President Andrés Manuel López Obrador revealed that by his meeting with the then President of the United States, Donald Trump, brought a poem with which would defend his stance against the construction of the border wall, For although the subject was “implicitly vetoed,” he was not confident that it would not be touched upon.
Through his book Halfway, López Obrador narrated what his relationship with the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, was like, For more than two years, in which they only saw each other in person once and held telephone conversations ten times.
In his text, López Obrador narrates that among the issues addressed with the Republican were from the congratulation to win the 2018 presidential election, to his stance of not reducing oil production, migration, The release of Ovid Guzman and persuade the United States not to apply tariffs, among others.
The wall was useless: I LOVE Trump
On March 21, 2020, as the covid-19 pandemic began to spread around the world, López Obrador and Trump spoke again; in the talk, the republican expressed his decision to him not to close the border completely, leaving it open for essential trips, which, for more than a year remains closed and although the Mexican government accelerated anti-vaccine vaccination in border states, there is no clear date for reopening.
In this conversation, López Obrador proposed to Trump that, in consideration of the situation of both countries for covid-19, the collection of commissions for the sending of remittances to Mexico would be suspended, To which the now former president of the United States refused and even claimed to be considering increasing them.
“On this occasion something very peculiar happened: I knew in advance, because I had been informed, how to do this kind of conversation, on the subject to be treated, and I thought I could ask President Trump for something for the benefit of our people, So I decided to ask him that Mexicans, especially migrant countrymen, would look favorably on him and appreciate what, because of the health crisis, the commissions charged for sending money to their relatives in Mexico will be temporarily eliminated“.
López Obrador expressed in his text that he had not yet put forward his proposal when Trump’s “no, no, no,” almost shouting, interrupted the request.
Until this point in the bilateral relationship, Donald Trump had not uttered the word “wall” to López Obrador, as “it was an issue implicitly vetoed in our conversations.”
“On this occasion he told me that what he was thinking was the opposite, that is, by increasing the commissions for remittances to pay for the wall.”
Faced with such a thought by Trump, López Obrador turned around that the wall was useless, for through tunnels organized crime continued to operate.
“I remembered something that had happened days before and I replied, with a lot of respect and care that, in fact, ‘speaking clearly,’ the wall was useless; I mentioned to him that the Mexican Army had just discovered a a well-built tunnel from Tijuana to San Diego, California, that ran in front, almost below, of U.S. customs. “
According to López Obrador’s account, Trump could not bear to laugh and he replied that “he could not with me”: “Neither he nor I continued with the issue of the commissions and the wall and the communication ended in good order, remaining in force on pact of silence on the famous wall“, He wrote.
Trump’s joke about the wall and AMLO’s ‘missile’
In July 2020, during López Obrador’s visit to the White House on the occasion of the entry into force of the Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC), at the dinner that Donald Trump offered to the Mexican president, the Republican wanted to brighten up the evening with a joke from the wall.
“Once the public event was over, we went to the dining room, where about 50 guests were waiting for us. The door had barely closed.and heard President Trump’s spontaneous, loud expression, “No more press, now I can talk about the wall!”. The joke caused a collective laugh and applause and of course there was no talk of a wall at dinner. ”
In this trip of Lopez Obrador to Washington, the only one he has done abroad as President of Mexico, expressed hearing distrust that Donald Trump mentioned the wall, to whichl the president was already prepared with a “missile”, not warlike but literary, true to his style.
“I wasn’t completely confident, since I left in the morning (from the residence of the Mexican ambassador to the United States) I was carrying in the bag inside the braid the poem by the great Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén entitled ‘ The Wall ‘”.
“And I was prepared to finish, if circumstances demanded: “‘Instead of the wall we build a wall around the hemisphere: the wall of universal brotherhood’. “Fortunately, it was not necessary to use this missile, President Trump continued to behave like a gentleman,” Lopez Obrador wrote.
The wall, the promise star of Trump that Biden threw
In 2016, when Donald Trump was a candidate for the presidency of the United States, he promised to build a wall across the country’s border with Mexico and thus halting the migration of Central Americans.
In his last acts as president in 2021, Trump visited the construction of this wall, which, according to then-White House spokesman Judd Deere, it was able to take shape in around 644 kilometers of work.
After the arrival of Joe Biden to the presidency of the United States, in the first hours of his administration, sign a decree which put an end to the construction of the border wall between that country and Mexico.
In his first act in the Oval Office, Biden signed a total of 17 decrees and proclamations aimed at undoing many of the measures taken by his predecessor, Donald Trump, several of them related to migration.
JLMR