CIA meddles in Mexico's elections, and fails

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is no radical leftist by any definition. Personally I think he's a center-leftist at the most. But right-wing capitalists hate his guts just the same. Just look at any article from the Wall Street Journal or the neoliberal Nation.
Which is why when Mexico's mid-term elections happened the other week, the CIA left it's fingerprints all over it.

President López Obrador has been railing against the United States’ funding of what he says are political groups opposed to his administration, accusing the U.S. government of meddling in Mexico’s internal affairs.
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The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have provided approximately US $591.5 million to organizations operating in Mexico, according to documents reviewed by the newspaper Milenio.

That figure — made up of the amounts the two agencies sent to Mexico in 2019, 2020 and the first five months of this year — is more than double the entire 2021 budget of Mexico’s Interior Ministry, Milenio said.

The newspaper said that the USAID and NED money goes to projects led by Mexican organizations, projects led by United States organizations that are active in Mexico and to municipal, state and federal governments....The government has also asked the U.S. to stop funding opposition groups, but López Obrador said Monday that there has been no response to that request.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of USAID and NED knows that those groups are just other ways to spell CIA.
As we all know, it's OK when the United States does it.
So with a tsunami of money from the U.S., alliance of right-wing parties, the vociferous backing of business associations, a nearly uniform opposition by the Mexican media, you would think that AMLO would get steamrolled.
And that's how the right-wing media portrayed it. For example,
Mexico Checks AMLO’s Power (WSJ).

But reality was a little different.

none of it was able to prevent the MORENA coalition from romping to victory in the Mexican midterm elections of June 6, retaining its majority in Congress and seizing two-thirds of the governors’ races in dispute.

Results from the preliminary electoral count indicate that MORENA will win between 190 and 203 seats in the lower house of Congress known as the Chamber of Deputies, equaling or bettering its result in the presidential election of 2018, when it captured 191. Add this to the range of 35 to 41 seats won by the Workers’ Party (PT) and the 40 to 48 captured by the Greens, and the coalition is set to win somewhere between 265 and 292 seats: a clear majority out of 500. The victory will allow MORENA’s legislative agenda to proceed in tandem with its majority in the Senate, which was not up for election.

In governors’ races, MORENA did even better, sweeping eleven of the fifteen statehouses in dispute, ten of which it flipped from one or other member of the right-wing alliance: from the once-feared Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) alone, it snatched seven. This will raise the total number of states governed by MORENA from a mere six before the midterms to seventeen out of thirty-two.

It makes you wonder, when measurable facts differ so much from the spin that you are being told, what other lies are they telling us? This is anything but a rejection of AMLO.
Now the news coming out of Mexico is a visit by VP Kamala Harris.
You have to go looking for it, but this is definitely not some innocent diplomatic visit.
Look how it's getting reported in the Mexico Daily Post.
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You see, one week before Harris visited, the Director of the CIA visited.
And in case you still didn't get the idea, Harris, while standing in Mexico, made a "slip of the tongue".

The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, qualified this Thursday afternoon her support for the press and non-governmental organizations by explaining that her criticism was only directed at Guatemala and does not include Mexico....

The initial statement was widely disseminated, as it came after criticism launched by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who pointed to the Agency for Development Cooperation (USAID) as responsible for “financing the coup.” by supporting some organizations that the president considers opposing.

The interview revealed that, during his meetings on Monday and Tuesday with the President of Mexico and Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, he asked them to let NGOs and the press in their countries “do their job” without hindrance.

Yes, please let USAID and NED "do their job". What exactly is that job again?

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This is his claims. It's not enough, to my eyes, to justify a CIA coup.

In a 90-minute speech to an estimated 250,000 supporters in the zócalo, López Obrador listed his government’s achievements since he took office on December 1, 2018.

Among them: laws to combat corruption, the implementation of austerity measures, a change to the constitution to prevent tax avoidance by large corporations, cancelation of the previous government’s education reform, elimination of protection from prosecution for the president, creation of the National Guard, increased welfare for the nation’s most disadvantaged people, a 16% increase to the minimum wage, establishment of a northern border free zone and a 94% reduction in petroleum theft.
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López Obrador conceded that the economy hasn’t grown as the government would have liked but claimed that there is now a “better distribution of wealth.”

He emphasized that inflation is at a three-year low, the value of the peso has increased 4% in comparison with the US dollar, the Mexican Stock Exchange is up 2%, foreign investment is strong, Mexico has become the United States’ largest trading partner and the government has struck an agreement with the private sector that will boost infrastructure spending.

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Brazil was just one of them.

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Pricknick's picture

is in order.
Another thing Lopez has attempted: The banning of glyphosate.
There are many companies who use glyphosate beside bayer and their trademark roundup. He has demanded the the banning of all glyphosate uses.
The man has cojones.
Thanks gjohn.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

edg's picture

President Biden will hold President Putin accountable for Russian election meddling in US elections. After all, we can't let other countries do to us what we do to other countries.

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Will the entertainment never end??

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin