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Signs of the times: Small media during Covid-19 in Mexico City

By May 14, 2020November 27th, 20206 Comments8 min read6,560 views

Editor’s note: In this latest contribution to our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, Judy Kalman takes us on a tour of the Covid-19 linguistic landscape of Mexico City. The call for contributions to the series continues to be open.

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Susana Distancia (“Susan Distance” or “Your healthy distance”)

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, impromptu signs are showing up everywhere in my neighborhood in Mexico City. They have become a prominent resource for responding to centralized government orders and communicating changes in the organization and procedures of everyday activities to the community. With the issuing of each new directive, schools, small businesses, and organizations have turned to making and posting signs to announce ongoing transformations, showing the relevance of locally produced writing as a means of communication in the context of mass media and the internet. At the same time, the signs provide social commentary about the ways people are adapting to the pandemic, by modifying different aspects of everyday life to meet the demands of the times.

The initial cases in Mexico were reported at the end of February 2020, and the federal government’s first public health campaign promoted avoiding close contact, constant hand washing, and greeting people from afar. In a country where the saludo is highly treasured, and often includes a handshake, a hug, a pat on the back, a peck on the cheek, or a combination of all of these, this first directive caused a bit of an uproar. Waving hello from a distance to people in our lives felt awkward at first, but as the pandemic has progressed, it has become more and more natural to take several steps backward from anyone in our conversations.

Two weeks later, these directives exploded into everyday discourse via television spots, radio announcements, social media, and print. One of the first visible measures was the distribution and display of posters produced by the Secretary of Health and other official agencies in public places: clinic entrances, schools, pharmacies, public transportation, and local government offices. These centrally produced posters present clear and precise information about Covid-19 and are part of a concerted campaign. They share texts, logos, color schemes, drawings, diagrams, and contacts (such as coronavirus.gob.mx). The information varies in depth and scope, depending on who the assumed readers are. The materials posted on the front gate of a public clinic may be somewhat technical and detailed, while the content posted at a primary school entrance might be more basic and illustrated.

Dear Fathers and Mothers: Please verify your phone number in the “chat” group with your representative because this will be the way we will be sending the teachers’ programmed activities that will be evaluated during the confinement period from March 17 to April 3, 2020. Thank-you for your attention to this matter!

After this first round of printed posters, locally produced signs began popping up around Coyoacán, a colonial neighborhood in the southern end of Mexico City. Some of them were handwritten on brightly colored poster boards with black marking pens, and others were printed out on computers (black ink on white paper) and taped to window panes or doorways. This burgeoning use of small media (Spitulnik 2002)—the production of social messages directed at local and defined audiences via posters, flyers, graffiti, community radio, hashtags, and so on—provides evidence of the fast-changing situation and people’s response to the continuous new challenges posed by the pandemic. For the most part the signs are just written messages sprawled across the page, and on occasion they have more thought-out designs. Behind the local writers’ words are intentional activities and social relationships impacted by the unfolding emergency. The written displays reveal how shop owners, teachers, and others are mobilizing available semiotic resources through their production of complex multimodal signs, and at the same time, are providing sociolinguistic evidence of fast-paced changes in everyday life.

Towards the middle of March, the Secretary of Public Education (SEP) announced the closing of schools two weeks before the scheduled spring break. Principals at local schools placed handwritten notices to parents at the entrance informing them where to pick up homework assignments for their children or how to keep in touch with the school for updates. Written by hand in black ink on a bright yellow poster board, this sign from a middle school begins as a letter addressed to Señor padre or madre de familia (“Dear Fathers and Mothers”).

Displaying signs for parents at the school entrance is a common practice here. This one is dated March 18, one day after the school was officially closed, suggesting how quickly decisions had to be made. In the text, there are several phrases underlined in red, drawing the reader’s attention to the central imperative: parents must verify their phone number, chat application, and their representative’s contact, so that they can receive assignments for their children and other updates. Every day the SEP was insisting via messages on social media, television, radio, and directly through school authorities that these two weeks of shut down were not a vacation and that study programs should be continued at home. The distribution of homework and the red underlining attests to the intention to grade students’ work and reveals the top-down relationship of the principal’s office (and the SEP) with families and the expectation that students will comply (with the threatened sanction of a poor evaluation if they do not).

Soon came other closures. Authorities launched two interconnected campaigns, one was the creation and diffusion of the superhero character Susana Distancia, a play on words for Su-Sana-Distancia, using a homophone to simultaneously construct a proper name (“Susan Distance”) and a public health message (“Your healthy distance”). The Secretary of Health (SH) published and broadcast a wonder-woman-like cartoon whose super power consists in extending her arms to create a space that is a meter and a half wide to keep the coronavirus away. Susana Distancia then reveals that anyone can also have this same power. Susana Distancia quickly became part of conversations and social discourses via face-to-face interaction, print, digital media, television and radio. Susana Distancia appeared almost immediately in public places in a variety of ways, as in this hand-drawn poster taped to the back of an SH mobile health unit that was parked in the plaza. In a county where funding is scarce, and resources are often depleted, local adaptations like this one are common.

