You can see the bright pink and lime green offices of DIF http://www.difver.gob.mx in most pueblos of any size at all. The acronm stands for Sistema Nacional para e Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, or the Comprehensive Development of the Family. It offers all kinds of services from food, more in hard times, to mammograms to activities for us old people to issuing cards for seniors to get discounts, to sports, to psychological counseling and health education, some devoted to specific problems like leukemia and assistance for people without state insurance who need heart surgery. It offers programs for kids and teenagers. It’s kind of like a community center in the US, except this is a government organization. It’s very visible. It doesn’t seem to suffer for its government connection, and it is tied closely to local communities. This is the place in Coatepec where citizens are supposed to bring their cooking oil.
DIF is also a dispenser of sage advice on A/H1N1 prevention measures. Here’s a poster they share from the Ministry of Health on hand washing:
We haven't heard of anyone in our area yet who has had swine flu. In the country at large, 2431 new cases have been reported in the last 48 hours. Thus far, altogether 41,920 people have been infected and 260 have died from it. Mexico has a population of roughly 106 million people.
In looking at the epidemiology of those who've died in Mexico, it's reported in (I thik the October 1 issue of El Processo that 22.5% of the 193 people who'd died as of October 1 in Guadalajara, 22.5% were cigarette addicts. It's a bit hard to find a quantitative definition of addiction, but the Mayo Clinic says that you can tell if you are dependent if quitting causes withdrawal symptoms. In Mexico, somewhere between 12% and 15% of the population are considered addicts, less than the mortality rate from the A/H1N1 flu, at least in Guadalajara, indicating perhaps a link between lungs compromised by smoking in particular and the severe pulmonary complications of the flu. The article pointed out that most people who died had serious secondary problems from heart disease to other pulmonary disorders.
A reminder: You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.
We drove into La Gloria down a fairly smooth road from the main road to Perote. We knew where to turn because there was a bright new sign saying, La Gloria, 9 km. I suspect this was new so reporters could find their way. When we drove down the road, it didn't occur to me that it had been widened and smoothed It was a dirt road) for the hubbub that grew over it being thought of as "Ground Zero" of the flu epidemic because of the presence of the litte boy who was the first diagnosed case, but I think it must have been. There were remnants of road-making materials still lying on one side. Jim thought perhaps they were there to repair damage when the rains came...roads suffer terribly in the heavy downpours.
Here is a picture Jim took when we arrived at La Gloria.
There were no reporters, no cameras, no media vans. But there was a bit of crowd at the center. Still present were public health trucks and a mobile kitchen from the state. I suspect these mobile kitchens are normally used for disasters.
Jim's photos of the outside and inside of the mobile kitchen.
I'm not sure how long the government had been providing these delicious-smelling meals, but I know it hadn't been longer than La Gloria's presence in the world news. I talked to a government representative who said indeed it was because of all that La Gloria had had to endure with being at the center of attention. Another woman said the government had never done it before. At least the trucks were there longer than the press. In the picture below, you can see people eating and lining up to eat. We were invited to join in. We felt it would be odd to do it. We weren't of the community. I guess I can't really explain our feelings, but it felt a bit like it would be cheating.
Below is a picture of the clinic on the main street in La Gloria. Granjas Carroll says it provides all health services for the community.
Perhaps part of the rejuvenation of La Gloria's appearance for the press (by the government of the state) was repainting (or painting) these statements on the sides of the elementary school buildings.
(Jim's picture)
The values statement says that within the relationship among the director, teachers, support people, students and parents there ought to exist respect, tolerance, trust, responsibility, solidarity and fairness. While there is huge room for improvement in Mexican public schools (as there is in many countries, including the US), there is a striking difference between the US and Mexico. In the latter, responsibilities to family and community are stressed. Achievement is linked to doing well for family and community, not for oneself. Meeting these responsibilities seems ever-more elusive in times when people are forced to leave both to make a living.
(In addition to Mission and Values statements, on another wall there is a Vision statement: shades of Total Quality Improvement to which my clinic and I were subjected in the 1980s.)
In the park in front of the school, the main park, this sign hung. It shows the municipality of Perote including La Gloria and highlights all the road improvements the state government lays claim to. (Jim's picture) Notice it looks like the two most important towns in the area are Perote and La Gloria.
