Mexican new leader’s red-carpet invite to Cuba, Venezuelan dictators is big mistake

Andres Oppenheimer

Mexico’s incoming president Claudia Sheinbaum is sending the wrong signals before taking office: She has scared U.S. investors by actively supporting a controversial judicial reform, added fuel to a pointless spat with Spain, and invited the dictators of Cuba and Venezuela to her Oct. 1 inauguration.

Sheinbaum, a left-of-center protégé of outgoing populist president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, can hardly afford to pick fights with Mexico’s business community, or with its top trade partners. Thanks to the outgoing president’s ineptitude, the country’s economic growth has been recently downgraded by Mexico’s central bank to a meager 1.5 % in 2024, and 1.2 % in 2025.

More importantly, Mexico is scheduled to start negotiations next year to update its free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, which comes up for a revision in 2026. More than 80% of Mexico’s exports go to the U.S. market.

If anything, Sheinbaum should have remained silent about Lopez Obrador’s populist judicial reform. The judicial overhaul will in effect allow the president to control the judicial branch, which has triggered fears among investors that they will have no legal protections against potential expropriations or unfair government measures.

But instead of remaining quiet about it, Sheinbaum has enthusiastically embraced the judicial reform, even after Moody’s credit risk agency and major banks such as Morgan Stanley warned it may scare away investments. U.S. ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar has said that the judicial reform “threatens the historic commercial relationship” between Mexico and the United States.

In an interview last week, Mexico’s Senate President Gerardo Fernandez Noroña, a firebrand leftist member of Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena party, told me that “investors have nothing to fear” about the judicial reform.

But the fact is that, regardless of what Mexican authorities say, investors lend much more credence to what credit risk agencies and financial media say. The Wall Street Journal reported before the judicial reform became law that U.S. multinationals could freeze $35 billion in planned investments in Mexico because of it.

Likewise, Sheinbaum’s invitations to foreign dictators to her inauguration raises questions about her priorities. While she invited the dictators of Cuba, Venezuela and Russia, she did not extend invitations to the king of Spain or the presidents of Ecuador and Peru.

Although Russia’s president Vladimir Putin — who has an international arrest warrant against him — has already said he won’t be able to attend, he will send a top official in his place. Cuba’s dictator Miguel Diaz-Canel is scheduled to accept the invite and receive the same red-carpet welcome as democratically-elected leaders. Venezuela’s ruler Nicolás Maduro has not yet confirmed his attendance, but may very well appear at the last moment.

Sheinbaum has not invited Spain’s King Felipe VI because he has not responded to a 2019 Lopez Obrador letter demanding that Spain ask “forgiveness” for crimes committed during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The Spanish government responded that the king’s exclusion was “absolutely unacceptable,” and that it would not send any official delegation to the incoming president’s inauguration.

It makes little sense for Sheinbaum to exclude the Spanish king for crimes that took place 500 years ago, while at the same time giving a royal welcome to dictators who are committing major human rights abuses nowadays. And yet, Sheinbaum has celebrated the escalation of tensions with Spain as a major victory for Mexico, claiming on Sept. 25 that Spain’s refusal to ask forgiveness for its abuses during the Conquest is “an offense” to the Mexican people.

Just as inconsistent, if not more, is the fact that Sheinbaum has not invited the constitutionally elected presidents of Ecuador and Perú. Lopez Obrador has falsely claimed that they are not legitimate, and Sheinbaum has in effect bought that lie.

Amazingly, Sheinbaum’s inaugural guest list suggests that she considers the dictators of Cuba and Venezuela more legitimate than those of Ecuador and Peru. That’s absurd. As politically difficult as it may be for her, she should take distance from her predecessor, and focus on attracting investments and reducing poverty.