Lol! Donald Trump’s face is a ‘hit’ in Mexico — it’s the piñata ‘everyone wants to break’

A piñata depicting U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump hangs outside a workshop in Reynosa, Mexico on June 23, 2015. Photo by Daniel Becerril for Reuters.

Few presidents of Mexico have managed to unite the country in the way Donald Trump did after he launched his U.S. presidential bid last week with a string of broadsides against America’s southern neighbor.

“Imbecile”, “racist”, “absurd” and “ignorant” were some of the less vulgar words used by prominent Mexicans about Trump after the flamboyant real estate magnate described migrants from Mexico to the United States as drug-runners and rapists.

Trump’s provocative comments, including a pledge to build a “great wall” on the U.S. southern border paid for by Mexico, were the latest in a series of swipes against a country where he has become more famous for controversies than boardroom success.

Mexicans rich and poor, cabinet ministers and staunch critics of the government alike trained their fire on Trump. On Thursday, the outrage prompted U.S. Spanish-language television network Univision to drop the Miss USA pageant that the Republican hopeful co-owns.

“If you look up imbecile in the dictionary, you’ll see it’s a synonym of Trump,” Joaquin Lopez-Doriga, news anchor of key Univision shareholder Televisa and one of Mexico’s most influential journalists, told his viewers on June 17, a day after Trump announced his White House bid in New York.

On Thursday, Trump said he has great respect for Mexico and loves Mexicans. He defended his more divisive remarks on the grounds that he was worried about border security, jobs in the United States and trade arrangements.

With millions of Mexicans struggling to climb the social ladder in the United States, and many more living in poverty in a Latin American nation steeped in U.S. culture, Trump’s brash tirade has fed a stereotype of the rich, overbearing American.

“He’s just a millionaire with nothing to do,” said Vico Almaguer, a 37-year-old TV advertising producer in Mexico City.

One newspaper cartoon mocked Trump by twisting his famous hair into the shape of a Nazi swastika, while Fher Olvera, singer of popular Mexican rock band Mana, likened him to the leader of the Third Reich during a concert last week.

“I haven’t heard a speech so violent and so filled with hate since Hitler,” Olvera told a crowd in Los Angeles.

Trump could not immediately be reached for comment.

Last week, Trump said on Twitter: “I like Mexico and love the spirit of the Mexican people.”

That was not enough to placate former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who fired back with one word: “Hypocrite.”

Not everyone has attacked Trump. Ximena Navarrete, Mexico’s 2010 winner of the Trump-backed Miss Universe pageant, stood up for the 69-year-old, saying he had been “really kind” to her.

Reuters