The construction a barrier between the U.S. and Mexico didn’t start with Donald Trump.
It didn’t start with Barack Obama. Or George W. Bush.
Construction bega in 1994, under President Bill Clinton. But work got serious after passage of a law called the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
One year later, I talked with the man who was president of Mexcico when that U.S. law was passed, Vicente Fox.
Vicente Fox had just written an autobigraphy, called “Revolution of Hope,” when we talked for a few minutes at a Washington DC booksigning. The book was something of a ‘first’ for a former Mexican president.
In his book, Presidente Fox describes what we would recognize as, and would probably call, an American dream.
But that day, in the fall of 2007, the U.S. was already at work literally putting up a wall — a fence, really — along the border, years before Donald Trump’s “Build that wall” mantra.
Since 2007 — and especially since Trump was elected — Vicente Fox has sharpened his rhetoric, vowing that Mexico will never pay for the wall.