Mexico’s excuses for inviting Putin and Maduro for inauguration are ridiculous

Andres Oppenheimer

Mexico’s invitation to autocrats Vladimir Putin of Russia and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela for President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s Oct. 1 inauguration is far from a routine diplomatic custom, as the Mexican government claims. It is an open endorsement of two of the world’s most brutal dictators.

The news of Mexico’s invitation to Putin was first reported by Russian media last week. The Izvestia newspaper quoted an official at Mexico’s Embassy in Moscow as saying that the “invitation to take part in the inauguration of President Sheinbaum was sent to President Putin.” It added that the Russian president would decide whether to attend or send a high-ranking official in his place.

It was a shocking revelation, because Putin has a warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, including the illegal deportation of hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia after his 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

International law experts agree that Mexico, as a member of the ICC, would have to arrest Putin if he set foot in its territory. But Mexico’s leftist populist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said that Mexico “cannot do that,” and that “it wouldn’t be proper” for his country to arrest the Russian leader if he accepts the invitation.

Sheinbaum later tried to downplay the invitations to Putin and Maduro, saying that it is customary for Mexico to invite all heads of state of countries with which Mexico has diplomatic relations to its presidents’ inaugural ceremonies. Sheinbaum’s designated foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, said 208 heads of state have been invited to her swearing in ceremony, as part of a “protocol practice” for such occasions.

But these official explanations have more holes in them than a Swiss cheese.

It’s not true that Mexico has invited all countries with which it has diplomatic ties to Sheinbaum’s inauguration. Lopez Obrador admitted that he has not invited Peru and Ecuador to the event because of “differences” with the two countries’ governments.

While Mexico recently broke relations with Ecuador over Ecuador’s arrest of a former Ecuadoran vice-president accused of corruption who had taken refuge at the Mexican embassy in Quito, the Mexican government continues to have diplomatic relations with Peru.

Lopez Obrador has accused Peru’s Dina Boluarte of being an illegitimate president, claiming that Peru’s former extreme-left president, Pedro Castillo, was illegally overthrown. In fact, Castillo was constitutionally ousted after he announced the closing of Congress in what amounted to a coup to grab absolute powers.

It’s ironic that Mexico is now inviting Maduro, who brazenly stole the July 28 elections, while at the same time not inviting the legitimate president of Peru.

In addition, Mexico’s claim that inviting all heads of state is a customary practice by Mexico’s governments is only partially true.

It’s true in normal times, but these are not normal times. When you have Russia invading a neighboring country, or Maduro committing the biggest documented electoral fraud in recent Latin American history, you’re talking about entirely abnormal situations.

Mexico’s former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda told me that when many Latin American countries transitioned to democracies in the 1990s, it became a common practice for Latin American presidents to invite all of their counterparts in the region to their inaugural ceremonies. But with the current trend of democracies becoming authoritarian regimes, that norm no longer makes sense, he added.

“If Maduro goes to Mexico, it would amount to a blank Mexican validation of Venezuela’s electoral fraud,” Castañeda told me.

My bet is that Putin will not attend Sheinbaum’s inaugural ceremony — it’s too big a risk — but that Maduro will. Unlike Putin, Maduro is under investigation but has not yet been convicted by the ICC, and has the precedent of already having attended Lopez Obrador’s 2018 inauguration.

The Venezuelan dictator is craving for international legitimacy after his latest electoral fraud, and would be more than happy to appear in the picture alongside democratically-elected Latin American presidents. By allowing him to do that, Mexico will become an accomplice of one of the biggest electoral frauds in Latin American history.