Breathe
By Kimberly Armengol
I have just spent a few days in Denmark and the Nordic countries and, upon my return, I hear again that Mexico will have a better public health system than the Danish one.
I want to believe that this is a jocularity to add salt and pepper to the morning conference, a blather, not that there is anyone who believes that this is possible.
We are no more than nine thousand kilometers away from Denmark, but several metaverses separate us.
God's schedule
Let's start with an example that is comical. While we (Mexico) lost hundreds of hours to eliminate daylight saving time because it did not correspond to "God's time" and it was "complex and unhealthy" to get used to it, the Danes have around this time 17 hours of daylight, it gets dark around midnight and dawn breaks around four o'clock in the morning.
Not to mention the winter, with more than 15 hours of darkness and at four o'clock in the afternoon it was already dark.
Evidently, there are no Danes explaining that their gods don't like that schedule or justifying imponderables.
Quality of life
In Denmark, 50 percent of the population owns their homes with mortgage loans with a maximum interest rate of two percent. In some cases, no interest at all. Us? To access a mortgage loan, you have to pay approximately 11 percent interest. If we talk about credit cards, the subject becomes vomitous because of the abuse allowed to private banks in Mexico.
Also, while in our country it's a real ordeal (breakdowns, chaos, accidents) to know if we will be able to get to work by public transportation, the Danes know exactly at what time which car passes and what its destination is, and it never fails!
On the other hand, we would never see a child begging in the streets or working as in Mexico where there are more than two million working and at least 100,000 living on the streets.
It's us, not just the government
Enough of the economic and political catharsis of comparing Denmark and Mexico and let's take responsibility ourselves as well.
In Copenhagen, the Danish capital, bicycles dominate the cityscape. They are parked everywhere and are never secured with chains or locks!
Accustomed - as I am - to the Mexican reality of fucking whatever you can, it is impressive to see how they leave their bicycles everywhere without worrying about whether they are going to be stolen or not.
And no, it is not a matter of need or poverty that differentiates us, it is much more complex and structural than that.
(I remembered that remarkable Mexican scientist named Peña Nieto who said that the problem was in our DNA).
POSTDATA
And no, I would never trade my very imperfect Mexico for any Nordic dream, but it's a shame that we settle for so little.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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