The crisis will hit here first...I hope to try to document the drastic political changes to come
Mexico's worst nightmare is suddenly in play, and it's trying to prepare Christopher Woody
US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto shake hands at a press conference at the Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, August 31, 2016.Reuters/Henry Romero
Mexico has featured prominently among Donald Trump's many targets during the presidential campaign, and that antagonism has weighed in the minds and wallets of people south of the border.
The peso has wobbled and veered with the shifts in the presidential race.
With early results on election night seeming to favor Trump, Mexico's currency plummeted, falling nearly 8% and not only breaching the 19-to-the-dollar barrier so long avoided, but nearing 20 to the dollar late on Tuesday night.
The weakening of the peso against the dollar has boosted the value of the remittances that flow from the US to Mexico, but the atmosphere between the two countries, particularly on the border, is ever more apprehensive.
"We're very worried. We know what Donald Trump is looking to do, which is limit the imports, he wants to manufacture everything in the States," Marcello Hinojosa, president industry group Canacintra in the city of Tijuana, just across the border from California, told Reuters.
"But this has been analyzed by both the United States and by Mexico and it's suicide for both countries," he added.
Mexicans burn an effigy of US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump as they celebrate an Easter ritual in Mexico City's poor La Merced neighborhood, March 26, 2016.REUTERS/Tomas Bravo
Mexico's central-bank chief has said a Trump win would hit the country like a "hurricane," but he has since said the government is looking at ways to adjust its economic position in the face of conditions brought about by an "adverse" US presidential winner.
"Having someone govern who feeds racism, hate, this sort of thing ... will also make a lot of Mexicans stop visiting (the United States) out of fear, out of a sense of pride, which will also hurt the US economy,"Cuauhtemoc Galindo, the mayor of Nogales, Mexico, told Reuters.
More than 80% of Mexico's exports come to the US, and some 6 million US jobs depend on trade with Mexico, according to the US Chamber of Commerce.
Galindo added that Trump's efforts to deport over 11 million undocumented migrants could strain the Mexican government, which has struggled to deal with the flow of migrants from Central Americatraveling north.