*Yep, but when your approval rating is 23%, to quote Donald Trump, What do you have to lose? VL
By Christopher Sherman and Mark Stevenson, Associated Press (3 minute read)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Enrique Pena Nieto’s meeting with Mexico’s most-disliked man is turning into a public relations disaster for a leader already struggling with historically low popularity ratings.
Not only did Pena Nieto not demand that Donald Trump apologize for calling Mexican migrants rapists and criminals, but he stood silently by in their joint press conference while the Republican candidate repeated his promise to build a border wall between the countries.
“This is an insult and a betrayal,” said artist Arturo Meade as he joined a protest against Wednesday’s meeting in Mexico City. “What can this meeting bring us except surrealism in all its splendor?”
Televisa news anchor Carlos Loret de Mola marveled that Trump would dare come to Mexico and reiterate his intention to build the wall. “The humiliation is now complete,” he tweeted.
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Particularly irksome to Mexicans was that Pena Nieto appeared to do little to push back against Trump’s earlier negative statements about Mexican migrants and unpopular proposals.
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[Photo by
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Suggested reading
In his essay lamenting the loss of the Tijuana of his youth, Richard Mora remembers festive nights on Avenida Revolución, where tourists mingled with locals at bars. Now, the tourists are gone, as are the indigenous street vendors who sold handmade crafts along the wide boulevard. Instead, the streets are filled with army checkpoints and soldiers armed with assault rifles. “Multiple truths abound and so I am left to craft my own truth from the media accounts—the hooded soldiers, like the little green plastic soldiers I once kept in a cardboard shoe box, are heroes or villains, victims or victimizers, depending on the hour of the day,” he writes.
With a foreword by renowned novelist Rolando Hinojosa and comprised of personal essays about the impact of drug violence on life and culture along the U.S.-Mexico border, the anthology combines writings by residents of both countries. Mexican authors Liliana Blum, Lolita Bosch, Diego Osorno and María Socorro Tabuenca write riveting, first-hand accounts about the clashes between the drug cartels and citizens’ attempts to resist the criminals. American authors focus on how the corruption and bloodshed have affected the bi-national and bi-cultural existence of families and individuals. Celestino Fernández and Jessie K. Finch write about the violence’s effect on musicians, and María Cristina Cigarroa shares her poignant memories of life in her grandparents’ home—now abandoned—in Nuevo Laredo.
The personal essays in this collection humanize the news stories and are a must-read for anyone interested in how this fragile way of life—between two cultures, languages and countries—has been undermined by the drug trade and the crime that accompanies it, with ramifications far beyond the border region.
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