A cornerstone of México’s foreign policy since the 1930’s has been the non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. For many years the country’s foreign policy was based on the Estrada Doctrine. The Estrada Doctrine argues that governments should not intervene in the internal affairs of another country. For example, often confusing to Americans is México’s seemingly support of the Castro regime in Cuba. What appeared to be support for Fidel Castro during the 1960’s through the 1990’s was the Mexican government’s stated argument that no country should interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs, believing, instead that it was up to the Cuban people to change their government should they choose to. Basically, the Estrada Doctrine says that the Mexican government should not call for regime change in Cuba because of Castro. Instead, any Cuban regime change was for the Cuban people to decide.
Although generally being the foreign policy of the Mexican government, non-interventionism was not always applied equally. The Mexican government openly criticized Augusto Pinochet’s rule over Chile, criticizing his human rights violations while supporting Castro. The dichotomy of the doctrine of noninterventionism is observed by how the Mexican government dealt with Castro versus Pinochet. On one had human rights violations were a factor while on the other it was not.
While México strongly condemned the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973 and severed ties with Augusto Pinochet the following year, México kept close diplomatic relations with Cuba under Fidel Castro. For the Mexican government, Pinochet’s violent takeover of Chile went against Chile’s democratic processes, while from the Mexican perspective, the Cuban Revolution was an internal matter for the Cuban people to decide.
But politics, especially geopolitics, is not a simple binary problem. It is often complicated by external factors. An underlining factor in the Cuban Mexican relationship was the ability for the Mexican government to undermine U.S. ideological foreign policy, or so it seems on the surface. But in the case of Cuba there was another geopolitical factor at play – the United States, but not in the fashion many believe.
There was the public face – an in-your-face approach to diplomacy where México challenged America’s foreign policy – while behind the scenes was a more complex and duplicitous Mexican foreign policy working in coordination with the U.S. For many, the Cuban and Mexican relationship was believed to be about communism, which it was for the U.S., but for México, it wasn’t a communist issue, but rather a Mexicanism issue where the Mexican government was challenging America’s foreign policy publicly. The was the convenient public reason.
The reality was that the U.S. and México had reached an “informal understanding” at the “highest levels,” according to a diplomatic cable Henry Dearborn sent to the Secretary of State on June 28, 1967. México was to have a “foot in the door” with Cuba to facilitate Cuban information gathering while keeping open communications with the Cubans. The U.S. wanted México to openly defy American foreign policy with Cuba while allowing the Mexican government to feign independence from its large neighbor to the north. Such was the cooperation of México that it created a special post in its embassy in Cuba to allow CIA operative Humberto Carrillo Colón to collect intelligence about Cuba for the U.S. government. And he did so for several years. When Cuban intelligence discovered it, everyone simply ignored it, including the Cubans.
Most Americans and American officials today will argue that the Mexican support for the Cuban regime was out of solidarity when it was more out of mutual political convenience for the U.S. and México at the expense of Cuba.
It wasn’t until 2000 under Vicente Fox that the Mexican government started to openly distance itself from its Cuban relationship and get closer to America’s foreign policy when it came to Cuba. This realignment was driven by the strategic decision on the part of the Mexican government to realign with the George W. Bush Administration in the hopes of bringing both countries closer together on domestic and international issues. Bush had shown friendliness toward Mexican interests on various levels, and it gave the Fox Administration an opportunity to address several bilateral issues that had stalled over decades.
But the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, closed the door on Fox’s attempt to realign the U.S.-México bilateral relationship.
The 9/11 attacks brought several intragovernmental entities closer together mainly in the national security and homeland security fronts, including a closer working relationship between both militaries. Publicly, México continued to follow the Estrada Doctrine on several fronts but also worked on American interests at times especially when it came to homeland security.
