MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

No diplomatic rift between Argentina and Mexico despite verbal clash between Milei and AMLO

Mondino and Bárcena agreed that things would not escalate

Foreign Ministries Diana Mondino of Argentina and Alicia Bárcena of Mexico held a telephone conversation Friday during which they concurred that the recent exchange of epithets between Presidents Javier Milei and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) did not jeopardize the two countries' diplomatic relations, which they agreed to label as “solid.” Bárcena and Mondino thus made it clear that neither nation intended to escalate the dispute.

Milei called the Mexican leader an ignoramus during a TV interview and AMLO replied on X that he indeed was one because he could not understand how Argentines, being as intelligent as they are, had voted for someone who despised them.

The Mexican leader also recalled that Milei once dubbed his fellow Argentine national Pope Francis a Communist and the ”representative of the Evil One on earth“ when, in his view, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires was ”the most Christian Pope and defender of the poor that I have ever known or heard of.“

“I had a pleasant conversation with the Minister of Argentina Diana Mondino, where we affirmed our bilateral relationship of cooperation and mutual respect. Position confirmed by the Embassy of Mexico in Argentina,” Bárcena wrote on X.

The Mexican Embassy in Buenos Aires also noted that the relationship between the two countries was “solid, based on mutual respect and bilateral cooperation,” thus downplaying media rumors that AMLO was planning to withdraw his mission from the South American country as Colombian President Gustavo Petro did after engaging in reciprocal verbal diatribes with Milei.