The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress of Peru approved on Monday a motion that seeks to declare President Claudia Sheinbaum a persona non grata due to her refusal to recognize Dina Boluarte as the legitimate president of Peru and her support for ex-president Pedro Castillo.
The motion — supported by 12 members of the Foreign Affairs Committee and opposed by six — will be considered by the 130-seat unicameral Congress of Peru in the coming weeks and is likely to be approved given the makeup of the legislature.
A persona non grata designation would prevent Sheinbaum from visiting Peru — although she would be unlikely to do so while Boluarte is in office — and would further sour the relationship between Mexico and Latin America’s fifth most populous country, both of which belong to the four-member Pacific Alliance trade bloc.
The official news portal of the Peruvian Congress reported that the proponents of the persona non grata motion believe that Sheinbaum has demonstrated a “hostile” attitude toward Peru since she took office in October 2024 due to her failure to recognize “the constitutional succession” in the country after Castillo was removed from office in 2022, and by referring to the ex-president as the “legitimate president of Peru.”
On Tuesday, Sheinbaum described the ousting of Castillo as a “coup.”
Ernesto Bustamante, a congressman with the right-wing Popular Force party, said that the motion seeks to punish Sheinbaum for her “high-flown and offensive” statements against Peru.
Congresswoman María del Carmen Alva Prieto said that the motion is not against the Mexican people, “with whom we share a history and friendship.”
Instead, it represents “a legitimate defense of national dignity,” she said.
“Peru demands respect for its sovereignty and its institutions,” Alva said.
The text of the motion refers to remarks made by Sheinbaum as “an unacceptable interference in Peru’s internal affairs and an insult to the national democratic system.”
The tension between Peru and Mexico dates back to late 2022, when Castillo was ousted from office by the Peruvian Congress due to “moral incapacity.”
Boluarte, who was Castillo’s vice president, assumed the presidency.
Castillo, a former teacher and union leader who was sworn in as president in July 2021, was arrested after his removal as president and has been detained since Dec. 7, 2022, on charges of rebellion and conspiracy, among other crimes. On that day, “he gave a televised speech in which he declared the dissolution of Congress and his intent to rule by decree,” the Associated Press reported.
Later in December 2022, then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared that Mexico’s diplomatic relations with Peru were “on hold,” and said that his government still considered Castillo to be the leader of the South American nation.
He said that Castillo had faced “an atmosphere of confrontation and hostility” from the beginning of his “legitimate presidency” due to “the interests of the economic and political elite.”
López Obrador also said that Castillo was a “victim of harassment and confrontation” and considered an uncultured “mountain-dweller” by the political and economic elite in Peru.
“… He was always harassed and they weakened him until they managed to remove him,” said AMLO, who accused Boluarte of “usurping” the presidency.
Sheinbaum unconcerned about possible persona non grata designation
At her Tuesday morning press conference, Sheinbaum said that her remarks about the political happenings and situation in Peru didn’t amount to an act of “aggression” against the South American nation.
The Peruvian Foreign Affairs Committee’s approval of the motion seeking to designate the president as a persona non grata came 10 days after Sheinbaum welcomed Castillo’s lawyer, Guido Croxatto, to the National Palace in Mexico City.
In a social media post at the time, Sheinbaum said that Castillo is “unjustly imprisoned in Peru.”
“On behalf of Mexico, I express my deepest solidarity with him and his family, because we know that his situation is not only a personal case, but a serious precedent of political persecution and discrimination in our region,” she wrote.
“The United Nations must act decisively to guarantee respect for human rights and justice. The freedom of Pedro Castillo is also the defense of democracy and the dignity of our peoples,” Sheinbaum wrote.
On Tuesday, she once again noted that she met with Castillo’s lawyer, and stated that “from our point of view,” the ex-president was a victim of “a coup.”
“I showed solidarity with him, that’s what I did. It’s a policy that comes from the government of president López Obrador,” Sheinbaum said.
She noted that Mexico also broke off diplomatic relations with Ecuador due to “the invasion” in 2024 of the Mexican Embassy in Quito, where an ex-vice president of Ecuador was holed up for months until his arrest during the raid carried out by Ecuadorian authorities.
With Peru, “we maintain the same criteria,” Sheinbaum said, adding that the proposal to declare her a persona non grata “doesn’t matter.”
“We’re going to maintain our position,” she said.
Mexico has a constitutionally-enshrined foreign policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of foreign countries. But that hasn’t stopped Sheinbaum — and didn’t stop López Obrador — from denouncing what she sees as an injustice in Peru.
With reports from La Jornada and El País