This tenuous relationship lasted until Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) reaffirmed the Estrada Doctrine in the context of asserting Mexican independence from America while staying away from antagonizing one global political sphere over the other. But the working security relationship with America remains intact today. The public reassertion of the Estrada Doctrine was evident in the War in Ukraine with México supporting all United Nations resolutions except for suspending Russia’s membership in the Human Rights Committee, choosing instead to abstain. Most were distracted with the abstention not realizing that México voted along the lines of helping Ukraine in every other vote.
In defense of the abstention and the decision not to provide Ukraine with weapons, AMLO said that México was “neither for nor against” either of the two belligerents. AMLO declined to impose sanctions on Russia and did not send weapons to Ukraine, instead choosing a neutral posture. For AMLO, this war was a convenient time to argue pacificism and neutrality because neither country had strong ties with México.
While neither Russia nor Ukraine have strong economic ties with México, AMLO’s neutrality allowed him to focus on taking advantage of the Trump Administration’s first term distraction with the border wall and domestic party politics to shore up the Mexican growing manufacturing economy by encouraging manufacturers to use México as their entry point into the American market. They did this by shifting production away from Asia into México starting in late 2022.
Contrary to the rhetoric that the Chinese made inroads into México as a springboard into the American market, AMLO kept the Chinese at a distance for two reasons. The first was to not encourage Americans to look closer at México’s manufacturing growth as a competitive problem for American companies, and the second is simply because Chinese and Mexican manufacturers compete with the same products thus for México, China is a competitor and not a market for Mexican products.
Under AMLO, México became America’s largest trading partner even under the chaos of the first Trump Administration with near-shoring by manufacturing companies shifting away from Asia to México that continues unabated to this day, further strengthening México as an indispensable American partner. But seemingly to portray México as a distant neighbor for the US, AMLO used the convenience of the Estrada Doctrine for symbolism.
AMLO’s reaffirmation of the Estrada Doctrine was just theater for domestic and international politics. For AMLO, noninterventionism was nothing more than a tool. For the most part, Claudia Sheinbaum continues the model established by AMLO – distracting from México’s growing manufacturing base bringing the two American economies closer while using the Estrada Doctrine and noninterventionism as a tool, rather than as foreign policy.
Recent events underline the usefulness and the distraction of the Estrada Doctrine for Mexican foreign policy, one that it embarked under AMLO and continue through Sheinbaum today.
México, for the first time in its history, is working on several fronts to make regime changes in South American countries. Most have not noticed, but three recent examples make it clear.
In 2019, AMLO authorized the Mexican Air Force to launch operation Chimoré (Operación Chimoré) to fly ex-Bolivian President Evo Morales out of Bolivia. Mexican media have characterized operation Chimoré as the “rescue” of Morales. Chimoré is the name of the Bolivian airport from where the Mexican aircraft departed Bolivian airspace with Morales onboard.
Evo Morales resigned the Bolivian presidency on November 10, 2019, after weeks of protests over the disputed election. Morales, who was first elected in 2006, drew controversy when he ran for a fourth term in violation of Bolivia’s constitution. Two days after Morales resigned, a Mexican Airforce transport aircraft departed Mexico City on its way to Bolivia to pick up Morales after he had requested political asylum from México. The aircraft landed in Peru to refuel before continuing to Bolivia. Peruvian officials told the Mexican pilot in command of the aircraft that “for political reasons” their planned refueling stop on their return trip from Bolivia had been canceled and they would not be allowed to land in Peru a second time.
After a tense standoff at the Bolivian military airport with Morales on the aircraft and Bolivian soldiers physically assaulting one of the Mexican pilots who were ordering him to have Morales deplane, the Mexican aircraft departed Bolivia. A Bolivian general had told the Mexican pilots that they had 30 minutes to depart Bolivian airspace, allowing them to takeoff. The general told them that after 30 minutes he would not be responsible for their welfare.
The Mexican Airforce aircraft departed Bolivia, refueled in Paraguay and flew back to México via Brazil and Peru which provided them with overflight permission to continue the journey. On the evening of November 11, 2019, Evo Morales arrived in Mexico City. After deplaning, he told those gathered to witness his arrival in México that the Mexican people had saved his life.
