Theft crisis coming due to hunger – Sociologist warns

For those living on the edge, confinement has another meaning, says sociologist Luis García-Abusaíd

SALTILLO, Coah. (Zócalo News) – Sociologist Luis García-Abusaíd said there is a crisis of hunger-related robberies that can only be contained if the authorities of the three levels of government, business, and society take action.

“They will be thefts (because of) the coronavirus, and they haven’t been given due importance, but these types of thefts are already common. We see in the news people who are arrested for taking food, for trying to feed their family. This will likely get worse,” he said.

In an interview on Tele Saltillo’s evening news, sociologist Luis García Abusaíd said that Covid-19 is a social equalizer, since it infects rich and poor alike, even though some people try to classify it according to economic possibilities. “It’s a virus that makes us all equal,” he explained.

In a talk with the director of Grupo Zócalo, Francisco Juaristi Santos, he recalled that in Mexico, six out of every ten workers are in the informal sector, “living from day to day, without savings or a secure salary. For them, confinement has another meaning, different from that of the middle class and wealthy, who can carry out quarantine in a disciplined manner. In Mexico, everyone lives confinement differently,” he said.

Garcia Abusaid stressed that it has been a society that has adopted measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 above the government, because it has been the Mexicans who have anticipated the rules of confinement, hygiene, distance, and other actions of phase 2 of the health contingency.