Mexico’s AMLO Rejects Venezuela Coup and Becomes a Bulwark Against US Imperialism
José Luis Granados CEJA
The night before Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence personally called him up and pledged the support of the U.S. government should he try to seize power.
Sure enough, on January 23, before a large opposition demonstration, Guaidó declared himself interim president of the South American country and set in motion a coup plot that had been in the works for weeks. The United States had once again waded into dangerous water with its latest effort to engage in regime change in Venezuela.
However, it was not just the United States involved in the conspiracy to oust the democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro. Shortly after Guaidó’s declaration, in what suggested a certain degree of coordination, a series of countries immediately came out with statements publicly backing him.One after another right-wing government in the region — including Colombia, Chile, and Brazil — affirmed their support for Guaidó. The wave of support in the hours after Guaidó’s proclamation suggested the coup plot had momentum.
Then, in a break in what had appeared to be a unified front, a spokesman for the Mexican government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that it would not recognize Juan Guaidó and would maintain diplomatic relations with the government of Nicolas Maduro.
With Mexico’s declaration, the façade that had been sold to the public — that this was a legitimate transition and not a coup — collapsed. Numerous other countries, including Russia and China, also came out against Guaidó’s unconstitutional attempt to seize power, interrupting Washington’s plans to install a U.S.-friendly regime in Venezuela.
AMLO, as the Mexican president is known, was met with heavy criticism from the punditry, many of whom claimed that he was out of step with Mexico’s allies in the region and that his government would be treated as a pariah as a result. Lopez Obrador’s leftist administration is already somewhat isolated, with votes throughout the region in recent years resulting in the election of right-wing and U.S.-friendly governments.
AMLO’s election in 2018 bucked that trend, but Mexico is still only one of only a handful of countries in Latin America with an independent foreign policy that remains willing to go against the wishes of Washington. However, AMLO presides over Latin America’s second-largest economy and is traditionally seen as a diplomatic heavyweight, making his government’s positions difficult to ignore.
A principled foreign policy stance
Lopez Obrador defended his decision to continue recognizing Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela by pointing to the Mexican constitution, which calls on the country to pursue a non-interventionist stance in its foreign affairs.
According to Christy Thornton — assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, whose research involves the history and sociology of Mexico and Latin America — AMLO’s position represented “a principled stance in foreign policy” and “important bulwark.”
Rather than represent a departure in Mexican foreign policy, as some commentators claimed, Thornton argued that Lopez Obrador’s non-interventionist position marked a return to Mexico’s traditional stance in foreign affairs, one that traces its roots to the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century.
This non-interventionist stance eventually came to be known as the Estrada Doctrine — after Genaro Estrada, secretary of foreign affairs during the presidency of Pascual Ortiz Rubio — which made respect for sovereignty the core tenant of Mexico’s foreign policy for decades before a series of neoliberal governments began to align their foreign policy with that of Washington.
The government of Lopez Obrador has worked to avoid provoking a direct confrontation with the Trump government, despite a number of simmering issues and the ideological differences between the two leaders.
However, in the case of Venezuela, Lopez Obrador refused to toe Washington’s line. Thornton told MintPress:
AMLO is trying to carve out an autonomous space for foreign policy that signals to the United States especially that Mexico will not be subserviently going along with the United States but also tries to make claims as to what democratic legitimacy looks like in Latin America.”
Rather than sideline Mexico, AMLO’s position has raised his country’s profile, as Maduro has accepted Mexico’s proposal for dialogue between his government and the opposition……More Here