MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, mentioned on Wednesday the nation was unsafe and criticized the earlier president for a failed safety coverage and refusal to just accept American help.
“The actuality is that Mexico just isn’t protected in the intervening time,” Salazar mentioned throughout a information convention at his residence in Mexico City.
The ambassador immediately criticized former President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, saying safety coordination between Mexico and the United States suffered throughout his tenure.
“Unfortunately this coordination failed over the past yr, largely as a result of the earlier president didn’t need to obtain assist from the United States,” he mentioned.
Lopez Obrador’s try to deal with the foundation causes of the violence, a method he known as “hugs, not bullets,” “did not work,” Salazar mentioned.
He added that he hopes President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took workplace final month, could be extra profitable in combating crime and violence by investing extra in safety.
Sheinbaum, who belongs to the identical social gathering as Lopez Obrador, harassed that his safety coverage will carefully observe that of the earlier president.
The feedback come as relations between Lopez Obrador and Salazar have turn out to be more and more strained in latest months after the ambassador criticized a judicial assessment carried out by the previous president.
It marks a stark shift from the early a part of Lopez Obrador’s presidency, when the 2 had been believed to have a detailed working relationship, a closeness that some U.S. diplomats privately criticized.
Mexico has suffered a latest wave of violence with tons of killed within the intra-cartel warfare in Sinaloa state, in addition to massacres in different states similar to Queretaro, the place 10 folks had been killed in a bar over the weekend.
(Reporting by Diego Delgado; Writing by Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Sandra Maler)