At the same time, the Secretary of Health announced the Jornada Nacional de Sana Distancia (National Safe Distancing Initiative) and the beginning of the shelter at home directive. This was a game changer: it closed non-essential businesses, bars, and restaurants; it cancelled public events; and all those who could work from home were instructed to do so. Immediately signs popped up everywhere. They made visible the different ways people were adhering to official policies. The sign shown here is posted on the door of an informal micro business, a family that makes tacos that neighbors can buy and eat in the doorway or take away. It reads: “Due to official orders there will be no tacos starting the 19th of March until further notice. Thank-you for your understanding”. This hybrid message combines the very formal “Due to official orders” and “thank you for your understanding” juxtaposed to the almost comical “there will be no tacos”.

Business owners demonstrated their compliance, and at the same time, tried to salvage their livelihoods: local restaurants have organized take away services, small stores have offered home delivery, larger establishments have promoted on line services. Many bright poster boards announce these changes in operation.

As in other places, disinfectants, gloves, facemasks, and gels have become scarce and hard to find. Cottage industry production of these items is being sold by curbside entrepreneurs from the back of their cars, on the sidewalk, or taken up by businesses offering them as new merchandise. One dry cleaner advertised facemasks for six pesos by re-purposing an existing sign in their storefront, taking advantage of the dialogue balloon, but changing the message with a bright green handwritten paste-over.

The pandemic separates us but love brings us together

Other types of signs are now, at the end of April, beginning to appear. These signs point to the human side of collectively living through an emergency. Some communities are publicly displaying banners showing appreciation for health care workers. There is also a campaign to help people who have lost their jobs and are in need: in a gas station a table was set up with a well-designed cloth sign hung from a second story window sill. It reads: “The pandemic separates us but love brings us together”. Below is a table with a display that says “if you need something take it, if you can, leave something.”

These written messages are part of the local response to a worldwide health emergency and document how people are modifying their activities, forms of work, and social behaviors. The signs are at once global and local, formal and playful, formulaic and hybrid, graphocentric and multimodal. They present intertextual, hybrid texts—varying from everyday writing to formal discourse—to accomplish diverse communicative purposes. The writers simultaneously document their activities and contribute to the social construction of living through the pandemic. These visual resources record the local history and local practices, and reveal forms of organization and adaptation of the people who live there. They are a sign of the times.

Reference

Spitulnik, D. (2002). Alternative small media and communicative spaces. In G. Hydén, M. Leslie, & F. F. Ogundimu (Eds.), Media and democracy in Africa (pp. 177-205). London: Routledge.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

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Judy Kalman

Author Judy Kalman

Judy Kalman is a professor at the Department of Educational Research of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the IPN since 1993. Her research interests center on the social construction of literacy and digital culture. She currently directs the Laboratory of Education, Technology and Society http: //www.lets.cinvestav.mx/, a space for reflection, the exchange of ideas, design and research. In 2002, she was recipient of the International Literacy Research Prize awarded by UNESCO and is a member of the Mexican Academy of Science since 2004. In 2019 she received an Honorary Doctorate from the National University of Córdoba, Argentina for her work in literacy, adult education, and digital technologies. She has published books, articles and chapters in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese about reading and writing in diverse contexts.

More posts by Judy Kalman

Join the discussion 6 Comments

  • Lilly says:

    This post is very informative and interesting to read. Thank you, Professor Kalman. These rapid appearances of localised, handmade textual products to cope with the fast-changing pace of information during the pandemic are proof of efforts contributed by every citizen to protect themselves, their family and the community surrounding them. It is indeed these “small media” products that can deeply reach the heart of the people.

  • AlexH says:

    Thank you for sharing your experience in Mexico during the first months of this ongoing pandemic, Prof. Kalman. I found these experiences very similar to the Peruvian context. Just like Mexico, a peck on the cheek when greeting is also customary in Peru, my home country, and I can understand the uproar when the government recommended suspending this “saludo” for prevention reasons. These handwritten or printed posters also appeared in my country, especially in “bodegas” to provide information for customers on health protocols when entering these premises. Like you stated in your post, seeing signs on the street with different communicative purposes has become a part of every-day life now.

  • Li Jia says:

    Thank you, Pro. Kalman, for sharing with us these warm messages. Indeed they reach to our heart deeper and more effective than official reports. I can also read love and shared solidarity from these messages.
    Thank you again for bringing real lifewords to us!

    Best,
    Li Jia

  • Laura says:

    Thanks Prof Kalman for a fascinating exploration of the local uptake and transformation of national slogans and symbols. The combined inclusion in the third image of the Jornada Nacional and reproduction of Susana Distancia is particularly interesting. This and the sign from the neighbourhood taqueria use different means to index government law/policy to legitimate their messages.

    The last image is yet another fascinating example: rather than drawing on rules, it makes the pandemic itself the actor, responsible for keeping people apart, then contrasts this with the internationally recognizable heart symbol as its opposite. What a beautiful way to motivate donations while also encouraging those who need it to take something.

    Laura

  • Livia says:

    Thank you, Professor Kalman, for taking us on a tour of Coyoacán and the changes in its linguistic landscape due to Covid-19. Your analysis of the ‘signs of the time’ captures how people apply public health information and policy into their everyday practices. I’ve never been to Mexico City, so I was wondering whether the Spanish-only signs around Coyoacán were an exception, or moreso the norm within the wider linguistic landscape of this metropolitan city? All the best, Livia

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