Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador slammed three Cuban-American US senators representing both the Republicans and Democrats during a press conference with the Mexican media.
Speaking on Wednesday morning, Mr Obrador accused New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, Florida Republican Marco Rubio, Texas Republican Ted Cruz, and other Cubans in the US of using their influence to keep the US embargo against Cuba in place.
Mr Obrador said Cuba was one of the reasons for his absence from the Summit of the Americas, which is being hosted by President Joe Biden in Los Angeles, California. Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were not invited to the summit over human rights concerns.
On Tuesday, Mr Rubio tweeted in Spanish: “Glad to see that the Mexican president, who has handed over sections of his country to drug cartels and is an apologist for tyranny in Cuba, a murderous dictator in Nicaragua and a drug trafficker in Venezuela, will not be in the US this week.”
On Wednesday, Mr Obrador rejected Mr Rubio’s claims regarding cartels and instead went after the senatorial trio.
“I want proof,” he said about the allegations hurled against him, according to Reuters. “Because I have proof that (Mr Cruz) has received money from those in favour of gun manufacturing in the United States (to lobby against) a ban on sales.”
According to government transparency watchdog OpenSecrets, Mr Cruz and his campaign have received more than $440,000 from gun lobbyists during his career in politics.
Mr Obrador also played a clip from Sky News during the press conference, showing Mr Cruz walking away from an interview as a reporter presses him on mass shootings following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on 24 May when 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old gunman.
“You’ve got your political agenda,” Mr Cruz told the reporter as he left the interview. “God love you.”
On Thursday, Mr Menendez appeared on MSNBC and accused Mr Obrador of trying to blackmail Mr Biden to include authoritarian governments in the Summit of the Americas.
“I think President López Obrador basically tried to blackmail President Biden into insisting countries that are not democratic, countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, that are dictators and despots, should have been invited to the summit,” Mr Menendez said.
The leaders of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador joined Mr Obrador’s summit boycott.
“I applaud President Biden for upholding the standard of the Summit to be a summit of democracies,” Mr Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, added.
On Monday, Mr Obrador compared Mr Menendez’s stances on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to those of Mr Rubio and Mr Cruz.
“Those two gentlemen, I understand them better because they’re Republicans. But this gentleman, he’s in the Democratic Party,” Mr Obrador said.
“Because of internal pressures, President Biden can’t invite everyone,” Mr Obrador claimed. “Because of the influential senator, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, imagine that.”
“Instead of coming to the summit and strengthening the relationship with us after four years of Donald Trump, he chose to stay away and side with dictators and despots,” Mr Menendez told MSNBC, referring to Mr Obrador. “If that’s what he claims is my problem, then so be it.”
