Mexico’s President Stresses that the U.S.’s Heroes Have ‘Always Sought to Have a Relationship with Mexico Based on Respect’

July 11, 2020 (EIRNS)—Back at work early Friday morning after his July 8 meetings with President Trump in Washington, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) held his regular early morning press conference in Mexico City yesterday to report back on his trip. “The visit was a success and very beneficial for our people.... We have the possibility of initiating a new stage in the political relationship with the United States, and we are going to continue with that. We do not want quarrels, we do not want confrontation; we want to seek agreement.”

AMLO stressed the critical historical theme which shaped the entire summit: “The heroes of that nation [the U.S.] always sought to have a relationship with Mexico based on respect.” As in the Rose Garden speeches by both AMLO and Trump, the Mexican President returned to the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Mexican President Benito Juárez, as well as two other key moments:

“George Washington, the founding father of the United States, said that nations should not take advantage of the misfortune of other peoples. Then the extraordinary relationship of President Lincoln with President Juárez through our foreign minister, one of Mexico’s best diplomats, Matías Romero. President Lincoln never recognized [Emperor] Maximillian, he never accepted the French intervention, he always maintained relations with the government of President Juárez. That helped us.

“More recently, at the time of the oil expropriation, the same thing. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood, he realized why that act of sovereignty, of patriotism by General Cárdenas regarding the nationalization and the expropriation of foreign oil companies, and there is understanding. That helped a lot.”

President López Obrador stressed his point:

“I spoke of three, of the exemplary behavior of the U.S.’s heroes towards Mexico: the good Presidents that the U.S. has had and who have been respectful towards Mexico. As for those who were not respectful, well, we aren’t going to recall them. It’s better to forget.... The United States, because of how it was founded, the way in which that nation was founded, its first settlers, its first colonists established a truly democratic political system.”

For that reason, he said, Mexico’s persecuted leaders often sought refuge in the United States, mentioning the cases of Manuel Hidalgo (Mexico’s founding father), Juárez himself (who lived in exile in New Orleans for a period), and President Francisco I. Madero. “So, during our Independence, our Reform, and our Independence, people always sought refuge in the United States.”

López Obrador also reported that the issue of the wall on Mexico’s border with the U.S. had not come up in the public discussions, “because we wanted the meeting to occur on the basis of points of agreement, to push aside our differences and seek to resolve those differences—which are natural between neighbors and independent and democratic nations—on the basis of dialogue.” He added that there is an open invitation for President Trump to visit Mexico. “That is a gesture of friendship on our part; however, because of the electoral circumstances, it is not possible for President Trump to visit us right now.”