I’m sorry, I just don’t get it. I know I tend to be both skeptical and cynical, but putting a statue of little Edgar Hernandez, Mexico’s first swine flu victim, as a symbol of HOPE, just doesn’t fly with me.

A Mexican sculptor is putting the finishing touches on a bronze statue of a 5-year-old boy who became Mexico’s earliest confirmed case of swine flu.

Veracruz state spokesman Jorge Brandy says the statue of Edgar Hernandez will be erected in the central park of La Gloria, a pig-farming village in the mountains where scientists trying to learn where the epidemic began are taking blood samples from residents and pigs.

Brandy says the statue of Hernandez, who recovered from the illness after taking antibiotics, is meant to serve as a symbol of hope.
-AP

Don’t get me wrong, I think little Edgar is adorable and I am thrilled for both he and his family that his particular H1N1 story had a happy ending, but where do the endless amounts of joy and life embracing golden rays of hope come in?

We still don’t know where the virus came from, how and why it affected Mexicans differently than others across the globe, how it mutates, how and when it will hit again, if vaccines are the answer, or extreme hygeine is really our only defense.

Industrial pig farms are still in La Gloria Veracruz, pumping steroids and God knows what into animals to continue a multi-billionaire dollar global pork business, they still dump dead pigs in shallow graves close to community water supplies. Mexico still allows American and other foreign companies who were pushed out of their own countries due to unethical and unsanitary conditions to own and operate in our country.

Where is the hope? Does it all lie within little Edgar? I hope not, if so, I fear the human and economic losses caused by the swine flu will never be in the past, as history forgotten tends to repeat.

While I am extremely proud of President Calderon’s decision making skills in the midst of such crisis, I HOPE, Mexico, as a whole, will remember the tolls which were cast upon us. I HOPE we will awaken to the ills of our ways. I HOPE we will overcome this crisis before the next one hits.