From a bountiful table filled with culinary delights from Oaxaca, Mexico’s president offered unusual advice for a country facing the coronavirus crunch: keep dining out.
“We’re going to keep living life as usual,” a relaxed Andrés Manuel López Obrador insisted in an online video shot during a weekend tour of the southern Mexican state.
“I’ll tell you when not to go out any longer,” the left-wing populist said, explaining that the pandemic was still only in its first phase.
“If you’re able and have the means to do so, continue taking your family out to eat … because that strengthens the economy.”
López Obrador, who most know as Amlo, has responded to the coronavirus crisis with nonchalance – never missing an opportunity to contradict the advice of public health officials or paint the pandemic as a plot to derail his presidency.
In recent weeks Amlo has routinely avoided social distancing and organised campaign-style rallies rife with gladhanding, hugs and baby-kissing.
Amlo has also resisted ratcheting up measures to slow the virus – such as calling off mass events until recently or closing schools and businesses – arguing that doing so would unnecessarily harm the vast swaths of the population economically unable to isolate themselves for several weeks or months.
Even his attempts at promoting social distancing seemed petulant. Last week he tweeted a video of a young girl with braided hair lauding his presidential agenda – “we’re with you and your great national project”, she said – to which Amlo replied: “I wanted to smother her with kisses, but couldn’t because of social distancing.”
Amlo’s supporters, meanwhile, speak of coronavirus in almost conspiratorial terms. One person at a recent morning press conference called it “a fad disease” in his question to Mexico’s leader.
Amlo’s behaviour has sparked a barrage of criticism from Mexicans – many of whom are taking precautions on their own without government guidance.
“López’s arrogance in the face of the global coronavirus crisis is frankly irresponsible and reprehensible ... his reluctance to use hand sanitizer is simply immoral,” the journalist Luis Cárdenas wrote in El Universal newspaper, calling Amlo Mexico’s “worst president in history”.
He is also drawing unflattering comparisons to other populists such as the US president, Donald Trump, who has downplayed the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic, and Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has dismissed the crisis as a media “trick” and a “fantasy”.
This week the left-wing American magazine Mother Jones branded Amlo “the most irresponsible president on the continent” and said his weak response compared badly with those of other Latin American governments such as Colombia and El Salvador.
Analysts said Amlo’s apathetic response stems partly from concerns over Mexico’s economy – and partly from his conviction that his political foes are behind calls for him to take more drastic action.
The political scientist Aldo Muñoz Armenta said Amlo’s attitude was one of “they can’t tell me what’s correct because they’re the ones that want to hurt me”.
“It’s now turned into an issue of competition and not a matter of public health,” said Muñoz, a professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico State. “Amlo is more interested in contradicting them than making a decision.”
Others believe that Amlo – who swept to power in 2018 vowing to champion Mexico’s poor – fears taking measures that are too tough, too soon could damage his political standing by causing economic chaos.
When Amlo’s predecessor, Felipe Calderón shut down Mexico City for five days in 2009 to combat the H1N1 viral outbreak, Amlo criticised the move as excessive. Analysts said Amlo wanted to avoid repeating Calderón’s example – even though it was lauded by international health officials.
“The perception that Calderón overreacted is still prevalent among Amlo supporters,” said Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez, a sociologist in Mexico City.
Xavier Tello, a Mexican healthcare analyst, said: “He could genuinely be trying to save the economy for the poor. But he is allowing them to become infected and contagious, which will be worse for them in terms of the health costs.”
“He’s being as irresponsible as a head of state can be,” Tello added.
On Tuesday Mexico – which has so far reported 367 confirmed cases of coronavirus and four deaths – announced it would suspend all public and private gatherings for the next month in an attempt to halt the disease’s spread.
