Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador lambasted the Biden administration for U.S. financing of an anti-corruption group in the country ahead of a bilateral meeting with Vice President Harris on Friday.
“A foreign government cannot give money to political groups in another country. Our constitution forbids it,” said López Obrador.
“It’s treason,” he then added. “It’s meddling, it’s interventionism and it’s promoting coup-plotting.”
At his daily press conference Friday, López Obrador said the country’s Foreign Affairs Secretariat presented an official diplomatic complaint to the United States a day earlier over the financing.
López Obrador accused the anti-corruption group Mexicanos Unidos en Contra de la Corrupción e Impunidad (MCCI) — Mexicans United Against Corruption and Impunity — of plotting a coup against his government, while presenting evidence of U.S. financing.
The United States Agency for International Development publicly supports MCCI, a nongovernmental organization that advocates against corruption.
Claudio X. González, the founder and former head of MCCI, has been vocal about his opposition to López Obrador.
López Obrador, who routinely mocks MCCI with the monicker “Mexicans in favor of corruption,” pointed to González’s current and past political activism as proof of MCCI’s support of an alleged coup.
“To define coup-plotting, it’s not necessarily about the use of arms or the army. Coup-plotting is a movement that gestates that can be consummated by the army or the military, but conditions to enact a coup are created with the support of foreign governments, the media, what happened when the coup against President Madero,” said López Obrador, referring to the events that detonated the military phase of the Mexican Revolution in 1913.
“The American ambassador, Wilson, intervened. And the Mexican press created the conditions,” added López Obrador.
Harris is due to meet with López Obrador on Friday morning, with the two scheduled to discuss regional migration.
Harris’s office declined to comment on this story.
López Obrador ended his conference Friday saying he would not bring up the MCCI issue with Harris.
“We will bring up with the [vice] president the issue of migrants,” said López Obrador.