Photo: Presidencia

By KELIN DILLON

During his daily morning press conference on Tuesday, Aug. 13, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) accused the United States of interfering in Mexico’s June elections by funding “opposition groups” that have been critical of his National Regeneration Movement (Morena).

AMLO subsequently announced he would send a diplomatic letter to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden surrounding the money it supposedly sent to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), a non-profit organization founded by vocal López Obrador critic Claudio X. González.

The U.S. Agency for International Development revealed it sent $6 million to MCCI in 2023.

“This organization is the one that promotes the conservative bloc, it gets involved in electoral political issues and it is the one that is participating in the dirty war against our movement and against the president of Mexico,” said López Obrador. “We maintain that they are financing everything that the campaign costs on the internet with the legend ‘AMLO narco’, no, ‘narco president’, something like that, ‘narco president’.”

 “How do they justify that the United States gives money to this association? And then, how does this association justify the use of that money?” asked the federal executive. “Because the organization could say that the people of Mexico suffer from a dictatorship and that there is persecution of the media, and there are no freedoms.”

“It’s the last straw that our neighbor and friend is financing an opposition group,” concluded AMLO. “Because it is not only in Mexico, the United States are surely doing it in other countries financing opponents and it is a bad habit.”