With food like tacos, beans and rice, Mexicans are showing their solidarity amid the coronavirus crisis in a country that has entered its worst phase of covid-19 infections since the health emergency began two months ago.
Sales have fallen by almost 90 percent for the Los Pastorcitos taco stand, which Edgar Pastor opened a year-and-a-half ago at the town hall of Tlalpan, in the southern part of Mexico City, but that hasn''t prevented him over the past month from handing out tacos for free to those of his customers hardest hit by the crisis.
"I''m not asking for support for me, as a business, the support is for everyone. The support should be for everyone, for each Mexican, because everyone is suffering, not only me, not only my neighbor, we''re all suffering," Pastor told Efe as he prepared the meat for the tacos.
Taco stands like Pastor''s are the micro, small and mid-sized businesses that make up three-quarters of the country''s formal jobs and more than half its GDP, but which are at risk during the coronavirus pandemic.
The covid-19 emergency has resulted in 13,842 confirmed virus cases and 1,305 deaths in Mexico so far, but it has also meant the loss of almost 347,000 jobs since March.
Given this scenario, Pastor warned that more and more people are coming to him to ask for tacos, and they have no "specific" social profile but rather they come from all classes of Mexican society.
Thus, he called on others to join his solidarity campaign, which has gained popularity in the southern Mexico City area.
"This support, or what I''m giving, wasn''t something that I wanted to have announced in such a big way all over. I did it from my heart. I didn''t do it for fame or anything like that. We''ll keep doing things out of love," he said.
A few kilometers away, in the Granjas Coapa district, Elizabeth Carmona collects and distributes food with the help of two female friends, food that includes the basic staples of Mexican cooking like beans and rice.
After losing her job at a casino in the northern border city of Tijuana, Carmona returned to the capital, where she sees the great needs of the people as being at the root of the problem.
"If you don't have work, having lost it in the pandemic, how are you going to support your children? More than ever, it's an issue of money, which basically is the problem that's everywhere in Mexico and people are in great need," she said regarding the concerns of her neighbors.
The response of people on Facebook, where more and more of her supporters are gathering, motivates Carmona, who says that Mexico is a country with a lot of solidarity despite the dozens of doctors and nurses who have denounced attacks launched on them out of fear by certain citizens.
"We''re a country with a lot of solidarity, we always try to help one another. And I don''t think this is an exception. I feel that we''ve all acted very well, although there are people - I think ones who lack respect - who have lacked respect for our doctors," she said.
(djh)