Leader accuses U.S. of violating national sovereignty

MEXICO CITY — Just before an online meeting with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris Friday, Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador very publicly accused the U.S. government of violating Mexico’s sovereignty.

The issue apparently didn’t arise in the meeting with Harris: “It’s not on the agenda and it’s not our intention to create a bad atmosphere,” Lopez Obrador said ahead of the talks.

The meeting itself — the portion made public — focused on immigration, a key issue in U.S.Mexico relationship along with trade, border security and the pandemic.

“We are going to help” on immigration, Lopez Obrador told Harris. “You can count on us.”

But the nationalist president dedicated a good part of his news conference earlier to expressing outrage over a funding decision by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“It is an interventionist act that violated our sovereignty,” said Lopez Obrador, who added that Mexico had filed a diplomatic note with the U.S. Embassy.

Less than two hours later it was all smiles and compliments when Lopez Obrador and Harris met — at least in the publicly shown prelude to the closed meeting, which comes ahead of a planned actual visit by Harris on June 8.

The Mexican president wants the U.S. to fund a major expansion of one of his signature programs, “Planting Life,” which provides cash payments to farmers who plant certain fruit and lumber trees. Mexico has offered it as a way to help in Central America too. The more challenging part of Lopez Obrador’s pitch is that the U.S. grant sixmonth work visas, and eventually citizenship, to those who participate in the program.

Speaking earlier to his domestic audience, Lopez Obrador responded to questions from a reporter from online news magazine Contralinea about its report of U.S. financing for the anticorruption organization Mexicans Against

Corruption and Impunity.

The group has issued reports critical of some of Lopez Obrador’s major initiatives.

In the diplomatic note shown by Lopez Obrador Friday, Mexico says people connected to the group “have been explicit in their political militancy against the government of Mexico.”

The anticorruption organization rejected the accusation. “We reiterate the absolute legality of our work,” it said.