Mexico eateries close as industry feels flu pinch (News Feature)

By Manuel Gaona Apr 28, 2009, 17:19 GMT

Mexico City - Mexico's entertainment industry, one of the few sectors that continued to defy the world recession and boast of good health, is suffering the impact of the escalating flu epidemic.

The government of Mexico City on Tuesday ordered restaurants, gyms, clubs, cabarets and billiards rooms to close, as it sought to limit concentrations of people further.

All mass cultural and recreational activity in Mexico City was cancelled by the authorities from last weekend and until further notice, to hinder the spread of a flu virus that has already claimed at least 152 lives in the country.

The film chain Cinepolis, the largest in Mexico, closed all its cinemas in the states that have been most affected by the virus. Grupo Cinemex, which screens films in Mexico City and its metropolitan area, did the same.

Last week, the live entertainment company OCESA cancelled a show from the Finnish alternative rock band The Rasmus, at the National Auditorium in the capital, just a few hours before its scheduled start.

However, it did not cancel its theatre plays - more than 10 around the metropolis - and instead handed out facemasks among spectators.

The Papalote Children's Museum, the most popular among children and teenagers on weekends, also closed its doors. The National Council for Culture and Arts in Mexico and the Fine Arts Institute closed all their facilities and cancelled over 200 cultural activities.

Mexico City's culture officials, in turn, called off some 300 events. Chapultepec Park, the biggest and most important in the city, which holds the zoo and other facilities, also closed its gates.

Weekend football games were played before empty stands and could only be watched from home on television, while TV shows were broadcast without an on-set audience.

But a sense of humour also shone through at times.

The producers of the Televisa programme 'Hazme reir!' (Make Me Laugh) placed plastic dolls on the seats that are usually occupied by spectators, and it asked technicians and everyone else in the studio to use face masks.

Twentieth Century Fox called off the world premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which had been scheduled to take place in Mexico City Tuesday night, and instead took place Monday night in the US city of Tempe, Arizona.

'There was no point in proceeding under the current conditions,' the studio said.

The entertainment industry did not immediately release figures of estimated losses over the flu epidemic, but unless the situation changes soon they are bound to amount to millions of dollars, a source told German Press Agency dpa, although they asked that their name be withheld.