Mexico president complains US is funding opposition

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has again complained to the United States that the U.S. government is funding organizations opposed to his administration, this time in a letter to President Joe Biden

Mexico Violence (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Mexico President Andres Manuel López Obrador has again complained to the United States that the U.S. government is funding organizations opposed to his administration, this time in a letter to President Joe Biden.

The letter was dated Tuesday, the same day López Obrador met with a White House official. The president made a similar complaint in a diplomatic note two years ago, just before a virtual meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris.

In the letter, López Obrador states that the United States Agency for International Development for some time has funded “organizations openly opposed to the legal and legitimate government,” an act he described as “interventionist.”

“I am sure that you do not know about this issue and for that reason I respectfully request your appreciated intervention,” read the letter, which López Obrador read at his morning news briefing Wednesday.

USAID’s goals for Mexico focus on reducing “impunity, crime and violence by constraining the operational space for organized crime in targeted areas,” according to its current development strategy.

The organizations that López Obrador has identified as opposition include the local branch of Article 19, an international freedom of expression organization, which has been critical of the number of journalists killed in Mexico.

López Obrador met Tuesday with U.S. Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall, to discuss coordination ahead of the end of U.S. asylum restrictions at their shared border.