On the morning of May 12, the same day the post-Title 42 border was unfolding, Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) held his usual morning press conference. It was a real tour de force, the main, recurring theme was the U.S. National Question as interpreted by the Mexican government.
AMLO, with sidekick Marcelo Ebrard, the cunning Foreign Minister and possible future president, and some eager reporters, bashed Republicans
(including a sitting governor, a congressman and senator), boasted about Mexican-Americans being loyal to Mexico and discussed their refusal to take in large amounts of deportees from the United States.
What a difference American leadership makes. Just a few short years back, President Donald Trump compelled AMLO and Ebrard to reduce the number of illegal aliens crossing Mexico to get to the United States by threatening stiff tariffs on Mexican exports. Indeed, AMLO was notably conciliatory towards Trump. But now with Biden as president, AMLO is on board with the Biden-Mayorkas Great Replacement plan. Of course, that’s more to his liking anyway.
The cunning Ebrard, a possible presidential candidate, attacked the “most radical wing” of the Republican party, by which he meant those who want a secure border. Anyone in favor of that crazy idea is, well, you know what he is: He’s a racist:
[T]he political strategy in the United States of the Republican Party, especially its most radical wing … to take advantage of these circumstances [the current border situation] and advance its strategy against Mexico, because the basis of all its arguments … is racism.
[Versión estenográfica. Conferencia de prensa del presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador del 12 de mayo de 2023 (“Stenographic Version. Press Conference of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of May 12, 2023”). Gob.mx May 12, 2023]
Ebrard also swung hard at Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana because of his comments about the drug cartels and Mexican dependence on the United States, which the Daily Mail dutifully used in a headline: ’If it weren’t for America, Mexicans would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent’: GOP Senator John Kennedy sparks diplomatic row over ‘racist’ migrant comments [by James Franey, May 12, 2023].
“Yesterday [sic] Senator Kennedy—not to be confused with the Democrat Kennedy family, this Kennedy is not, as far as I know, a member of that family, he comes from Louisiana—made a series of unacceptable statements for Mexico,” Ebrard hissed.
Ebrard is watching the U.S. House of Representatives, too. He doesn’t like The Secure the Border Act of 2023 that passed on May 12 because it includes border wall construction, would deport illegals to Mexico, and detain and deport minors back to their home countries.
The bill won’t pass the Senate, Ebrard observed, and said the measure is being used for political reasons. And again, “I must say that the proposals are unacceptable to Mexico. Mexico will never accept them.”
“Racism against Mexicans, and in general all Spanish speakers” explains the bill, Ebrard continued. And he called out Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida for introducing it. With a C grade from Numbers USA in the current Congress and a career D, Diaz-Balart is hardly a standard-bearer of the immigration reform movement. But because he introduced the bill, he deserves condemnation [Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart Introduces the “Secure the Border Act of 2023,” MarioDiazBallart.House.gov, May 2, 2023].
After that, Ebrard returned to Kennedy and played a video of Kennedy’s questioning of Anne Milgram, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, during a committee hearing. Kennedy is “a deeply ignorant man,” Ebrard declared:
What you just heard is a position of interest in the political process against Mexico and we are not going to permit it, that’s why we aren’t going to remain silent.
The Foreign Minister even brought in Mesoamerican archaeology to discredit Kennedy:
And let me say another thing. I was saying it yesterday and I repeat today, [Kennedy is] very ignorant, because he doesn’t know of our civilizations from which we stem, among them the Mayan civilization, a thousand years before Galileo.
Ebrard continued with a false talking point about the Maya calendar:
They studied the solar system and created the most exact calendar of the world, a thousand years earlier. We come from that, that is Mexico. This man is profoundly ignorant, he doesn’t know.
In fact, it’s Ebrard who “doesn’t know.” The Mayan calendar didn’t have a leap year, which makes it less exact than the Julian Calendar, instituted by the Romans on January 1st, 45 B.C., which was replaced by the Catholic Church’s even more accurate Gregorian Calendar in the 1500s.
