Maureen Ryan

Mexico vs Trump Maureen Ryan

Newspaper headlines and prime-time TV interviews lauded Enrique Peña Nieto after he won Mexico's 2012 presidential election. Time Magazine front covered him as "The Savior of Mexico." By the second year of his administration it had become obvious that the savior was a failure. Attempted cover ups failed to conceal an economy based on self-enrichment and the impoverishment of overly 40 percent of the population and the disappearance of forty-three young student protesters. Peña Nieto's wobbly status became even more fragile when he encountered U. S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. A Mexican journalist described their first personal encounter as "hard liquor vs. Koolaid" and added "hard liquor won." By 2017 the savior of Mexico's popularity had sunk beneath 20 percent and liberal candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador was on his way to becoming Mexico's new president with the promise he would alter the subservience that Mexico had shown to the Goliath of the north.