An Age-Old Tradition of Mexican Anti-Americanism Is Making a Comeback in the Trump Era - President Enrique Peña Nieto opened gasoline prices to market forces this January, the resulting 20-percent hike—both a step toward the entry of foreign gas stations and a top-up for the treasury’s depleted coffers—prompted weeks of outrage. La Jornada , the country’s leading left-wing daily, reported on the protests one day by splashing its front page with a woman setting fire to Old Glory. The message: The gas hike is the fault of the gringos. The paper’s take was a deeply oversimplified reading of the situation, but it makes sense in the context of what I call gringophobia, a strain of Mexican nationalism—at times muted, at other times pronounced—that views the United States and its citizens as objects of fear, disdain, and blame for the country’s ills.