Mexican filmmaker and two-time Academy Award Winner for Best Director Alejandro González Iñárritu lashed out at Donald Trump’s meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto last Wednesday.
He wrote a scathing opinion piece in the Spanish-language newspaper El Pais, referring to the meeting as “a betrayal.”
The meeting happened upon the behest of Peña Nieto, who invited billionaire presidential aspirant Donald Trump to visit Mexico. Trump, who has made illegal immigration a major point of his campaign, has referred to illegal Mexican immigrants in the past as rapists, criminals, and drug dealers. He even said that, if he were elected, he would build a wall along Mexico’s northern border, which he would make Mexico pay for.
This has made Trump highly unpopular in the nation, and it remains a mystery as to why Peña Nieto would invite him to visit.
Mexicans were expectedly outraged with the meeting, and González Iñárritu’s opinion piece seems to echo their entire nation’s sentiment.
He wrote that the visit serves “to endorse and validate someone who for more than a year insulted, spat upon and threatened us before the whole world,” and that “it shows a lack of dignity and in turn strengthens a political campaign of hatred toward us, toward half of the world, and toward the most vulnerable minorities on the planet. It puts our future and the lives of 16 million Mexicans at risk.”
And, instead of inviting him, Iñárritu says that “Trump should have long ago been named by our government ‘persona non grata’ for exalting hatred and division in the country, and distorting this reality without any compassion. American television networks, international corporations, heads of state and countless members of his own party have broken relationships, contracts and any kind of association with this guy,” Iñárritu pointed out.
The director also went on to defend Mexicans who have immigrated to the United States.
“I have never in my life seen a Mexican begging on a street in the United States,” he stated. “They work hard and honestly, contributing indispensably and benefiting the economy of both countries.”
He also admonished the President of Mexico.
“After this event and as a Mexican citizen, Enrique Peña Nieto does not represent me and … is not worthy of representing any country.”
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