MEXICO CITY—The outgoing president of Mexico had expected to end his troubled term on a positive note — signing a new free-trade deal with the United States and Canada on Friday. Now even that moment of triumph has gone awry.

An announcement that President Enrique Peña Nieto would bestow Mexico’s highest honour for foreigners to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump, for his role in pushing through the trade pact has incited fury in Mexico, where anger and resentment toward Trump is intense.

The Foreign Ministry announced the recipient of the award, the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, on Tuesday. The incredulity and outrage began to spread almost immediately.

“In Enrique’s defence, the recognition of Kushner has succeeded in doing something we all thought impossible — THE UNION OF THIS COUNTRY against the contempt shown by this decision,” Javier Risco, a radio announcer, said on Twitter.

The Aztec Eagle honours non-Mexicans for their service to the country. Once Kushner is decorated, he will be in the company of Queen Elizabeth, King Philip VI of Spain, Nelson Mandela, Bill and Melinda Gates, Gabriel García Márquez, historians, scientists and a rock star philanthropist, Bono.

The president, who will present the award this week on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, leaves office Saturday after a six-year term. His success in pushing through economic changes was overwhelmed by widespread corruption and a surge in violence.

In comments to reporters Tuesday, Peña Nieto called Kushner “a great ally” of Mexico who had “truly contributed to reaching this agreement.”

Practically nobody else in Mexico appeared to see it that way.

Decorating Kushner was viewed as an endorsement of Trump, who began his presidential campaign by insulting Mexican immigrants and calling for the United States to build a wall along the 3,200-kilomere — a demand he has been repeating this week during budget negotiations in Washington.

“Kushner is the son-in-law of someone who called Mexicans ‘murderers and rapists,’ ” Enrique Krauze, a historian, wrote on Twitter. “Giving him the Aztec Eagle is a supreme attitude of humiliation and cowardice.”

Jesús Silva-Herzog, a well-known political analyst, was similarly acerbic in his reaction.

“The Aztec Eagle to Kushner? Really? That is how the government of indignity bids farewell,” he said on Twitter. “A perfect crowning to its indecency.”

The debate spilled into morning television Wednesday, when Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray spoke by phone to a popular news program to defend the decision.

“Without any doubt, we would not have a free trade treaty today with the United States and Canada without the participation of Jared Kushner,” said Videgaray, who has formed a close working relationship with the president’s son-in-law.

Kushner, he said, had managed to intervene in “moments of great uncertainty” to persuade Trump not to renounce the existing free-trade agreement among the three countries, as the U.S. president had repeatedly threatened, and instead renegotiate it.

In Washington, White House officials, frustrated by the criticism surrounding the award, tried to draw a line between the work Kushner had done to establish better trade relations and the disparaging words his father-in-law has used to describe the Mexican people. But officials did not initially respond to requests for a public comment about the honour. Instead, a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said: “Jared is very honoured to receive this award. A lot of the work that he does is behind the scenes. He keeps his head down on trying to achieve the best outcome for the United States and its partners.”

Under Trump, relations between Mexico and the United States have fallen to their lowest point in more than three decades. Only 6 per cent of Mexicans have confidence in the U.S. president, the weakest of any national population in a survey of 25 countries by the Pew Research Center.

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Trump has turned Mexico into an easy mark for the anti-immigrant fervour that animates many of his supporters as he leads them in chants of “Build the Wall” at his rallies.

Over the past few weeks, as a caravan of several thousand Central American migrants traversed Mexico toward the United States, Trump took to Twitter to demand that Mexico stop them. He threatened to shut down the border.

When several hundred of the migrants broke away from a peaceful march to rush toward the border in Tijuana on Sunday, Customs and Border Protection agents on the U.S. side fired tear gas into Mexico.

Videgaray acknowledged that Trump’s posture toward Mexico is “offensive” but argued that it was “discriminatory” to criticize the choice of Kushner for the award simply because of the family relationship.

While Kushner receives his honour, his wife, Ivanka, the president’s daughter, will head to Mexico to attend the Saturday inauguration of the incoming president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose first task will be to deal with the swelling number of Central American migrants on the U.S. border and Trump’s response to them.

Mexicans pride themselves on acting as gracious hosts. But the uproar over the medal awarded to Ivanka Trump’s husband may be a sign that Mexicans may not greet her with the warmest of embraces.

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