Anti-Trump marches held in Guadalajara and a score of other cities across Mexico Sunday failed to attract the kinds of crowds organizers expected due to their “lack of focus,” several analysts are saying.
Only 10,000 people participated in the “Vibra Mexico” march in Guadalajara, about half the number of Mexico City, where 100,000 had been anticipated.
Commentators suggested the disappointing numbers are not an indication that Mexicans are becoming ambivalent to Trump’s ceaseless threats and unpopular protectionist and immigration policies, but that they are more enraged by the failings of their own president, Enrique Peña Nieto.
Although the marches were billed as non-partisan, and included participation by dozens of civic groups and universities, some of the most savage hostility was aimed at Peña Nieto and his performance over the past four years.
“The organizers were unable to knit together the goals of Sunday’s marches,” wrote Leopoldo Gomez in the Milenio newspaper. “The aims were multiple and the protesters divided.”
Organizers had originally centered the marches around the theme that Trump should give Mexico the respect it deserves. But a subsequent wide-ranging “call-to-arms” also demanded that the Mexican government “assume concrete actions to combat poverty, inequality, corruption, impunity and violations to human rights.”
Organizers said another aim was to pressure Peña Nieto into ensuring that he puts the interests of Mexicans above all else during any upcoming bilateral talks, and that the process is carried out in a completely transparent manner.
In the end, the marches featured as many signs denouncing Peña Nieto and highlighting domestic issues as those objecting to the new incumbent of the White House.
Although a mariachi band intoning songs such as “Cielito Lindo,” “Yo soy Mexicano” and “Mexico Lindo y Querido” tried to give the Guadalajara march a patriotic quality, the loudest cries of disapproval were reserved for the Mexican president: “Fuera Peña Nieto, fuera” (Out Peña Nieto, out) was a commonly heard chant. Universidad de Guadalajara (UdG) Rector Tonatiuh Bravo Padilla, who featured prominently at the head of the march, diplomatically did not comment on the president’s domestic tribulations, but outlined what he believed was the central point of the protest: “Civil society must do its part to (thwart) this assault from the president of the United States,” he said.
As expected, the polemic border wall was a focus of protestors’ wrath. Trump’s repeated assertions that Mexico will pay for the wall are viewed as a gross offense to this nation and its sovereignty. Most Mexicans agree that negotiations over changes to the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) should not go ahead unless this ultimatum is taken off the table.