Ekaterina Kosevich

• Occupation: Researcher
• Affiliation: Institute for Latin American studies, RAS
  
• Address: Russian Federation, Moscow

In 21st century the importance of constructing exactly the image characteristics of states increased significantly. The image of the state has become a necessary component of its success in global and regional political and economic competitive development.The article provides a historical analysis of the stages of construction by the US media of a negative image of Mexico and Mexicans. Different periods are considered when Mexico was not equally presented by the American print media, television and film industry.The accession to power in the U.S. of D. Trump has marked the transition of Mexican-American relations in respect of Mexico to a qualitatively new stage, which became the complete opposite of the “good-fellowship period” that existed under B. Obama. A special role in the Mexican-American confrontation that unfolded under the new head of the White House was played by the longterm consistent propaganda of planting a negative image of Mexico and its inhabitants in North American society, in which discourses on rapprochement are invariably muffled by calls for divergence.The author comes to the conclusion that despite the entire palette of historical events and episodes, which together survived these two neighboring, but still all the same distant for each other states, at the beginning of the 21st century, in the eyes of Americans, their closest Latin American neighbor continued to associate with negative images that only reinforce negative stereotypes, which for many years have been methodically created by the American media.