'Put Trump in his place': nationalism awakens in Mexican presidential race

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s habit of slapping down Mexico is feeding nationalist sentiment in the country’s presidential election campaign, prompting contenders to defy him and strengthening the hand of the frontrunner, who is courting the anti-establishment vote.

FILE PHOTO: Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) speaks during the presentation of his shadow cabinet for the July 2018 presidential election, in Mexico City, Mexico December 14, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo

In the past week, the three top contenders for the July election have all said Mexico will not pay for the wall the U.S. president wants to build on the U.S. southern border. None has made the point more forcefully than Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a veteran leftist leading the opinion polls.

A victory for Lopez Obrador, who was runner-up in 2006 and 2012, could usher in a more distant and confrontational relationship between the two nations as he promises to lessen Mexico’s economic dependence on foreign powers.

That dependence is strongest with the United States: Mexico sends about 80 percent of its exports to its northern neighbor and the United States has traditionally been the source of the bulk of foreign direct investment. Under Trump, however, Mexican views of the United States have soured.

“Without being disrespectful, we’re going to put him in his place,” Lopez Obrador said of Trump on Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico port of Veracruz, the scene of a notorious national humiliation when U.S. forces occupied it in 1914.

Earlier that day, Trump told his Twitter followers that Mexico was “rated the number one most dangerous country in the world.” Although violence is rising in Mexico, its murder rate remains well below that of several Latin American countries, data compiled by the United Nations and the World Bank show.

Lopez Obrador, who said earlier this month he would put an end to what he called puppet governments in Mexico taking instructions “from abroad,” promised to hit back against Trump’s barbs and tell the American “what I think” on Twitter.

A December survey by polling firm Parametria gave Lopez Obrador an 11 percentage point lead, while another last week by Mitofsky gave him a three point advantage, but growing.

Since taking office a year ago, Trump has often expressed negative views of Mexico, blaming it for drugs entering the United States, criticizing U.S. companies with operations south of the border, and insisting Mexico will pay for the wall he wants to stop illegal immigration. He has threatened to tie payment to the terms under which the two neighbors trade by reworking or canceling the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Each time, President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government has pushed back.

This week presidential hopeful Ricardo Anaya of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), who heads a left-right coalition, and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) contender, Jose Antonio Meade, also weighed in.

“Mexico will NOT under any circumstances pay for that wall,” Meade said on Twitter on the day Lopez Obrador was in Veracruz.

Few issues unite Mexicans more than dislike of Trump, who kicked off his presidential bid in 2015 by accusing the country of sending rapists and drug runners across the U.S. border.