Morales returned to Bolivia in late November 2020. Earlier this year, a Bolivian judge ordered that Morales be arrested for an alleged statutory rape from an incident in 2016. Morales has denied the accusation and remains hiding in a Bolivian jungle today.
México’s extraction of Morales from Bolivia was the first Mexican operation in generations where México publicly intervened in another country’s internal affairs and the first in recent memory where Mexican armed forces were involved, albeit unarmed. It came at the cost of other South American countries challenging Mexican attempts to project political power against them.
Five years after the Mexican aircraft flew Morales out of Bolivia, Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican embassy in Quito on April 5, 2024, to arrest former Ecuadorian vice-president Jorge Glas who had sought refuge at the Mexican embassy. Ecuadorian police successfully arrested and removed Glas from the Mexican Embassy damaging property and assaulting at least one Mexican official.
Before the raid on the embassy, Glas had sought refuge at the embassy in Quito. Soon after Glas’ term ended, he requested political asylum from México, which López Obrador granted. Glas was accused of corruption by Ecuadorian officials. As tensions between Ecuador and México grew, the Mexican president made matters worse by suggesting that the recent Ecuadorian elections were conducted in “strange manner.”
The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (PDF download) prohibits local police from entering a foreign embassy without the authority of the embassy’s ambassador. Both Ecuador and México have ratified the accord.
Soon after the embassy raid, México recalled its ambassador and severed international relations with Ecuador over the raid. It also filed a complaint with International Court of Justice (ICJ) for violations of the Vienna Convention on April 11, 2024. The complaint remains pending before the court today. Diplomatic relations between the two countries remain broken. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in April that she will not renew diplomatic relations with Ecuador so long as Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa remains in office.
Glas is currently in an Ecuadorian jail after being given an additional 13-year sentence for corruption. He is not expected to be released until 2041. A third South American country took offense this year to México’s attempt to influence their internal affairs.
On Monday, Peru cut off diplomatic relations with México after it learned that former Peruvian Prime Minister Betssy Chávez was at the Mexican embassy seeking refuge from Peruvian authorities who had accused her of participating in the 2022 coup attempt. Chávez had been in a Peruvian jail since June 2023 over her alleged part in former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo’s attempt to dissolve the congress. Chávez was granted bail in September and faces 25-years in prison if she is convicted. Castillo remains in jail after being impeached and arrested in December 2022. He faces 34 years in jail if convicted on charges of rebellion. Both Castillo and Chávez have denied any wrongdoing.
Peru had previously expelled the Mexican ambassador in 2022 after México granted asylum to Castillo’s wife and children after he was arrested. Peruvian officials have accused México of “repeated instances” of interfering in Peru’s “internal affairs.”
On Thursday, Peru declared Sheinbaum persona non grata. The persona non grata declaration has little legal implications. At best, Sheinbaum would not be allowed into Peru and if found there she cannot claim diplomatic immunity as a head of state. For the most part, it is a symbolic gesture that goes to the core of the Estrada Doctrine. Sheinbaum was declared person non grata for interfering in Peru’s internal affairs in violation of the fundamentals of the doctrine of nonintervention.
In all three cases, México offered political asylum to three former heads of state; Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru after they were accused of abuse of power. All three were removed by the people of their respective countries.
Although the stated fundamental ideal of the Estrada Doctrine is noninterference in the internal affairs of another country, and López Obrador’s reassertion of it after Fox moved away from it, the reality is that the two MORENA presidents, AMLO and Sheinbaum are intervening in the internal affairs of the three South American countries.
Under the two most recent Mexican leaders, the Mexican state is moving towards a more active international engagement through direct diplomatic confrontation by offering refuge to removed heads of state they politically align with. Outwardly the government argues international diplomacy based on the Estrada Doctrine, but the cases of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru betray a more assertive approach towards the use of diplomatic tools to effect political change in other countries.
