López Obrador’s Diplomatic Protest Insists Biden Answer: Are You Trying To Overthrow My Government?

May 10, 2021 (EIRNS)—Just hours before his scheduled virtual meeting with Kamala Harris on May 7, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that his Foreign Ministry had filed a formal diplomatic protest with the Biden administration over unconstitutional intervention into Mexican political affairs. He presented the proverbial “check-stubs” proving the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development was financing of “Mexicans Against Corruption,” one of the leading NGOs organizing for the overthrow of his government. Oh, no, I will not be raising this issue with Harris, AMLO told reporters; those talks are about immigration.

The message was delivered, however. From Harris on down, top Biden administration officials have been overt that their “stop the migrants” plan for Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is a cover for regime change against all of those governments, using NGOs and a fraudulent “fight against government corruption.” López Obrador’s actions do not just defend Mexico, but also strengthen El Salvador President Nayeb Bukeli’s hand in combatting the same corrupt, neoliberal agents being deployed against his attempt to develop his country.

The Mexican government confirmed the veracity of the invoices demonstrating U.S. government funding of the group —through USAID—from 2018 right up through May this year which had been revealed by Contralinea magazine, López Obrador reported. Civil society groups are welcome and free to operate in this country, he said, but “it is reprehensible that an opposition group to our government which has dedicated itself to blocking all the projects which are underway by promoting injunctions against them—as was the case with the Mexico City airport, the Tren Maya [Mayan Railway]—is being given financing from a foreign government. So yesterday we filed a diplomatic note requesting an explanation from the United States government about this case.”

The supposed “anti-corruption” group in question is headed by Claudio X. Gonzalez, Jr., son of one of the most powerful private business sector leaders in the country (of the same name) who, AMLO noted, in 2006 had threatened that if López Obrador’s probable electoral victory in the presidential elections were recognized, it would be necessary to do what was done in Chile in 1973: a coup d’état.

AMLO also reported that “Mexicans Against Corruption” personnel also overlap the “Article 19” supposed press-freedom NGO which also receives money from the U.S. government. In March 2021, EIR exposed “Article 19” as a British-headquartered, British-, U.S.-, EU-, etc., financed operation, after it issued a broadside against alleged López Obrador threats to press freedom.

López Obrador was hardline: “We are going to wait for an answer from the United States government.... This is an act of interventionism, which violates our sovereignty.... No foreign government can give money to political groups of another country. Our Constitution prohibits receiving money from another country for political purposes. That is treason against the Fatherland.”