Why Mexico was one of the last countries to react against the pandemic?

Mexico in many ways was seen as the model of how to react to a pandemic after facing the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 which forced the government to shut down part of the country. At the same time, Mexico faced the effects of the financial crisis that originated in the US in 2008 and organized crime was rising in the northern part of Mexico. With this experience, why Mexico has been one of the last countries in Latin America to establish social distance measures to fight covid19?

In this episode we hear from Arturo Sarukhán , he is the former Mexican Ambassador to the the United States from 2006 to 2013.

“Lopez Obrador probably feels that Mexico overreacted in 2009 and in many ways, in his view, he doesn’t want to repeat what he sees as mistakes that were done in 2009”

“There is a sort of DNA in this (AMLO’s) government that everything that preceded is wrong. So the protocols that Mexico put in place in 2009 are to be avoided at all costs”

“One of the reasons the Mexican government mobilized late in the game has to do with his (AMLO’s) convoluted view of everything that preceded”

“Marcelo Ebrard as a mayor of Mexico City in 2009 was taking measures even more draconian (to fight the H1N1 pandemic). It is paradoxical because he is now the foreign minister and somehow is fueling this new rhetoric”

“in Mexico, you see a lot of what you see in the US in the way cities and states are responding to the pandemic”

“Governors who started out with a more Laissez-faire, don’t ask don’t tell positions regarding who was in operation and who wasn’t, especially in the northern border because of the connectivity with the US, who now, because we have seen spikes in contagion in several of the maquiladoras facilities along the northern border and are now doing 180 degrees U-turn and are shutting down everything even though the federal government has not issued such orders”

“Where Brazil has had a chaotic foreign policy, Mexico doesn’t have a foreign policy”

“This government says that the best foreign policy is a good domestic policy”

“The Medical instruments industry is hugely important for the US. The largest imports of medical devices come from Mexico. So, Mexico would have the backbone because of its integrated supply chains in North America, to be able to lead coordinated response with the rest of Latin America”