Anti-Mexican speech is no different from anti-Semitism (Mexico Foreign Minister)

On Monday June 7, Mexico’s foreign minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu, while speaking to a conference of American Jews in Washington D.C., compared “the stench” of anti-Mexican “bigotry” in U.S. political dialogue to international anti-Semitism.

“Today in the 21st century, here in the United States, a climate of intolerance is sending a similar message: Mexicans go home,” Ruiz Massieu said in a speech to the American Jewish Committee’s annual conference in Washington. “Separate those who are different, blame the minorities, demonize the stranger.”

“Well, let me tell you who those strangers are,” Ruiz Massieu said of Mexican Americans. “No different from American Jews from all walks of life.”

While she did not mention Donald Trump, Ruiz Massieu appeared to be directing her remarks at the presumed Republican presidential nominee.

“The naked truth is that today, over 6 million commercial jobs depend on U.S. relations with Mexico,” Ruiz Massieu said. “We do not steal jobs from the United States,” she said, citing manufacturing that relies on component parts and assembly on both sides of the border, including “automobiles that cross the border eight times in the process of production, to smartphones, computers, from beer to state-of-the-art Learjets.”

“Those who want to make political profit stigmatizing these people, be they Mexicans, Jews, Muslims, people of color, or Asians, are wrong,” she said to sustained audience applause. “Let me say loud and clear, fighting anti-Semitism, like standing up to anti-Mexican sentiment, is not a Jewish issue or a Mexican issue. It is a common battle for human rights.”

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/