certainly not OK if people die, or are even inconvenienced for a few days – unless, of course, they’re originally from second-world bogs like Mexico.) The US has always had an uncomfortable relationship with Mexico in many ways, what with border issues, illegal immigrants, spring break Cancun invasions and that whole drug war thing. Add lethal swine flu to the list of delicate diplomatic subjects and Mexicans holidaying in the US might as well start wearing bells.

Vaccines

Nope. Not for at least another 6 months. By which time, as the taxi drivers warn us, the virus will have mutated beyond recognition. So lay down that tiny flame of naïve hope, will you, and accept the plain and simple fact that we’re all gonna die! (See A)

Where’d everybody go?

May 1^st 2009. Mayday, you know the drill: it’s when mobs of disgruntled lefties traditionally take to the streets in earnest to protest exploitation of the working class and to make a fresh call for the socialist revolution. Then police in riot gear make their habitual entrance and start blasting the demonstrators with hoses and batons, and the whole spectacle is pasted together on celluloid for the evening news viewing pleasure of the bourgeoisie. But this year was different: the streets of Mexico City have never been so empty. May 1st was like a ghost town and being out and about felt like trudging through the set of some strange post-apocalyptic stage set. People kept mentioning ’28 Days Later’ and ‘I am Legend’, and it didn’t feel too far from that. You could hear the birds sing; it was actually quite beautiful. So where the hell has everyone gone? Well, as it turns out a lot of people have skipped town for the outlying hotspots just a few hours drive from the city centre. Valle del Bravo, Cuernavaca, even Acapulco. All playgrounds of the affluent, and word is that these places are rammed with visitors congregating in enclosed spaces, kissing, holding hands and breathing over one another, sans facemasks. Is that really a good plan, guys?

Xenophobia 

It’s official: the world now hates Mexico, and they’ve no reason to hide the fact any more. France has all but put forward a motion to nuke the country off the face of the planet, while most of South America refuses to even fly here any more. China is quarantining Mexicans and anyone who’s had anything to do with Mexico ever. And as if Mexicans in the US didn’t cop enough crap already, they’re now going to be dealing with people treating them like lepers for at least the next year.

Yuk it up

As Lao Tzu probably once said, the most effective strategy in the face of fear is to belittle one’s opponent by way of a good old larf at its expense, and indeed Chilangos have been pumping out the jokes with the proficiency of court jesters. Tapabocas have been painted with all manner of amusing mouth shapes while rib-ticklingly mirthful online references to hamaggedon, parmageddon and the aporkalypse have been dealt in every direction. For my part, I spent a good hour trying to come up with a pun to do with flying pigs in the past tense in which I could fashion into a sentence involving ‘pig flu’, with little success. 

Zeitgeist (‘The defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time’)

What, at the end of the day, will we be able to glean from all of this? Is our over-comfortable world really lapsing into absurd paranoia at the prospect of a jolt to the social order from a phenomenon that is beyond our control? Or are the powers that be in fact dealing with this incredibly well by identifying a possibly lethal pandemic at an early stage and nipping it in the bud before it reaches the dizzying homicidal heights of the 1918 Spanish Flu? Indeed, two weeks of shutdown in Mexico City appear to have contained the virus, for the time being at least. With technology, hindsight, and a good sprinkling of irony, it seems that we might be able to transform this and other potential global catastrophes into a risible, and maybe even educational, storm in a teacup.

** This post was edited at 10:54am Mexico City time to include the text of the article.

As Ken Ellingwood wrote last year, “many Mexicans feel their leaders have lied so many times about so many things over the years that it’s hard to believe them, even when they might be telling the truth.”

The H1N1 / swine flu outbreak that descended on Mexico more than a week ago has provided an abundance of flammable fuel for those partial to conspiracy theories here in Mexico City.

You don’t have time to read, and I don’t have time to write, all of the theories that I’ve heard over the last ten days. But I would like to share my favorite with you, which came out during a conversation I had with Raul Camacho, a 62-year-old taxi driver, on Tuesday last week.

I asked him why he wasn’t wearing a face mask. At the beginning of last week, face masks and plastic gloves were yet to be mandatory for taxi drivers (that happened on Thursday), but everyone had been asked by the government to cover their noses and mouths as a precaution.

Camacho said he wasn’t worried about protecting himself because he didn’t believe the risk was as high as both the federal and city governments would have us believe.

“People in power do or say whatever they like to get what they want,” he said.

Camacho then went on to explain to me that Mexico President Felipe Calderon was in fact making the whole thing up in order to give Mexicans the impression that he was taking care of them and saving them from certain and gruesome death.

