Mexico tries to ease tension with Bolivia in the beginning of the new year. To do this, the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has taken the hand of the ambassador with the most seniority in the foreign service of mexico. The ministry of Foreign Affairs has informed this Friday that Edmundo Font, a veteran diplomat with over 45 years of experience, will be the new chargé d’affaires in La Paz. Font, 66 years old, arrives in the south american country in times of tension after the interim government of Jeanine Áñez drive the 30 of December the ambassador of mexico and two diplomats-spaniards and their escorts.
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Font, who is already in Bolivia, has been assigned to several missions in Central america, South america, Europe, Middle East and Asia. Since 1974, when he entered the foreign service has lived in eight countries on four continents. He was ambassador in Colombia, India and Santa Lucía. In the Caribbean, the ambassador Font also developed other passions that have been marked for more than 30 years: the painting and writing. During your stay at the front of the legation of mexico in the caribbean Saint Lucia, the Nobel prize in Literature Derek Walcott, a native of the island, he wrote a few lines about the work of the diplomat. “Font is our ambassador of Mexico and as most of the ambassadors is a nice guy… but he is also a painter considerably talented who loves my island genuinely and who paints what can only be called a decent frenzy,” wrote the poet laureate in 1992.
The reception of the Font in The Peace will not be as smooth. The ambassador will occupy the residence on the private La Rinconada, south of the bolivian capital. This building has become the core of the tensions between the two governments, initiated from the Executive to mexican offered asylum to Morales after his renunciation of the presidency, on the 10th of November. Nine former officials of the party Movement to Socialism, loyal to the exmandatario bolivian, are asylees in that house. Among them five former ministers and the exfiscal general. In the group stands out, Juan Ramón Quintana, the manager of the Interior of Morales, who has been accused of sedition and terrorism by those who now hold power in Bolivia.
The residence of La Rinconada has been the scene, according to the diplomats of mexico, of a “harassment”, harassment, and intimidation on the part of the bolivian authorities. The Government of Mexico has complained about the excessive surveillance of numerous police officers and drones outside of the premises. The fact that you broke the glass of the patience of the president Áñez happened on the 27th of December. Cristina Borreguero, charge d’affaires in Madrid in Peace, visited the ambassador to mexico, Maria Teresa Market, accompanied by the Spanish consul Alvaro Fernandez.
The meeting was presented as a casual visit, but the bodyguards of the diplomats spaniards staged an incident with the neighbors of La Rinconada, a zone of upper-middle-class with large presence of opponents of Morales. The bolivian foreign ministry considered that Borreguero and Fernandez had abused their diplomatic privileges and accused them of meddling in internal politics. Four days later, the interim president announced the expulsion of the three diplomats, and the bodyguards Spanish of Bolivia. Font has the task to defuse some relationships that are in their darkest hours.
