The Good People of Mexico

Susan Estrich on Jan 30, 2025

I am writing this in La Paz, Mexico, a beautiful oceanfront city that is the capital of Baja California Sur and the home of a UNESCO wildlife preserve where today my daughter went diving with the sea lions. Breathtaking. All week, we have been taken care of by the good people of this beautiful country. I'm supposed to be relaxing, but President Donald Trump keeps invading my peace. His overheated, and largely untruthful, rhetoric about the criminals coming across the Mexican border would have you believe that this is a terrible country full of murderers and rapists desperate to cross the border.

How horribly unfair. What a total misrepresentation. And a dangerous one.

I cannot say enough about the people here -- how warm and welcoming they are, and how hardworking. In my years of travel, I have been to places where I try to keep my mouth shut (not easy for me, I admit) because it is clear that Americans are not welcome. I have wandered the streets of Moscow lost because the police wouldn't give directions to someone speaking Russian words in an American accent. Not here. Yes, they depend on American tourism. But we also depend on them. Mexico is, after all, America's biggest trading partner. That should mean something. Once it did. Is that over, too? And what will it mean to us economically?

Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is the first woman and the first Jew to hold that office. She is a self-described feminist who emphasized crimes against women when she served as the leader of the Government of Mexico City. She has combined a tough-on-crime approach with more social spending to deal with the roots of crime, and has boldly taken on organized crime. Unlike Trump, she actually won in a landslide. Later, she sent Trump a letter warning that "one tariff will follow another in response and so on, until we put our common businesses at risk."

She's right, of course. And why?

Trump's rhetoric is not how we should talk about our neighbor to the south. I have yet to meet a single Mexican who told me that their dream was to move to our country. The idea that all Mexicans wish they could move to our country is simply wrong. The Mexicans I talk to here want what we want -- to work hard, to play by the rules, to raise their families and live in peace. Why do we demonize them? Why do we need a wall to keep them out? They are not flooding across our border. The immigration problems America faces have far more to do with the poverty and violence in Central America than they do with Mexico, and yet Mexico gets tarred and blamed.

Yes, we are careful here. But we are also careful in America. No more so here.

I haven't talked politics with any of the Mexicans I have met. I was afraid, a little, that they would attack us because of the hateful rhetoric of our new president. I was ready to try to explain that not all Americans see Mexicans as dangerous thugs. But they have not said a word. Perhaps they understand that. Or maybe they're just afraid to say it.

I have rarely felt ashamed to be an American. But I am. Ashamed at the demonization of our neighbors. Ashamed at the vitriol that has been hurled in their direction. Ashamed at the ignorance it reflects.

But don't take my word for it. Come see for yourself. Mexico is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. And its people are among the finest.

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.