Camacho referred back to Mexico’s controversial 2006 elections during which Calderon beat the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in a voting process that many still claim was fraudulent, and referred to Calderon as “el espurio” (the illegitimate one). Calderon is trying to gain legitimacy with this swine flu “story”, claimed Camacho.

OK, I asked, if that’s the case, why is Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, also a member of the opposition PRD party,going along with Calderon’s flu-stopping strategy of closing schools and nonessential services?

Camacho had an answer for that.

“It’s not convenient for Ebrard to fall out with Calderon right now. There are elections coming up in July, and he doesn’t want any trouble before then.”

My ride came to an end before I could ask Camacho why the World Health Organization was also in on the plot, but no doubt he’d have had an explanation for that too.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza.

Mexican-Canadian visual artist Alec Dempster, who lives in Xalapa in the state of Veracruz, got in touch to send us some images of his that are part of a series called “Toxic Love.”

Dempster, who resides in the state where the first case of the new strain of swine flu strain was found, actually created the images years ago.

“I did this series quite a while ago. I think I was still at university studying art in Toronto. I moved back to Mexico shortly after graduating from York University in 1995. I remember showing them at the university gallery.

“Since then they have been stored safely in a cold and dark basement somewhere in Toronto waiting for the right moment to see the light of day again. I had forgotten about them until a couple of days ago after starting to see some people walking around Jalapa with their face masks.”

You can see more of Dempster’s images here on his blog and his website.

Government restrictions have limited them and the thousands of other restaurants in Mexico City to only providing takeout meals, and sales at Fonda Garufa have plummeted as a result.

Here in Mexico, as many people sit out the crisis at home, or even leave the country, the Web is where many of them turn to express their feelings and stay in touch with what’s going on in the real world.

This is a collection of responses I received to a request to Mexicans and foreigners living here for comments on the ongoing swine flu situation here. The comments, articles and quotes were sent to me via Facebook, Twitter, blog links and e-mail by people I know.

“I was sitting in my apartment on Monday morning, having not left since Friday night. Despite a weekend spent reading breaking news on the coming pandemic, I felt I still had no idea who had actually been affected and whether the situation was going to get worse.

“The city was paralyzed. I thought to myself, Why the hell am I waiting here helplessly — obsessively refreshing Google News — simply waiting for complete catastrophe? Time to get [out].

“For my own personal sanity (and that of my family and friends in the States), I booked the first flight to Denver for myself and my girlfriend.

“Overreaction? Possibly. But, no matter the eventual outcome, I won’t regret it at all. I’m feeling far more at ease here than I was in DF and at least I can go out for a … beer.”

– Brett Schultz, 30, American Mexico City resident and gallery owner, via Facebook

“Panic has hit us residents in different ways. In some, it’s intense, a frantic, fanatic upset. In others it’s a ‘keeping up with the Jones’-like farce, something someone puts on to pretend that they’re just as panicked as the next guy, when really, they think it’s all just overblown. In me, it’s a calm, quiet anxiousness that appears around the edges.”

– Julia Cook, 25, American journalist living in Mexico City, via an article for MexicoReporter.com

“Confident about what the gov is doing, calm bcause it’s relatively easy to take care. Little scared 4 the economy & scared bcause this could get worse w the bad info or political fights-beliefs of some people.”

– Pablo Puga, 31, Mexican designer and photographer, via Twitter

“There is a very mild (as far as I can tell) hysteria coursing through city life here. Although people tend to go about their every day, you can’t help but notice the fewer numbers driving and commuting and eating out. The only time the bit of hysteria comes up is If you hear a nearby sneeze or a cough. Most people look at the culprit in disgust or anger, especially if the sneezer or cougher didn’t cover their mouths in one of the two government approved ways: sneeze into your armpit, or into your a disposable paper towel. You could always wear your mask, but I think a lot of people are still on the fence with that one. Maybe the non-mask wearers are just waiting to cop a technologically advanced face-mask like the one created in Japan: the BioMask.”

– Camilo Smith, 33, American writer in Mexico City, via his blog “I Know, Huh?”

“No I’m not afraid. Storm in a tea cup, and people in Mexico are not ready to face something like this,and if you add the stupid way the goverment its trying to solve the problem, the only results are BAD. I got info by reading and checking the WHO site not from TV or any mass media. I think those media are even worst than the flu. Schools and restaurants, good methods but bad way to execute it. Rock on people, READ and be free …..wash your hands and take care of each other.”

