Mexicans take time out to rage against Trump

Last Sunday, thousands of Mexicans in Tijuana did something unusual. They stayed at home.

Life in the seedy border town revolves around “the line”: many locals live on one side and cross to go to school, work or the shops every day, feeling more integrated with the US than with Mexico City, which sits nearly 1,500 miles and an entire timezone away to the south. 

But rallied by the social media hashtag #UnasHorasPorMéxico — a few hours for Mexico — protesters stopped crossing the border from 8am to 3pm on February 5 in a demonstration against Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions and anti-Mexican invective. 

The aim was simple: to make Mexicans’ presence felt by their absence. The idea echoed the premise of a 2004 low-budget movie called A Day Without a Mexican, in which California grinds to a halt when all the Mexicans mysteriously disappear. Instead of “Mexicans with a war cry”, as the opening line of the national anthem goes, the Tijuana protest organisers called it “consumers with a war cry”. 

Like most anti-Trump protests in Mexico since last month’s inauguration, it was largely symbolic. But it highlighted the heartfelt disgust south of the Rio Grande at the new US president’s vows to barricade the border and charge Mexico for the privilege of being walled off, and his pledges to deport “bad hombres” and illegal immigrants. 

Perhaps the most widespread way for Mexicans to wear their hearts on their sleeves has been to swap their social media profile photos for an image of the green, white and red Mexican flag. 

Unabashed patriotism taps into the confusion, puzzlement and downright dismay that many Mexicans feel at the sight of the US — which Mexico has long looked up to — behaving more like a tinpot regime in their backyard than a beacon of hope for the free world. 

But talk of boycotts of Walmart, the US supermarket chain that is Mexico’s top retailer, or of coffee shop Starbucks, have come to little in a country that is at once proudly nationalist and a massive fan of all things American. Mexicans simply could not live without Coca-Cola — the country is vital to the US beverage giant — and have adopted the all-American doughnut as a delicacy alongside tacos and tamales. 

As the pace of protest starts to pick up, barely a day goes by without the government of Enrique Peña Nieto issuing exhortations to unity and solidarity, despite its singular failure to summon either for much of its tenure. A video posted by the president’s office of a group of Mexicans pulling together to drag up a huge national flag that had fallen down went viral on social media — a vivid image of plucky defenders of the nation’s honour and dignity. 

That is a message that resonates deeply with Mexicans who are both insulted by Mr Trump’s tone and troubled by his apparent desire to carry out all his campaign promises. 

That the US president knows next to nothing about Mexico is clear — people scornfully recall the Trump Tower taco he posed with last year that bore no resemblance to the real thing. But American consumers know better. For last Sunday’s Super Bowl, Mexico supplied 35,000 tonnes of avocados for game-day guacamole. There are smaller victories too — like the fact that sales of Mexican red salsa in the US are about to overtake ketchup and that Americans eat more tortillas than sandwich bread.

The outpouring of national pride provides Mr Peña Nieto with a handy narrative. Battered by scandals, a falling economy and mounting crime, he had been drifting into his final two years in office with his popularity at an all-time low of 12 per cent. 

But unity is not just “all shouting together and waving flags together”, as veteran leftist politician Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas observed. Opposition to Mr Trump cannot distract from the unfinished job of combating corruption, and from demanding accountability from those in power.

Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz wrote that Mexicans saw life as the possibility to screw or be screwed. They must now prove the late poet wrong on another of his observations: “Resignation is one of our popular virtues.” 

jude.webber@ft.com