Mexican president: Blinken ‘misinformed’ on journalist killings

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rebuked Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday, after the U.S.’s top diplomat lamented the recent killings of Mexican journalists.

“Of course it’s very sad that there are assassinations of journalists, we know it, it’s just that we are acting on all these cases, there is no impunity, they are not crimes by the state,” said López Obrador at his daily press conference. 

“And if the chief of the Department of State of the government of the United States intervenes, well I think he doesn’t know, he’s not well informed about this situation because there are no crimes by the state,” he added.

Blinken on Tuesday tweeted his concern about the killings; so far in 2022, five journalists have been killed in the country. 

“The high number of journalists killed in Mexico this year and the ongoing threats they face are concerning. I join those calling for greater accountability and protections for Mexican journalists. My heart goes out to the loved ones of those who gave their lives for the truth,” wrote Blinken. 

López Obrador defended his government’s actions to protect journalists from threats, including a mechanism to grant special federal security assistance to journalists. 

But those efforts have been called into question, particularly after the January death of Lourdes Maldonado López, who was technically protected by the federal mechanism when she was killed in Tijuana. 

Maldonado had personally appealed to López Obrador at his daily press conference in 2019, and was involved in a protracted lawsuit against Jaime Bonilla, a former governor of the state of Baja California and close ally of López Obrador.

Most recently, journalist Heber López Vásquez was killed in Oaxaca earlier this month, shortly after a colleague of his survived an attack.

On the day after López’s murder, López Obrador took to his podium to rail against a prominent national journalist, Carlos Loret de Mola, who has been reporting on the president’s son’s lifestyle in Texas.

In attacking Loret de Mola, López Obrador revealed the journalist’s supposed income and called on tax authorities to investigate his earnings.

In the wake of the scandals over his son’s lifestyle and the public threats against Loret de Mola, López Obrador railed against the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for funding anti-corruption groups critical of his administration.

López Obrador has often relied on anti-American rhetoric that had previously been largely abandoned in Mexico over the past quarter century. 

Days before hosting Vice President Harris in Mexico City last May, López Obrador slammed the Biden administration’s alleged interventionism, saying that USAID was funding “coup plotters” in the country. 

Former President Trump threatened Mexico with economic sanctions and tariffs. And López Obrador, who on the campaign trail in 2018 published a Trump-critical book called “Listen, Trump,” mostly avoided touching on bilateral issues in his morning press conferences during the Trump administration.

López Obrador’s rhetoric has become more fiery under the Biden administration.

That’s despite Trump’s threats, tensions over border wall construction, and despite the fact that USAID disbursed $55.62 million in Mexico in 2019, $46.07 million in 2020 and $38.95 million in 2021. 

In response to Blinken’s tweet, López Obrador said Mexican authorities are investigating the murders of journalists and suggested the secretary keep up to date on those efforts.

“[I would] ask [Blinken] as a favor to get informed and for them not to act in an interventionist manner because Mexico is not a colony of the United States, nor is it a protectorate. Mexico is a free, independent, sovereign country,” said López Obrador.

Updated 6:33 p.m.