The U.S. State Department issued on March 20 its annual Human Rights report on every other country in the world, with which it browbeats countries not deemed sufficiently docile. Mexico was among the latter this year, with State citing “credible reports” showing that Mexico has “significant human rights issues.” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) spoke for many other governments in the “Global Majority” when he responded at his press conference the next day that the State Department “are liars … [who] believe they are the government of the world … and only see the mote in the eye of the other, not the beam in their own.” (A Biblical reference from Matthew–ed.) He pointed to Seymour Hersh’s report that the U.S. government blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Lopez Obrador called the State Department report “pure politicking.” What if Mexico were to evaluate the United States? “Let’s see. Human rights: So why don’t you free [Julian] Assange, if you are talking about journalism and freedom? Why do you keep Assange imprisoned? If we are talking about acts of violence, how is it that an award-winning journalist in the United States maintains that the US government sabotaged the gas pipeline from Russia to Europe?
“Why does the United States allow a cartel, or various cartels to freely operate in that country, distributing fentanyl, which does such harm to youth? Ask them: What are you doing so that youth do not consume fentanyl?
“And one more, with all due respect: Former President Trump is saying that they are going to arrest him … for an alleged affair…. If that happens, everyone will know, because we weren’t born yesterday, that it is being done so that he doesn’t appear on the electoral ballot…. That is completely undemocratic. Why not let the people be the ones who decide?”
AMLO repeated the common error of equating the originally anti-imperialist Monroe Doctrine with the imperialist dogma it was twisted into under Teddy Roosevelt, applied fervently by today’s arrogant unipolar interests. But he then also coupled his denunciations with an appeal to the historical, anti-imperialist United States, holding up the great U.S.-Mexican friendship in the difficult days of Lincoln and Juarez as an example of what bilateral relations should be, and can become. He spoke of Lincoln’s support, backed by deeds, for Mexico when the French invaded it in 1861, and how in 1847 then-Congressman Lincoln had “opposed the U.S. invasion of Mexico,” even though then-President Polk denounced him as a traitor “for having spoken out on behalf of Mexico.”
All this was too much for State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel. He blubbered the next day that the United States had “never been ones to indicate that we are the government of the world or some kind of edict like that” — and then proceeded to recite the very same charges against Mexico.
