López Obrador accuses the US of financing “coup” organizations

Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, during a press conference at the National Palace Presidency of Mexico HANDOUT / EFE

Just a few minutes before starting the meeting with the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, the president of Mexico charged harshly against the United States this Friday. From the morning conference, Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused the United States Government of being behind the financing of civil organizations that it considers to be opponents and announced that the Foreign Ministry has already filed a diplomatic complaint with the embassy in Mexico City. A support that considered an interference in Mexican national sovereignty, one of his favorite mantras, in addition to qualifying as a “coup leader” businessman Claudio X. González, founder of several civil organizations and promoter of the Yes for Mexico platform, which brought together the opposition parties ahead of the June 6 elections.

López Obrador's darts are specifically directed against the organization Mexicanos contra la Corrupción, a civil association dedicated to investigations of political and economic issues, founded by González in 2015. “We have the report that this group from Claudio X. González has received around 50 million pesos from 2018 to today. This are the bills. We are going to await the response of the United States Government ”, added the Mexican president. The Agency for International Development (USAID) –which has resources assigned by the US Congress for international assistance– would have been, according to the president, the funding institution through what it has described as “donations ”.

The onslaught came just minutes before the president finished his daily lecture. Then López Obrador has moved to one of the offices of the National Palace to begin his virtual meeting with Vice President Harris, the first high-ranking meeting with the new Joe Biden Administration. The conversation has the central focus on migration to the north after the relief in the White House generated a

from the Northern Triangle of Central America that left the highest number of illegal entries in 15 years. Both parties had shown their willingness to collaborate on a joint plan to respond to the migration crisis. Although with distant positions even before the offensive of this Friday by López Obrador.

“The financing for your group, from the United States Government, is an act of interventionism that violates our sovereignty. That is why we are asking for clarification, because it is a foreign government. You cannot give money to political groups in another country, ”the Mexican president remarked. Regarding the specific accusations on the figure of the businessman, he added: “I have no doubt about the opposition and coup attitude of Claudio X. González and others, they have always been preventing progress. The coup, to define it conceptually, does not necessarily have to do with the use of arms or the Army, the coup is a movement that is developing and that can be consummated by the Army or the military, but the conditions to carry out the coup are they are creating with the support of foreign governments and the media ”.

The accusations are part of López Obrador's polarizing strategy, in full flood ahead of the June elections. This is not the first time that the president has drawn an iron line between a kind of "us and them," "the people and their enemies." At the end of March, he disqualified the work of the organization Article 19, which defends freedom of the press, for its collaboration in a report by the US State Department on the protection of human rights in Mexico. “Why does the United States Government have an opinion on issues that only concern Mexicans? We are respectful, we cannot comment on what happens in another country, ”he said then.

The mantra of national sovereignty is one of the red lines of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and any movement that is interpreted from the National Palace as an outside interference, whether in energy or security matters, is exposed to receiving the president's invective.

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