– Aldo Monterubio, 25, Mexican musician, blogger, podcaster and director of DIXO.COM, via e-mail

“Para mi la gran pregunta sigue siendo: ¿Por qué se mueren acá y no en otros países (sin contar el bebé de México en Texas) ? Será porque se tardan demasiado en confirmar el caso de la influenza porcina y no recetan el antiviral antes? falta de o pésima atención médica? predisposición genética? condiciones ambientales? estadística?”

“For me the big question continues to be: Why are people dying here and not in other countries (with the exception of the baby who died in Texas)? Could it be because they take too long to confirm cases of swine flu and don’t prescribe the antivirals earlier? A lack of medical attention, or bad quality medical attention? Genetic predisposition? Environmental factors? Statistics?”

– Elena Fortes, 28, Mexican, director of the Ambulante documentary festival, via Facebook

“With so many people staying home, I reckon there’ll be a baby boom in oh, about nine months’ time.”

– Vivienne Stanton, 36, Australian journalist and resident of Mexico City, via Facebook

“You can’t keep away from the news with this story and that naturally heightens some of the paranoia and anxiety, but it’s also important to stay informed and alert. I did leave DF after filing some news pieces for radio, and feel a little calmer right now here in Puebla. At the same time, I am eager to get back to DF to keep witnessing this historic global moment.”

– Daniel Hernandez, 28, journalist and creator of the blog Intersections, via e-mail

“My decision [to return home to the U.S.] began with pressure from my parents. News spreads around the world as quickly as pig flu, apparently. My parents were hearing so much about Mexico City’s epidemic in the news that they got in touch very quickly and proposed I spent two weeks out of the country, until there was more information about the flu and also about its prevalence in Mexico City.

“At first I was resistant to the idea, for many reasons (I am not a worrier, first of all, but also because I didn’t like the notion of leaving Mexico as soon as times got a bit tough). However, after a few days in the ghost town of La Condesa, I decided it would be the perfect time to visit with my family and have a change of scenery. I do not do well under house-arrest, and though I do enjoy trips to the grocery store, I need considerable more human contact than Superama was giving me.

“A few other things, in addition to the generally depressing atmosphere of the city, led me to conclude that leaving Mexico was the right decision. One was the disappearance of tapabocas. I didn’t wear a mask all week; however, seeing the supply of them run out (at least in Condesa pharmacies) was proof that when millions of people have the same concern, and all run to the pharmacy in the same weekend, supplies get exhausted. As much faith as I have in Mexico’s medical system, it became clear to me that a large epidemic could require resources that this city simply does not have. And finally, the closing of the American embassy to non-emergencies was not reassuring.

“I had no problem leaving the country. No scrutiny from doctors or airport officials–on either end. I did ask the airport guy who checked me in if they were doing medical checks, and he said “pasado manana” (after tomorrow) they would be starting.”

– Colleen Kinder, 27, American journalist living in Mexico, via Facebook

“You can bet that, no matter what the outcome, and despite enormous effort, Mexico’s government will be found lacking. This is mainly because both inside the country, and outside of it, there is nothing that the government can do right. Despite the fact that both the leftist city government and the right-leaning federal government were democratically elected, they still lack credibility.

“This is especially curious because, whether during the influenza scare, or during a hurricane, people follow the government’s instructions. We are left with the strange situation that people are obedient and responsible in their actions, but dismissive and inflammatory with their words.”

– From an article by Agustín Barrios Gómez, 39, Mexican president of SolutionsAbroad.com, and first published in the News. Via an e-mail from the author.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Julia Cooke, 25, is an American cultural journalist who writes for Monocle and Travel + Leisure Mexico, among others. She has been living in Mexico City for three years. Cook wrote the following article about her reaction to the swine flu outbreak here in Mexico, and kindly donated it to MexicoReporter.com.

My throat is dry and itchy. I could have noticed the dryness and the high pollution index because of the usual symptoms: the plants on my patio drying out even though I water them every two days, the inside of my nose starting to hurt, my contact lenses going blurry after a few hours. But I worried this morning as I reached for the glass of water on my nightstand. I can’t tell my mother that my throat hurts, because she’ll think it means that she has to buy me a ticket home immediately, and after four years of living here in Mexico City, I know it’s just a normal sign of dry, high-altitude air.

Panic has hit us residents in different ways. In some, it’s intense, a frantic, fanatic upset. In others it’s a ‘keeping up with the Jones’-like farce, something someone puts on to pretend that they’re just as panicked as the next guy, when really, they think it’s all just overblown. In me, it’s a calm, quiet anxiousness that appears around the edges.  

