Bad news for democracy! Mexican presidential front-runner might back Venezuela, Cuba | Opinion

Bad news for supporters of democracy across the Americas: Claudia Sheinbaum, the government-backed front-runner in Mexico’s June 2 presidential elections, has suggested that, if she wins, she will maintain Mexico’s current support for Cuba, Venezuela and other dictatorships.

In the third and final presidential debate on May 19 Sheinbaum said that “we are going to maintain the foreign policy of the president of the Republic,” referring to leftist-populist president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. She added that Lopez Obrador’s foreign policy “is a medal of pride” for Mexicans.

What’s more, she tacitly paid homage to late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. During the debate, she criticized former Mexican President Vicente Fox for famously asking the Cuban ruler to “have lunch and leave” at a 2002 Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico. Under her presidency, there would have been no such demand to Castro, she said.

Lopez Obrador has been a major regional ally of Venezuela and Cuba. When he took office in 2018, Lopez Obrador invited Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to his inauguration in Mexico City, defying a regional effort to isolate the Venezuelan ruler after he had reelected himself fraudulently earlier that year.

Lopez Obrador also signed generous agreements with Cuba to bring Cuban medical missions to Mexico, and to supply Cuba with oil at preferential prices. Last year, Lopez Obrador awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico’s highest medal for foreign dignitaries, to Cuban dictator Miguel Diaz-Canel. The Cuban regime holds at least 1,020 political prisoners, according to human rights groups, and has not allowed a free election in more than six decades.

Xochitl Galvez, the leading opposition candidate challenging Sheinbaum in the upcoming elections, says she would radically change Mexico’s current foreign policy of coddling to dictators, which she describes as “shameful.”

In an interview this week, Galvez told me that her main foreign policy priorities would be defending human rights, and improving ties with Mexico’s key economic partners, especially the United States and Canada.

‘”I found it shameful that Lopez Obrador invited dictators to his (military) parades, like he did with the one of Cuba, and with the armies of Russia, Nicaragua and Venezuela,” she told me.

Galvez said that, as president, she would no longer subsidize the Cuban economy.

“I don’t think that this exchange with Cuban doctors is something entirely fair, or ethical,” Galvez told me. “Because the Cuban doctors are paid three cents, and Mexico pays the (Cuban) dictatorship millions of dollars.” She added that Mexico “has delivered oil (to Cuba) almost for free.”

Asked about Sheinbaum’s claim that Mexico’s current foreign policy is based on respect for the principle of non-intervention in other countries’ internal affairs, Galvez told me that it’s pure hypocrisy. Lopez Obrador meddles constantly in the internal affairs of right-of-center countries, Galvez told me.

That’s very true. Lopez Obrador blatantly meddled in Argentina’s internal affairs when he said weeks before the 2023 presidential elections that then-candidate Javier Milei, a libertarian conservative, was a “fascist.” Likewise, the Mexican president has declared Peru’s president Dina Boluarte “illegitimate” despite the fact that she was constitutionally appointed by Peru’s Congress.

If Sheinbaum wins, there is always a chance that she could shift away from her campaign promises, and include human rights and democracy among her foreign policy priorities. But I doubt it, because she has always been an unconditional Lopez Obrador loyalist, and, more importantly, because the outgoing president would have legal mechanisms to keep her under his control.

Under a law passed by Lopez Obrador’s ruling party, Mexico can hold a recall referendum on future presidents halfway through their six-year mandates. In other words, if Lopez Obrador remains popular, he could ask his followers to demand a recall of whoever is in power, including Sheinbaum.

Sheinbaum’s vow to continue with Lopez Obrador’s foreign policy would be a bad omen for the defense of democracy and human rights if she wins the elections. She made that pretty clear during the debate.

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