Imagine living in a country with restricted freedom of the press. The COVID-19 pandemic hits, and with it, an overwhelming sea of information. Every morning at 7:00 a.m. the president of this country hosts a media conference where he openly denies science. The chief epidemiologist makes up elaborate technical excuses to support these claims, rather than contradict his boss. Together, they broadcast their messages on national television for three hours a day, saying hundreds of things that are impossible to verify. There is no fourth estate strong enough to hold them accountable.

That country is Mexico.

For the past two months, Mexicans have watched our government downplay the virus and politicize all criticism. We could say it’s the symbol of our polarized time. But in Mexico, rigorous reporting is the exception and not the rule, which results in a lack of accountability measures that spells disaster in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. …

Mexican doctors risked their lives with the countries first COVID-related death. This story is about the human impact that faulty testing criteria have during a pandemic. It is also, a possible explanation behind the low number of people with COVID-19 in Mexico.

Originally published in Spanish in Aristegui Noticias

It was past midnight in Mexico City on Sunday, March 15th. José, 41 (not his real name) walked into the National Institute of Respiratory Issues, known as INER. He clutched his wife’s arm. José had been sick for a week with a dry cough and fever. By now he could barely breathe. White lights blazed in the emergency room. …

It’s midnight, Day of the Dead in California.

In Mexican culture we believe the afterlife portals are open, and the deceased come to visit us.

I light all my candles. Burn some copal, sacred incense, and I call upon my muertos.

My brother lies at the center of the small altar I fashioned. He died four months and eight days ago. This is his first Day of the Dead after he died and also my first outside of Mexico — at least ever since death has actually meant something.

Four months and eight days.

It seems like a lifetime. El tiempo del no tiempo. The time of no time. …

In “Roma,” a white-Mexican director tells the story of a brown-skinned indigenous domestic worker — like my friend Zoe Mendelson says, this was bound to generate polemics.

The American press hailed it as the “Latest Entry in Alfonso Cuarón’s Feminist Oeuvre” and Naomi Klein called it one of the most “magnificent, generous and feminist films” she had ever seen. Roma, named for the neighborhood where Cuarón grew up, is a homage to the woman who raised him.

But Mexican feminists — while acknowledging the film has become a cultural touchstone — offered a more complex view of “Roma.” …