New plan or political recycling?
After the violent incident at a high school in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, Claudia Sheinbaum came out with the predictable script. Announces a “mental health strategy” for youth. Next week, he says. Because of course, bureaucratic deadlines never mean urgency.
The curious—or the cynical—is the origin of your great idea. It’s not new. She herself admitted it: she will recover the work she started when she was head of government of Mexico City. In other words, it recycles its own material. Efficiency or lack of fresh ideas?
The plan sounds like a manual of good intentions: talks in schools by public servants, guides for teachers and parents, dissemination campaigns and even reading promotion. Because nothing calms a teenager in crisis like a good book, right?
The President described the case as “very painful” and pointed out that attention should not be limited solely to the criminal sanction of the person responsible, but rather address the social and psychological causes faced by young people.
Here is the key point. Talking about “social and psychological causes” sounds good. It’s what they say after every preventable tragedy. The real challenge is to move from speech to real action in a collapsed educational system.
Sheinbaum wants this case to be “isolated.” But memory is short. How many similar plans have been announced after previous violent events? Institutional amnesia is part of the problem.
Meanwhile, the families in Lázaro Cárdenas deal with real trauma. And the government is preparing its next press conference.