Alejandro, my boyfriend, and I slip into the hypochondriac-skeptic roles that I’ve seen my parents play since I was a child: I make a ridiculous comment about how we should stock up on dog food, just in case, and he repeats what I’ve just said in a silly voice that makes the panic behind my comment suddenly apparent. “We should find ways to exercise at home,” he said this morning, as we checked the news and saw that all gyms and restaurants have been closed. He has a punching bag that hasn’t been touched in years, but we’ll get it set up this afternoon. We’ve been holed up in his house in the south of the city since Friday after making the executive decision to cook all of our own food and avoid social interaction. The reasons why I love my apartment in La Condesa, Mexico City’s SoHo, have become health liabilities: impromptu coffees with neighbors and greeting the friends I run into in the streets, a plethora of fun restaurants, coffee shops and bars close by. Now, at Alejandro’s more isolated house, I’m reading books, like The Kite Runner and Milan Kundera’s The Art of the Novel, that I’ve meant to read for ages.

My anxious reaction to this waiting game, not knowing how deep and dark this epidemic really is, struck in a very Martha Stewart way: I insisted that we go to the supermarket on Sunday and have been cooking ever since. I am measuring and combining and Tupperware-ing. I made a Thai chicken with basil and chili peppers, penne with bacon and broccoli, a red pepper and tomato caprese salad, Tuscan bean soup, walnut and parmesan pesto. But no one’s eating the dishes except us. After dropping into a convenience store today, I thought of picking up a few extra boxes of long-life milk, the kind that I don’t let Alejandro buy because it would probably survive a nuclear attack along with the Twinkies and cockroaches. “If it comes down to it, we could survive on oatmeal and full-fat milk for a few weeks,” I catch myself thinking. 

This morning, Alejandro and I ran through disaster scenarios over huevos rancheros and chai in the sun. The weather has been so warm and sunny, it’s hard to believe that the death tolls from a deadly flu are rising (on Tuesday, the WHO confirmed 26 cases of pig flu in Mexico, and flu-related deaths hit 159) around the city. “What if people start freaking out and trying to buy a month’s worth of rice, or maybe dog food, and then the supermarkets go crazy and people start rioting and stealing? What if it’s like in the movies?” he says. “What if the government hides how bad this thing really is from us and it’s like the Spanish influenza and 25% of the population gets sick?” I counter. “That’s not so bad, we’ve been screwing up the earth for ages and now it’s our turn to get purged. But why here, why in Mexico City?” he wonders. We already went through what we want each other to do with our stuff in case either of us dies: He gets the fledgling art collection I’ve started putting together, except for a photo that he’s to give to my best friend from high school. I am to make sure that the money he borrowed from his mother years ago to start his company is returned and give his aunt his Vespa. It was funny at first, until it wasn’t. 

In a cab this morning, the driver was sure the government was both unprepared for and exaggerating this crisis. He thinks it’s all ridiculous. The streets we drove through were filled with cars; I don’t know where the apocalyptic photos of empty streets are being shot, because I haven’t seen anything like that. I told him that I’ve lived here for four years, and he looked at me, incredulous. “Why here? You wouldn’t prefer to live in the U.S.?” he asked me, as if I were a truant child who was making a comment about why learning to read is superfluous. “Most of the time, I prefer it here. Right now, I guess, I’d prefer it there,” I answered. But I don’t want to leave. Alejandro tells me that if it will make me feel better, if it will calm my nervous family down, I should really just buy a ticket to Portland and head home for a week. 

There’s a strange sort of hubris floating around the expat community here. People put the newest WHO pandemic rating on their Facebook status, link to dramatic news articles about the epidemic, change their pictures to images of themselves in face masks on the street. Journalists post about their newest scheme to try to get into a hospital for man-in-the-hospital-bed quotes. “I am here, in it,” they seem to proclaim. “Where are you?” One expat friend calls me in a panic, telling me that she bets it’s really bad because the government always covers things up, doesn’t it? And the PAN (political party of President Felipe Caldaron) is worse than the rest of them. She feels lonely. She doesn’t have anyone here. If all else fails and we can’t get on planes to get back to our families, she asks me, will I rent a car with her and drive to the border? Absolutely, I say, hearing my voice tinny as I speak. I hope it doesn’t come to that. For now, I’m waiting, antisocially, in my skittish Martha Stewart panic skin, to see what happens next.

You can contact Julia Cooke on julia.cooke@gmail.com.

Image: A young boy stands on the corner of Republica de Guatemala and Republica Brazil wearing a tapabocas on Saturday afternoon. Credit: Deanna Dent.

Deanna Dent is an American photographer currently in Mexico City documenting what’s going on at ground level. She kindly gave us permission to publish her photograph – see more at her excellent photography blog here.