For Mexicans, Trump Is a Figure of Comedy as Well as Concern
With Republican presidential candidates such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush distancing their rhetoric from Donald Trump's anti-Mexico remarks, the political climate seems to suggest that the celebrity businessman does not speak for the people or even his fellow Republican politicians.
Trump has called Mexicans that cross the U.S. border rapists and he has made remarks alluding to Fox commentator Megyn Kelly's menstrual cycle.
Despite this apparent disregard for dealing with women and Latino voters, The New York Times has reported that Trump is doing well in the polls, and is in fact leading among women.
If U.S. citizens aren’t sure what to make of all this, Mexico really doesn’t know.
Piñatas of the easily caricatured candidate show that Mexicans are happy enough to take a whack at a candy-filled effigy of the tycoon at parties, while a bounty of a $100 million offered for Trump by escaped Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán proves that Trump’s words have hit a nerve even with a notorious trafficker, who is miles away from the hoi polloi.
Dalton Avalos, a 28-year-old artisan who likely made the first Trump piñata, has found the silly side of the 2016 Presidential hopeful. “We like to laugh at people like him and the nonsense that comes out of his mouth,” Avalos told TIME.
As unlikely and outrageous as the idea of Trump, a man who is demanding that Mexico pay for its own border wall, becoming president of the U.S. may seem to some Mexicans, there are those who are looking at the polls and taking him more seriously. “A month ago, I thought that Trump had absolutely no chance. But now I’m not totally sure. Americans can vote in weird ways,” says Jorge Chabat, a man who teaches economics at Mexico City’s Center for Research.
The concerned academic is careful to note that campaign words do not necessarily translate into action. “Presidents are not gods," he says, “Trump could attack Mexico verbally but that would not change the enormous amount of cross-border trade or the entrenched cooperation between the security services.”
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