Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, the wife of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has accused a Spanish newspaper of libel after it reported that she would soon move to Madrid with her son and live in an exclusive neighborhood of the Spanish capital.
The ABC newspaper reported on Saturday that Gutiérrez would “soon” settle in Madrid with her 18-year-old son Jesús Ernesto López Gutiérrez.
“ABC has been able to confirm through diplomatic sources that the wife of the ex-president of Mexico requested in March a residence permit in order to settle in Madrid,” the newspaper said.
ABC said that the same unnamed sources confirmed that Gutiérrez would move to Madrid, “without her husband” but with Jesús Ernesto, who “will start studies at a public university in Madrid, probably the Complutense.”
The newspaper also said that “the influential wife” of López Obrador “has chosen” to “establish her residence” in the “exclusive La Moraleja housing development,” located north of central Madrid.
Later in the report, ABC said it appeared “certain” that Gutiérrez would move into the neighborhood. The newspaper said it wasn’t known whether the move would be permanent or temporary.
Incorrectly citing the ABC report, some Mexican newspapers reported that Gutiérrez had already moved to Madrid. SDP Noticias reported more than two weeks ago that she had already moved to La Moraleja.
Gutiérrez — an academic, writer and, according to ABC, the “gray eminence” behind López Obrador’s 2019 letter asking the king of Spain to apologize for the conquest of Mexico — hit back at the ABC report in a statement posted to social media on Monday morning.
She began by asserting that ABC is the “equivalent” of Mexican newspapers such as Reforma and El Universal — “professional libelers of the most rancid and corrupt right [wing of politics].”
Such publications “want to take revenge on you-know-who,” Gutiérrez wrote, referring to López Obrador, best known as AMLO.
Gutiérrez said that neither she nor Jesús Ernesto has moved to Spain or anywhere else. However, she didn’t directly respond to the assertion that she will — future tense — move to Madrid with her son.
Among the other remarks she made in her statement were that:
- She is “independent” of politics.
- She has worked in “teaching and research” at a public university in Mexico — the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla — for decades and continues to do so.
- She is “in love” with AMLO and her son.
- They are a “very close family” that has been “vilified” because of the “ideals of that beautiful crazy man called AMLO.”
- She visited AMLO in Palenque, Chiapas, on the weekend. (Gutiérrez presumably lives in Mexico City.)
Gutiérrez also wrote that López Obrador “achieved at least two historic feats during his presidency: “notably reducing poverty and inequality” in Mexico and returning “to the people of Mexico … the power they have.”
“Now these non-imaginary citizens have become a very powerful force; in our beloved Mexico, those who considered themselves owners and lords of the nation no longer steal or rule,” she added.
“… Do you want more clarification? Are you going to continue libeling?” Gutiérrez wrote at the end of her statement.
The publication of the ABC report came after Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, one of AMLO’s sons from his first marriage and a high-ranking official with the ruling Morena party, was criticized by opposition politicians and others for vacationing at a luxury hotel in Tokyo.
Extravagant international travel — and a supposed plan to move to an exclusive neighborhood in Madrid — are seen by many Mexicans as incompatible with the public and personal austerity promoted by AMLO, founder of Morena.
Austerity is — or is supposed to be — a hallmark of Morena and its politicians, leading to various Morena officials in addition to López Beltrán, including Senator Ricardo Monreal and Education Minister Mario Delgado, to come under fire for their recent international travel.
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies ([email protected])