Now I have to add that one shouldn't be too cynical. Roads are being improved/constructed all over the state, including at the entrance to our own colonia. Texas does this, too, but on a much grander scale. No two lane roads for Texas!
We walked through the downtown and beyond. Three women joined us and asked who we were. We explained. They were eager to share information about La Gloria: not about Las Granjas Carroll anymore, but they wanted us to know that half the working population had to go to Mexico City to work -- they stay there during the week and come home on weekends, and that many were in the US. There was little work to be found in La Gloria.
We had noticed some towers toward the end of the street. They turned out to be towers of a ruined hacienda. We all walked towards it, the sand still blowing around us.
The next post: The Hacienda and a bit more.
First of all here is a link to an excellent post on the La Gloria-Granjas Carroll connecton on an excellent blog called Intersections by a Mexican-American-Mexican(?), Daniel Hernandez, in Mexico City. You'll find links within it to more information about the La Gloria-Granjas Carroll connection.
Jim and I took a trip to La Gloria last week going by way of Ixhuacán de los Reyes and Los Altos. Before I write about that, here are some segments sometimes loosely translated (sometimes just paraphrased) from an article in La Jornada which I found via a link on Intersections which describes La Gloria's fifteen minutes of fame:
By Andrés Timoteo Morales, correspondent.
In only eight days, La Gloria was transformed from a neglected, semidesert pueblo into a community allive with streets being paved, the little parke being rehabbed with paint and decorative plants, and even a cafe....
In fact...a week ago Wikipedia opened a site on La Gloria and had thousands of hits from all over the world....
The bonanza arrived at the puebla with the national international press....more than fifty representatives from, among other places, the US, France, Qatar, China, Brasil, Corea, Japan, the UK, Germany, Spain and Venezuela, attracted by the reports of the origin of ...A/H1N1 and because it was the home of Edgar Hernandez, "patient zero" of the infection.....
Dozens of state and municipal workers made La Gloria the center of their rehab operations starting on April 29....and they hung a huge map marking the location of the pueblo.
They smoothed the road whic led to Perote, the center of the municipality. The government of the state, according to Silvia Dominguez, the secretary of Social Development and the Environment of the state, said they invested five million pesos in public works in addition to resources for health and food.
The communities which benefited from the fame of La gloria are Xaltepec, El Carmen, Totalco, Guadalupe Victoria and Zayaleta. At all the towns, trucs loaded with construction materials, provisions, and mobile health units from the Secretary of Health.
"We have more than thirty people who come daily to work at La Gloria, said Dominguez, the secreatary, and he continued, adding that all this sudden activity was not due to the flu outrage, but because all the works were pat of the progam of public works for the state for 2009. Not a peso nor an action have been improvized." (This last is a direct translation)
To this figure, is added the personnel of the community kitchens, three mobile health units, and pollsters/interviewers who enroll the inhabitants in various social programs of the state.
We are from La Gloria, nthing more, and now the whole world knows us, said some of the oldest. Some of them told anecdotes about interviews they gave to CNN, Televisión Española and even Al-Jazeera
....
The first sign posted for the media to see was this one (taken from La Jornada):
However, it seems that the mayor of Perote ordered more signs to hang at the main accesses to La Gloria. These are what we saw:
Next: Our visit to La Gloria, after the fifteen minutes of fame.
In a previous post, it was mentioned that finally Fidel Herrera Beltrán might be calling in some truly independent investigators to look into The Situation at Granja Carroll and La Gloria to see if it might be at all possible to track the flu there still. Numerous questions mean that it is impossible to rule it out including the rather unusual outbreak which affected a quarter of the population in March and earlier of this year. Apparently half the working population of La Gloria works in Mexico City during the week, returning home on weekends. (Many others have migrated to the states -- where in the States? When?) Given that people can be contagious with the flu for days before they exhibit symptoms (if indeed they do exhibit notable symptoms), it seems quite possible that these workers may have brought the flu to the Mexico City. Is this being investigated?
An excellent and very important piece of investigative journalism by Laura Carlsen here at Americas MexicoBlog
Among the points:
You need to read the article.
