Imagine Gabriel García Márquez rising from the grave, grabbing today’s Mexican newspaper, and muttering: “Damn it, they plagiarized me.” Because if something reeks of sweaty, rancid magical realism, it’s the medicine shortage in Mexico. A “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” where the victim isn’t Santiago Nasar but millions of patients discovering—too late—that the IMSS pharmacy doesn’t carry their treatment. And the killer? Not hiding at all. He’s right there at the morning press conference, denying the murder ever happened.
The story begins with a healthcare system that wasn’t Denmark, but it wasn’t Somalia either. It had corruption, bureaucracy, shady deals—but it functioned. Think of that beat-up car that smells like gasoline, needs a push to start, but still gets you home. Seguro Popular was ugly but it covered millions. Pharmaceutical distributors were hyenas, sure, but at least they knew how to deliver the carcass. Imperfect, greasy, flawed—but not a death sentence.
Then came “the transformation.” A government that diagnosed the disease—corruption—and prescribed a cure like a rusty machete lobotomy. They dismantled consolidated drug purchases, banned expert distributors, and handed logistics to the Ministry of Finance, as if bean counters could suddenly manage chemo treatments. Spoiler: they couldn’t. And when the chaos became undeniable, the savior arrived: UNOPS, a UN agency that had never bought aspirin in a corner store, fumbling through late, overpriced contracts like a tourist haggling for tequila at a Cancún flea market.
Meanwhile, children with cancer became political scapegoats, their parents begging at airports accused of being opposition puppets. The president insisted there was “96% coverage,” with the same conviction as a Herbalife rep promising their shake cures diabetes. And then, the pièce de résistance: the Mega Pharmacy. A giant warehouse, because apparently public health is solved with an XXL bodega. Magical realism meets Costco.
Here’s the irony: the government didn’t inherit a drug shortage, it manufactured one. Like those hipster chefs who say they hate industrial food but serve you raw hamburgers in the name of “authenticity.” They didn’t just destroy the system—they rebranded the rubble as moral purity. Let the chemo run out, as long as ideology is fully stocked.
Fast forward to 2025. Claudia Sheinbaum takes office. Everyone wonders: will she steer the ship away from the iceberg? Nope. She’s painting over the wreckage for the campaign photo. The discourse is copy-pasted: neoliberal villains, conservative sabotage, “heavy inheritance.” As if the real enemy were some Disney villain instead of an actual child waiting for chemo. The Mega Pharmacy is still paraded as a totem, the army is still distributing meds like bullets, and patients are still collecting “no hay” stamps in their medical pilgrimage.
The contrast is grotesque enough to be comedy: a country that brags about incorruptible honesty while its citizens buy medicine on the black market. A nation that promised Denmark but woke up in an episode of El Chavo del 8, where the school first-aid kit doesn’t even have Vicks VapoRub.
“Chronicle of a Death Foretold” ended with the certainty that everyone knew what would happen but no one did anything. Mexico, 2025: same story. Everyone knows the health system is broken, but the government insists everything’s fine, the medicine is “on the way,” the future is already here. Just be patient—because apparently hypertension, epilepsy, or cancer can wait six years for the next administration.
This is Mexico’s true magical realism: a country where people die waiting for medicine while politicians cure everything with the cheapest drug of all—denial.