Not intervening” is not an alibi to justify “complicity

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Mexico’s President-Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his nominated Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard, announced their return to the “Estrada Doctrine” in conducting foreign relations with “a policy of not getting involved in foreign matters that will seek not to meddle in conflicts such as the ones in Venezuela or Nicaragua”.  A mistaken political position that ignores existing International Law in whose context, “not intervening” and/or “the self-determination” are not an alibi of “complicity with Organized Crime’s dictatorships”.

The Estrada Doctrine was named after Genaro Estrada, Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs and was published on 27 September of 1930.  It states; “the government of Mexico does not grant accreditation because it considers this practice to be degrading since it, besides undermining the sovereignty of other nations, places these nations in a case in which their internal matters may be judged in any way by other governments who, in fact, assume an attitude of criticism in deciding favorably or unfavorably, over the legal capacity of foreign governments.  The Mexican government limits itself only to keep or to remove its diplomatic representatives, anytime it deems this appropriate without judging precipitously, or after the fact, the right of the nations to accept, retain, or replace their governments of authorities”.

The Estrada Doctrine proclaims to be founded on: the self-determination of the nations or their right to free determination that is “the right of a nation to decide on its own form of government, to accept, to keep, and to replace its authorities, to be freely structured without external interference”, it is “the right of a nation to decide for itself” and not to intervene, meaning “that it is the obligation of the States to abstain from intervening, directly or indirectly, in the internal affairs of another State with the intent of affecting its will and obtaining its subordination.”

The international legal standard of today is governed by –among other things- the United Nations Charter (UN) in existence since 24 October of 1945 that has as its purpose “the international peacekeeping and security”; by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted on 10 December of 1948 with the fundamental objective “that Human Rights be protected by Law in order for people not to be compelled to the supreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression”; by the Charter of Bogota that created the Organization of American States (OAS) on 30 April of 1948; by the American Convention over Human Rights (Treaty of San Jose) of 22 November of 1969; by the Interamerican Democratic Charter (IDC) of 11 September of 2001.

The free determination of the nations and not intervening are not absolute principles as they were intended in 1930 when the Estrada Doctrine was published and are now applied within the framework of meeting “international obligations” among which the respect for human rights such as; the right of life, freedom, security, equality before the law, not to be subjected to torture, not to be arbitrarily detained, imprisoned, or exiled, to have free speech and freedom of the press, and many more, are preferred.

Democracy is a human right in the Americas.  The Treaty of San Jose begins “recognizing the objective to consolidate, in this continent, within the framework of democratic institutions, a regime of personal freedom and that of social justice based on the respect for the basic rights of the people”.  Article 1 of the IDC establishes that “America’s peoples have the right to democracy and their governments the obligation to promote and defend it”.

Free determination is precisely what the people subjected to dictatorships DO NOT have in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia where there is no respect for any of the basic components of democracy. With dictators who assassinate, massacre, imprison, exile, extort, who commit crime as the means to indefinitely sustain themselves in the government, these holders of power in narco-states; Raul Castro, Nicolas Maduro, Daniel Ortega, Evo Morales and their regimes is who Lopez Obrador is invoking the backward and out of date Estrada Doctrine to deal with, thus becoming in an accomplice and concealer?

Published in Spanish by Infobae.com on Sunday July 15th, 2018