LETTER FROM MEXICO CITY
“Dear President Joe Biden”, vsbegins to read the Mexican president, May 3, during his daily morning press conference. That day, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as “AMLO”, had a tense face and a bad mood. On the panel that serves as a backdrop, a missive he has just sent to his American counterpart is displayed on the screen.
After the polite formulas and the assurance that Mexico seeks above all cooperation with its powerful northern neighbor, “AMLO” goes straight to the point. He requests the “precious intervention” of Joe Biden, while the United States Agency for International Development (Usaid) has further increased its budget to finance “organizations openly opposed to our government, legal and legitimate”.
For the Mexican head of state, it is “of an interventionist act, contrary to international law and to the respect which must prevail between free and sovereign States”. He says he is certain that Joe Biden ignores this file, will take it into account and sign ” your friend “. “AMLO” then turns to its audience, made up solely of journalists, and continues: “Biden is a good person, of course, but the United States is not changing its interventionist policy. »
“And who receives money from the United States?asks “AMLO”, visibly angry. Always the same. » The names of the funded NGOs are then displayed again on the screen. At the top of the list, the association Mexicans against corruption and impunity (MCCI), created in 2016 and chaired for four years by an entrepreneur, Claudio Gonzalez, who has since become one of the most virulent opponents of the Mexican president. . Even if Mr. Gonzalez no longer heads MCCI since 2020, his figure remains attached to the NGO whose main function is to uncover corruption through journalistic investigations.
“Aggressive, neo-colonial ways of Washington”
The next day, the editorial of the left-wing daily The Day with the title “NGOs as an instrument of interference” gives (as often) right to the president: “There is no justification for the aggressive, neo-colonial ways of this superpower. Washington is repeating practices that Latin America is familiar with, funding political operatives who disguise themselves as civil society as they seek to overthrow the government. »
Also on social networks, the Latin American left is following suit and congratulating “AMLO”: “Finally a president who has the stature of Chavez [ex-chef de l’Etat vénézuélien] and Evo Morales [ex-dirigeant de la Bolivie] »writes a user. “Out of our continent, Usaid! »adds another.
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