For Trump, Mexico symbolizes the source of many of the problems in the United States. Trump has suggested that the Mexican government has outsmarted the US by purposefully sending criminals across the border.

His racist absurdities, however, draw from a long history of American ignorance about and bigotries toward Mexico and Mexicans, who become blank canvasses upon which all manner of nightmares, insecurities, and dreads about jobs, drugs, security, and cultural identity are painted. These stories told about Mexico in the US aren’t just wrong, they also obscure the source of our shared problems, which, more often than not, are the two countries’ ruling classes.

That’s the case when it comes to blaming Mexican workers for the scarcity of well-paying work. It’s also true of the violent drug war that has enveloped Mexico in recent years, which the US government has funded and, by driving drug trafficking routes away from the Caribbean and into Mexico, played a major role in creating. In reality, it is the US that exports violence to Mexico, including the guns used by cartels that are easily purchased here and then exported south illegally.