U.S. Senators claim Mexican President Obrador supports dictators

U.S. senators Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio accused Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of supporting dictators by refusing to participate this week in the IX Summit of the Americas, where the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan regimes are not welcome. 

"I am glad to see that the Mexican president, who has handed over sections of his country to drug cartels and is an apologist for tyranny in Cuba, [for] a murderous dictator in Nicaragua and a drug trafficker in Venezuela will not be in the U.S. this week," said Rubio, a Republican member of the Senate subcommittee dedicated to Latin America.

Democratic Senator Bob Menendez said that Lopez Obrador's absence at the Summit of the Americas "will, unfortunately, delay efforts" in favor of the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States, reported Aristegui Noticias.

Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated that he joins those who "are increasingly concerned about President Lopez Obrador's decision to support dictators and despots rather than represent the interests of the Mexican people at a summit with his partners from across the hemisphere."

After weeks of lobbying to include the "socialist" regimes led by Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua at the summit, AMLO confirmed that he would not attend the meeting in Los Angeles, California. Instead, however, he will send Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.

On Monday, the United States announced its final decision not to welcome the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua in Los Angeles due to their violations of human rights and democracy. On the other hand, Cuban civil society actors, residents in exile and on the island, were invited, but the communist regime prohibited the latter from participating.

"To remove dictators from the table of democracies is to listen to the people," Cuban Rosa María Payá said on Monday at a forum parallel to the IX Summit of the Americas, in response to a representative of Panama who lamented the exclusion of the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

The democracy activist and coordinator of Cuba Decide said that the intervention "of the lady from Panama has made us, the representatives of Cuban civil society, very nervous… the Inter-American Charter is very clear in defending the right to democracy of the peoples."

"The Cuban people have not lived in democracy for 62 years, the Venezuelan people for 20 years, and the Nicaraguan people are suffering one of the worst repressions," Payá explained.

According to Payá, the issue that should be discussed in civil forums and the Summit of the Americas is "how to stop giving concessions to Venezuela, the Cuban dictator or the Nicaraguan dictator, and start supporting the right of the people to live in democracy.”