Mexico regrets Peru’s decision to withdraw ambassador

Mexico said Saturday it regretted the decision by Peruvian President Dina Boluarte to withdraw her country’s ambassador in response to criticism from Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said in a statement that Mexico “will keep open diplomatic channels of communication to benefit both societies, and also expresses hope that a democratic agreement can be reached soon to resolve the differences in our fellow Latin American country.”

In his regular morning press briefing Friday, Mexico’s president said he had seen polls “where the spurious president (Boluarte) has 15% acceptance and 85% disapprove of her.”

He also said that members of Peru’s Parliament have even less approval. “They have 90% of the rejection and even so they rule with bayonets and with repression, force.”

Later Friday, Boluarte rejected López Obrador’s comments “on the internal affairs of Peru and the unacceptable questions that he repeatedly formulates about the constitutional and democratic origin of my government.”

She reproached López Obrador for hurting ties in order to “privilege ideological affinities.” While the Mexican president’s domestic policies and relations with the United States are not particularly leftist, he was made a point of supporting leftist regimes like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

While López Obrador has slammed the killing of protesters in Peru, he has been criticized for saying little about the hundreds of Nicaraguans killed or exiled by the government of President Daniel Ortega.

With the ambassador’s withdrawal, diplomatic relations between Peru and Mexico “formally remain at the level of charge d’affaires,” the president said in a statement at the presidential palace in Lima.

Dina Boluarte took office on Dec. 7 after then-president Pedro Castillo was ousted by Parliament and jailed after trying to dissolve Congress to avoid a vote on his removal from office.

Since then, there have been almost three months of protests that have left 60 dead, 48 of them due to direct clashes with the police. One policeman was burned to death in a patrol car.

López Obrador has frequently expressed his support for Castillo.

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