I would like to add that as in the case of global warming, in which the problem is undeniably real, but attention to which blinds us to other very serious environmental problem, the agroindustry-disease connection is very real, but it shouldn't blind us to other very serious problems presented by these companies, from dangerous overuse of antibiotics to loss of jobs to pollution of soil, air and water, to hideous mistreatment of animals to loss of income for local areas.
In the Washington Post you can read about Mexico's response to diagnosis of the flu: a story filled with high drama. It was wonderful and swift. Mexico is a country with an abundance of very smart, very talented people.
Agenda Veracruz is a blog of political opinion mostly addressing issues here in our state, often in the context of national politicsandissues. It is in Spanish.
From La Jornada, May 8, 2009
My translation
The Federal Commission for Protection against Public Health Risks (Cofepris--Spanish acronym) only verified that there were no sick pigs in Granjas Carroll and the community. The public health visit was limited to La Gloria months after the outbreak. The report contains data which contradict that reported by the National Water Commission.
by Ángeles Cruz Martínez
At the end of April, two months after the flu outbreak that affected 25 percent of the inhabitants of La Gloria in Perote, Veracruz, and six days after a public health emergency was declared in the country because of the epidemic of A/H1N1 flu, the Federal Commission for Protection against Public Health Risks (Cofepris) completed a public health verification which was limited to confirming that there were no sick pigs either in Granja Carroll or in La Gloria.
Miguel Ángel Toscano, head of the Commission, participated yesterday in a press conference at the Health Department (Ssa--Spanish acronym) in which he described the state of the epidemic in the country. He also recounted the activities which supervisors of Cofepris undertook both in the town and in the pig plant, but without making any reference to the complaints which the inhabitants of La Gloria have made over the years about public health risks because of environmental contamination.
This past March 1, one of the 1,200 case of A/H1N1 confirmed at this point was recorded in La Gloria. In La Gloria, one of the unusual outbreaks of influenza between February and March of this year also occurred, in which 25% of the inhabitants were affected.
Discontented citizens at that time expressed their fear that the viral infections were related to the contamination generated at Granja Carroll; however, nobody paid attention to them. The epidemiological outbreak ended, and it wasn't until this past April 23 when Ssa confirmed that one of the tests taken in La Gloria on April 23 and sent to Canada for testing came back positive for the new virus.
The discontent of the Veracruzanos [La Gloria is in the state of Veracruz] sharpened when they found out that A/H1N1 had a genetic component of swine origin
Yesterday in his presentation, Toscano highlighted the basic public health measures and public health promotion which the government of Veracruz had undertaken, such as the distribution of [colloidal silver, 5 kilograms of hyperclorito of calcium], chlorination of fifty water tanks, and 100 kilograms of lime and the [encalamiento-- lime treatment)?] of foci of infection.**
Then Toscano proceeded to recount the visit to Granja Carrol, located eight kilometers from La Gloria. According to Toscano, the company manages garbage well. It is taken away by specialized contracting businesses. The management of [pig] corpses is by means of composting mixed with straw and dirt in installations with concrete walls and a mesh roof to avoid bird, rodent and insect infestations.
In addition, he said the mortality rate at the granja is maintained below the average of the sector. From October 2008 to March 2009 it varied between 2.1 and 2.9 percent, where as the average in pig farms is between 3.1 and 3. percent.
He also referred to the operational conditions of the granja which, he said, included measures maintaining a high level of biosecurity such as a mesh fence surrounding the whole installation, programs of weed and pest control, disinfection and sanitization of materials which enter the farm and keeping food containers closed, among other measures.
According to Toscano -- and in contradiction to that which the National Water Commission reported in respect to the existence of underground filtration of fecal wastes--, the oxidation lagoons in which the solid wastes are captured are constructed in three layers of compaction withclay and a special sealant which prevents filtering into the subsoil.
* Granjas Carroll is a company that is jointly owned by Smithfield Foods of the US and Agroindustrias Unidaswith 16 pig factories in the states of Veracruz and Puebla, all, I think, in the areas of the Valley of Perote and the Valley of Guadalupe Victoria. It's worth taking a tour through their website.*
Granja Carroll or granja Carroll refers to the factory nearest to La Gloria.
** I am not scientifically-minded enough to translate these terms correctly to English since I'm not sure what they'd be in English.