MEXICO CITY _ During a tense phone call in January with newly elected President Donald Trump, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto explained that he simply didn't have the political capital to bargain on one of Trump's signature campaign issues: forcing Mexico to pay for construction of a border wall.
"I would also like to make you understand, President Trump, the lack of margin I have as president of Mexico to accept this situation," Pena Nieto said politely, according to a transcript of the call published Thursday by The Washington Post.
Pena Nieto's tone during the conversation _ polite and nonconfrontational even as Trump badgered him to stop saying publicly that his government would never pay for the wall _ is being hotly debated in Mexico, with Pena Nieto praised as strong or condemned as weak.
Some, including members of opposition parties who hope to replace Pena Nieto as president when his six-year term ends in 2018, have accused Pena Nieto of not standing up to Trump on the issue of the border wall. They complain he remained silent after Trump suggested sending American troops into Mexico to fight drug traffickers.
Jorge Lopez Martin, a spokesman for the right-leaning National Action Party, said Pena Nieto came off as "submissive and complacent" in the call.
"Mexicans must know if our president will follow the orders of a foreigner who hates us, or if he will safeguard the autonomy of the Mexican government that he represents," Lopez told Mexico's Reforma newspaper.
"Where is the defense of our sovereignty?" wrote Agustin Basave, a member of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, on Twitter. "Trump offered to send troops into Mexico because ours 'are afraid' of narcos, and Pena remained silent."
In January, the Mexican government had fiercely denied reports that Trump had suggested sending American troops to Mexico to fight "bad hombres," with Pena Nieto's spokesman calling such claims "nonsense and a downright lie."
But the transcript obtained by the Post shows Trump did suggest sending American soldiers to Mexico.
"I know this is a tough group of people," Trump said of drug traffickers, "and maybe your military is afraid of them. But our military is not afraid of them, and we will help you with that 100 percent because it is out of control _ totally out of control," Trump said.
But other commentators defended Pena Nieto, saying he did an effective job of not provoking the volatile U.S. president, who in the past has threatened to slap a border tax on all imports from Mexico, a move that could devastate the Mexican economy.
Genaro Lozano, a professor of political science and international relations at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City, pointed out that Pena Nieto did not adhere to Trump's repeated demands that the Mexican leader stop denying publicly that his government would pay for the wall.
"He was very courageous to publicly defy what the president of the U.S. told him to do," Lozano said. "He treated a bully the way a bully should be treated, by ignoring what the bully demanded."
Lozano said the focus should be on Trump's comments during the conversation, specifically his acknowledgment that in the end, the border wall may not actually be funded by Mexico.
Payment for the wall "will work out in the formula somehow," Trump told Pena Nieto. He described the wall as "the least important thing we are talking about," although he said "politically this might be the most important."
"That's such a big lie to the American voters," Lozano said. "He's the one who should get criticized."
