Donald Trump’s insistence upon a wall along the southern border of the USA and his petulant shutdown of the government when he failed to get his way, are creating world headlines right now. His antipathy to Mexican immigrants; and Mexicans, in general, is well established. In the past, he has referred to Mexicans as ‘rapists’, ‘bad hombres’ and had based his election campaign on the ‘Build a Wall’ plank. He also said that he would make Mexico pay for the proposed wall. Mexico decided they'd had enough of the Mexico-bashing and apparently did this:
In the beginning the ad features a bunch of white Americans saying that they couldn’t envisage wanting to go to Mexico. Some DNA tests later, when it is revealed that most of those people have some amount of ‘Mexican’ ancestry in them somewhere, they change their tune.
Canadians wanted in on the discounts. The airline ad claims to offer discounts based on the percentage of Mexican ancestry their DNA test revealed them to have.
Most people agreed that this ad is about Aero Mexico trolling racist Americans, but they also agree that this is about racists getting their just comeuppance.
This tweet thought that this was genius marketing since, as another comment said, in the end the only ‘colour’ that matters, is green! In the ad, those who claimed to dislike the thought of going to Mexico seemed not to mind the idea at all when confronted with the prospect of an attractive discount.
Most people loved the ad and the way that it calls out rank racism. Some resolved to buy a ticket from the Mexican airline even though they weren’t planning on visiting and this person decided to move their points to the airline.
In America, there is currently a widely prevalent anti-Mexican narrative fed by the fear mongering and alarmist statements of the President himself. Many have an unreasoning fear of droves of criminals illegally entering the United States via its southern border with Mexico; a point on a view based largely on ignorance, misinformation and a false sense of victimhood.
There was some pushback against the ad, mostly from white nationalists who saw the way the ad made fun of them as derogatory to them and their ideology. In some bizarre way, they thought that the ad itself was racist. Considering that the ad ends with this inclusive message – There are no borders within us – this charge is strange indeed.
There were those who couldn’t wait to visit Mexico on a 50% discount. There were also those who wondered if a 100% discount was available – for Mexicans!
Some people point out that a DNA discount such as the one contemplated in the ad would be illegal since it would amount to racial discrimination. However, it seems extremely unlikely that the airline is actually offering a DNA discount for several reasons: the video was published way back in May 2018 and has now been republished by various other channels since it went viral.
This ad has not been published on YouTube by the airline itself but by a YouTube channel called DHOSTUDIOS with barely a few hundred subscribers. Hence the ad cannot constitute an offer of any kind by Aero Mexico nor can it then be made the subject matter of a suit. Also this cannot be said to be ‘false advertisement’ since what is actually being offered is ‘Inner Discounts’ and since this is clearly social satire, not a real advert. Like all the commentators, said its genius!
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