MEXICAN WAVE
As well as the “poisoned” schoolgirls in Iran and Afghanistan (), “possessed” Ouija board users in Colombia () and “fentanyl overdosing” police in the US (), Mexico has been having its own social panic. On 23 September 2022, a 12-year-old girl named Esmeralda emerged from the girls’ toilets at the Federal 1 public secondary school in Tapachula and fainted. Her friend Diala, who came out after her, then fainted too, swiftly followed by another nine girls and a boy, with another 22 school students complaining of severe headaches and vomiting. Some students reported a smoky smell, like burning leaves, making authorities suspect drugs, while others said they had seen a mustard-coloured powder in the bathroom, but toxicology revealed nothing. News of this triggered incidents elsewhere in Mexico, with 68 students passing out, vomiting, or becoming disoriented atafflicted for several weeks. Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador even took to including updates about the school fainting episodes in his daily press conferences. Despite this, no cause was discovered, with various official reports concluding “probable intoxication through food”, “probable transmission through the air”, and “probable intoxication with stimulants”, although it was generally believed drugs were involved somehow. Dr Carlos Alberto Pantoja Meléndez, an epidemiologist from Mexico City, carried out his own investigation based on the data available and published his results in June 2023. Having ruled out drugs, contaminated food, heatstroke, poisoning with chemicals or insecticide, he concluded that the cause was mass psychogenic illness, most likely spread by social media. This prompted Dr Robert Bartholomew, co-author with Bob Rickard of to say: “Now, social media is an extension of our senses, and we’re always playing catch up… I think we are on the verge of a much bigger, global epidemic.”
