Vaccination in Mexico and beyond requires collective action from a variety of groups and individuals. Personnel in hospitals fight the disease. The researchers speed up a process that usually takes years. All the people who participate in the chain of production, circulation and distribution of a substance that will help the world population to defend themselves against this threat. We do not recognize all of them, many of them risk their lives and that of their loved ones.
It is therefore worrying that political groups take advantage of vaccines to promote a political platform. The chain of activities by which the vaccine is produced in laboratories until it is inoculated in each person goes through a network of social action we have never seen in the history of humanity.
Problems with Vaccination in Mexico
On January 4, the leader of Morena party Mario Delgado spread this publication on Twitter attaching a promotional video of the party for the 2021 electoral campaign:
Source: Twitter. User account @mario_delgado, 4/01/2021, 8:39 a.m., available here.
The institution in charge of monitoring Mexican electoral processes (Instituto Nacional Electoral) asked to remove it from the media ecosystem. This decision was ratified later by the judicial body in charge of electoral processes (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación). Despite this, the video is still present on some digital sites.
Further Problems with Vaccination in Mexico
Another case occurred when some details about the vaccination campaigns were made public. Among the people in charge there were not only doctors to apply vaccines, but also soldiers to protect and the so-called “servidores de la nación” (translates as “servants of the nation”) for logistics issues.
Source: Presented at a morning government conference 12/01/2021 by the Secretary of National Defense Luis Crescensio Sandoval. The image was taken from the Regeneration website: https://regeneracion.mx/se-integra-la-brigada-correcaminos-para-distribuir-vacunas-en-todo-el-pais/
Before the pandemic, servers had the function of taking censuses for government welfare programs.
Sociology and Vaccination
From a sociological point of view, they serve as a symbolic resource by wearing symbols in their clothing and accessories that associate their role with the federal government using the governmental logo of the national heroes and even openly presenting the name of the president in his backpack as we can appreciate in the following image:
Source: Aristegui Noticias. Image used in an article by Sebastián Barragán
All the above contributes to infer that there is at least an indirect way of promotion during vaccination campaigns using symbols associated with Morena.
Behind vaccines there is a whole cooperation and solidarity network that transcends borders, ideologies, social classes, gender, and any other type of distinction that we have built throughout our history.
Final Thoughts on Vaccination in Mexico
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), if it is not applied to a high number of the world population, the outbreaks will continue, and the virus will evolve.
Once this crisis is over, why should we stop this solidarity network? It must be the starting point to solve other social problems that afflict us as a global community.
