Mexicans rely on the money emigrants send home from the U.S. But in one village, those remittances have precipitously. The reason? COVID-19.
https://apnews.com/ce96cbaa6b5d452f8f64c917ee926dff
The impact of COVID-19 has many questioning whether the years of struggle, absence and badly paid work were worth it. Mayor Ibaan Olguín Arellano estimates that the town’s people received some $500,000 a month in remittances before the new coronavirus struck New York and other places where migrants are working.
He predicted that Mexico will feel the pain in coming months, when unemployment benefits run out. The country has long depended on that money; remittances bring in more money from overseas than oil exports or tourism. So even before Mexico began debating quarantines, emigrants from this town imposed one on their families from 2,500 miles away. San Jerónimo stopped moving. To date, not a single villager has been infected; the mayor says six townspeople living in the U.S. have died.
On July 11, nearly three months after his death, his son’s ashes were sent from New York, destined for the town’s cemetery alongside his mother. “When I stopped coughing they would ask me, ‘What happened? We can’t hear you anymore,’” he recalled. Once, when he was particularly ill, he called his wife and said something that he’d never brought up before. If he could, he said, he would return home. She froze.
Figueroa was able to return to the Vietnamese restaurant part-time. He arrives to work by bike, pedaling past vendors selling face masks and gloves for a dollar. But he is just making ends meet and hasn’t sent money home since March. Three months later, he returned to San Jerónimo. Though he tried to go north in 2003, he ended up staying in Mexico to care for his mother and for the three daughters of his sister, Magnolia Ortega, who remained in the United States.
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