To Counter Trump's Anti-Mexican Rhetoric, Mexico Looks to the Jewish Playbook Rafa Fernandez De Castro - Fusion
go to original June 10, 2016

Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Carlos Sada and Mexican Undersecretary for North America Paulo Carreño at the AJC conference / Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu met with House Speaker Paul Ryan during her Washington D.C. trip. (Ron Sachs/SRE)

Donald Trump is uniting Mexicans in a way that few other causes have in the past.

Now Mexican lobbyists, diplomats, business leaders and advocacy groups are organizing a strategy to fight back against the Trump menace. But in doing so, they’re learning that their country needs to proactively take control of its own narrative, rather than just respond to Trump’s insults and provocations.

This week Mexico took a big first step towards creating a united front by meeting with leaders of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a powerful U.S.-based advocacy organization that works to advance Jewish causes around the world. The AJC, which this year turned 110 years old, recently hosted a series of advocacy training sessions with Mexico’s entire diplomatic corps in the U.S. and several top Mexican-American leaders.

Mexico, like Israel, feels like a country under attack. Donald Trump has built a solid base of support by railing against Mexico and stirring xenophobic and nativist sentiments in the United States. At first Mexico tried to ignore him, but that’s become impossible. So now Mexico is turning to the Jewish advocacy group for a strategy about how to bulletproof Mexico the same way they have helped bulletproof Israel, a country that’s considered America’s unconditional ally.

“We don’t make Stalin or Hitler comparisons lightly, but some of the expressions of populism we have witnessed are reminiscent of those times,” AJC Latin America outreach director Dina Siegel, who was born in Mexico City, told me.

But it’s not just about Trump. The Jewish advocacy group is urging Mexico to think beyond The Donald and focus on coalition building. “In the U.S., Israel is not a Jewish issue, but a national interest issue,” Siegel explained. “In the same way, Mexico needs to stop being a Mexican or a Latino-only issue and become an American issue.”

Read the rest at Fusion

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