Then it was back to the Republicans again. AMLO said:
[Their strategy] is a racist and false strategy against our country, and we are going to be saying it clearly because, if nothing is said and we remain silent, first of all, we would accept that our national pride be trampled on, which we would never allow; but, secondly, we would be encouraging them to take those kinds of measures because nobody tells them anything. So we are not going to allow it.
The senator is a persona non grata in Mexico, but he is also a liar to the citizens of the United States.
Isn't it really appropriate for the foreign minister of one country to attack another country’s elected official by name ?
He not only slammed Senator Kennedy but also offered voting advice for the paisanos, meaning U.S.-born Mexicans and all other Hispanics: “When it’s time to vote, don’t vote for candidates like this Senator Kennedy.”
But he didn’t stop with merely telling American citizens how they must vote because they’re paisanos. He bashed Kennedy, too, and explained why the paisanos must vote as he says:
I don’t even want to use that surname, because in Mexico we have a very good image of John F. Kennedy and his family, because he maintained a relationship of respect with Mexico.
But well, to say to our paisanos, the Hispanics, to our American friends, to not vote for persons with this mentality, very bossy, very offensive, very ridiculous. Whoever has a migrant grandfather, a migrant father, or who has arrived to the United States as a migrant, cannot support these attitudes.
Message: Recent immigrants and their children must not vote to restrict immigration. For the paisanos, immigration patriotism is unacceptable.
That meddling is bad enough. But then AMLO explained that the paisanos owe their loyalty not to the United States, where they were born, but to Mexico, their “fatherland.”
Remember what the song of [Panamanian singer] Ruben Blades says, “he who does not love his patria [‘fatherland’] does not love his mother”—he who does not respect his patria does not respect his mother. …
[T]here are 40 million Mexicans in the United States and the second Hispanic group is the Puerto Ricans with 5 million, 40 million Mexicans, 5 million Puerto Ricans, 4 million of our Cuban brothers, but this is sometimes forgotten. … We are many and we will be more.
AMLO also took a swipe at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, “who has the same posture, also of the Republican party, also making politics on the eve of campaigns.”
When Ebrard and AMLO finished bashing Americans, reporters got their licks in.
Adriana Estela Flores of the Mexican Radio institute denounced “these racist declarations by U.S. legislators and also decisions that they are making, such as made by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis,” and asked if any diplomatic responses were planned.
AMLO answered that he had good relations with President Biden, bragged again that Biden is not building a border wall, and recalled making President Trump laugh by telling him about a tunnel under the border.
Vicente Serrano, director of Sin Censura TV (No Censorship TV) asserted that Americans would have no food without Mexican labor. “How long are we going to put up with these offensive acts?” Serrano asked rhetorically. He insisted that AMLO “visit the migrant communities of Mexicans in the U.S.”
“I don’t want them to have reasons to say that I am meddling in the internal politics of the United States,” AMLO answered. “The important thing is that they know that they can count on the support of the government of Mexico. … And we are going to always, always, always defend the migrants, and not just the Mexican migrants.”
Another reporter asked Ebrard about deportations to Mexico from the U.S.
Replied Ebrard:
Mexico has let them [the Americans] know that it cannot, in any case, receive more than 1,000 persons a day, we cannot, we do not have the capacity to accept them. … [T]hey [American officials] know that we are not going to accept more than that number, because we can’t.
Let that sink in.
Thousands of illegal aliens, both non-Mexicans and Mexicans, are entering the U.S. from Mexican territory. Yet the Mexican foreign Minister is saying that Mexico will only take back 1000 a day. They refuse to take back more than 1000 people and say they can’t, even though all these people entered from Mexico.
A patriotic American president defending our sovereignty would not accept that for a minute. But our president is Joe Biden.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008 after many years residing in Mexico. Allan‘s wife is from Mexico and is now a U.S. citizen, their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Border Hawk blog archive is here, his website is here.
