“Who is going to pay for the wall” he asked?
“Mexico,” the crowd answered.
“Who?” he insisted.
“Mexico,” the people replied.
That was January 2016 in a rally in Burlington, Vermont.
It was not the first time the then-US presidential candidate sought to belittle the United States' southern neighbour and its people, just months before he said of Mexican migrants: “They are bringing drugs, they are bringing crime, they are rapists."
Both the Mexican government and citizens reacted to the comments.
In September 2016, when Trump visited Mexico, various groups took to the streets and protested against him. Enrique Pena Nieto, the Mexican President declared to the press a day after the said visit: “I made clear that Mexico is not going to pay for that wall”.
On Wednesday, Donald J. Trump, now the US President, signed the orders to build that wall in a series of actions ostensibly to beef up national security and tackle illegal immigration.
It is not yet clear how the 3,201-km wall will be funded, but Mexicans are not running shy of opinions about it.
“The wall, I think is a very daring decree, full of arrogance and racism. Although Trump is not denying the entry by legal ways to USA, it is like giving a lecture of ignorance — his attempt to build such a massive project,” observed Oscar Flamarique, a Mexican living in the border Mexican estate of Tamaulipas.
“USA would be eating the words of one of its tallest symbols: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’ so it is written at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty,” he pointed out.
Hopeful in hardship
Others see hope in hardship.
“I am always a little positive, it [the wall] will be an opportunity to demonstrate that we are getting ahead as a country; Mexicans are always united in harsh situations. Although I am more worried about our own politicians than him [Trump], if they were doing their job, we would be improving not only now but long ago,” said Alberto Sanchez, a freelance artist from Mexico.
Fabiola Zurita, from Mexico’s northern state of Nuevo Leon, shares that opinion.
“Trump and his wall are not the problem. Mexico is. He can build the wall, but Mexico [government] should stop shaking, also close the border and stop feeding the USA.”
Mexican-born American citizen Jose Langarica has a different view.
“By itself the wall won’t affect anything, the wall is already there, is being progressively built since Bill Clinton; it’s been progressing… Now it is just a fact announced to ‘fulfil’ what was promised in Trump’s campaign," said Langarica.
"On the other hand, the intimidating policy about immigration will just affect the wrong-doers, the social parasites; if you are here legally, you don’t worry at all about it,” he reckons.
