Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly referred to as AMLO, recently sent a letter to US President Joe Biden asking that he stop interference in his country by the United States Agency of International Development (USAID).
According to López Obrador, USAID is funding opposition parties and so-called 'non-government organizations' opposed to his administration, including Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity and Article 19.
“I would like to express briefly,” AMLO said in the letter, “that for some time now, the United States government, in particular the United States Agency for International Development, has been financing organizations openly opposed to the legal and legitimate government that I represent, which is clearly an interventionist act, contrary to international law and the respect that should prevail among independent and sovereign states.”
López Obrador also added in the letter that funding to those groups has increased recently. “[A] few days ago it was announced that said agency [USAID] will increase the budget granted to organizations opposed to our government, as published in the official page of the State Department," he wrote.
However, AMLO stopped short of saying that Biden is aware of the program, instead asking for his “valuable intervention” to end it.
He also said he considered not sending the letter, but did so as a matter of principle and in defense of his country’s sovereignty so “future generations should not wonder why this type of violations against the nation’s sovereignty were allowed."
Article 19, responded, saying that AMLO's comments amounted to "attacks against press freedom."
AMLO spoke about the letter at a May 3 news conference after being asked if he brought up the issue of the US Department of Defense spying on the Mexican military, including top officials like the Secretariat of the Navy and the Secretariat of National Defense.
López Obrador accused the US of spying at an April conference, claiming media in Mexico “are publishing information provided by the DEA [US Drug Enforcement Agency] and Pentagon” that had been obtained illegally.
The letter to Biden was given to his national security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, who was in Mexico on official business.
AMLO said during the earlier presser that he is not concerned about the alleged interventionism, explaining it loses its power once the people are made aware of its existence.
“If we inform the people, there is no problem because we have nothing to hide. We have no complicity with anyone; we are not corrupt; we have moral authority,” López Obrador said. “We are doing this, because, although it does not harm us, politically speaking, by revealing all this, the people become aware—they understand better what we have been saying all this time, that these conservatives are traitors to the nation.”
Biden and López Obrador spoke on the phone on Tuesday in a talk that focused on the growing border crisis as Title 42 nears its expiration. It is not known if AMLO brought up the issue of USAID to Biden during that talk.