MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, mentioned on Wednesday that the nation just isn’t protected and criticized the earlier president for a failed safety coverage and refusing to just accept American help.
“The truth is that for the time being Mexico just isn’t protected,” Salazar mentioned throughout a press convention at his residence in Mexico Metropolis.
The ambassador criticized former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador immediately, saying safety coordination between Mexico and the U.S. had suffered throughout his time period.
“Sadly this coordination has failed within the final yr, in nice half as a result of the earlier president didn’t wish to obtain assist from america,” he mentioned.
Lopez Obrador’s try to handle the basis causes of violence, a method he referred to as “hugs not bullets,” did “not work,” Salazar mentioned.
He added he hoped that President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took workplace final month, would have larger success in combating crime and violence by investing extra in safety.
Sheinbaum, who belongs to the identical celebration as Lopez Obrador, has harassed that her safety coverage will observe carefully that of the earlier president.
The feedback come as relations between Lopez Obrador and Salazar have grow to be more and more fraught in latest months, after the ambassador criticized a judicial overhaul being pushed by the previous president.
It marks a definite change from the sooner a part of Lopez Obrador’s presidency when the 2 had been considered having an in depth working relationship – a proximity that some U.S. diplomats privately criticized.
Mexico has suffered a latest wave of violence with lots of killed in intra-cartel warfare within the state of Sinaloa in addition to massacres in different states akin to Queretaro the place 10 individuals had been killed in a bar over the weekend.
