ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to account for Mexico’s problematic COVID-19 vaccination record, as manifested in the government’s slow vaccine roll-out, the initial exclusion of particularly vulnerable segments of the population, and an immunisation rate that was inferior in comparison with many other Latin American countries, as well as high-income and middle-income states. The author argues that a combination of the global political economy of vaccine governance and the Mexican authorities’ populist vaccination strategy helps to explain the country’s dismal performance. On the one hand, instead of facilitating more equitable access to vaccines, the global vaccine governance complex that emerged during the pandemic concentrated COVID-19 vaccine supply in the hands of powerful governments and pharmaceutical companies located largely in the Global North, to the detriment of countries like Mexico. On the other hand, medical populism, as it was practiced by the López Obrador government, contributed to an unnecessary and counterproductive centralisation and politicisation of the country’s vaccination effort, undermining both a more science-based and a more comprehensive whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach.
