López Obrador Tells Biden Team ‘Mexico Is Not a Colony’; Don’t Call Until the Election Is Decided

Nov. 11, 2020 (EIRNS)—For the third time since the media’s designation of Joe Biden as the U.S. President-elect on Nov. 7, a Mexican journalist asked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador this morning when his government would accept a phone call from the Biden team to begin coordinating relations, even if the government would not give congratulations or recognition. The journalist cited reports that the Biden team had requested that such talks begin.

López Obrador treated this continuing pressure as unacceptable bullying. “We have already clarified this matter sufficiently, and there is confusion—or people do not want to understand it,” he replied. My government’s policy, he said, is based on the historic principles of Mexican foreign policy established upon President Benito Juárez’s dictum that “respect for the rights of others means peace,” and expressed in Article 89 of the Mexican Constitution, mandating a foreign policy based on non-intervention and self-determination of peoples.

“We cannot make any kind of recognition of a government that is not yet legally and legitimately constituted....

“We are not against or in favor of anyone.... This is a decision of another country, another people.... There are more than 140 million voters, one part voted for one party; another part voted for another. Where do we come off becoming the judge? Who authorized us to do that, to go and get involved in an internal process? We have to respect the citizens of other countries....

“That if we don’t recognize them, there are going to be reprisals? No, there is no reason for reprisals, because we are sticking to our policy of principles.... Moreover, we are not a colony. We’re a free, independent, sovereign country. The Mexican government is not a patsy for any foreign government.”

In reporting this story, a journalist from the Mexican-American Sin Censura YouTube news channel reminded people that Mexico had suffered the evils of this policy of foreign governments “recognizing” non-governments in another nation, when European powers “recognized” Napoleon agent Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico, who had been installed after French, British, and Spanish soldiers overthrew Benito Juárez and occupied Mexico in the 1860s. The same policy, she added, was seen in the United States’ recognition of Juan Guaidó’s non-existent government in Venezuela.