Peru breaks its diplomatic relations with Mexico for giving asylum to Pedro Castillo’s former prime minister

“The Peruvian Government has decided to break diplomatic relations with Mexico,” Peruvian Foreign Minister Hugo De Zela reported in a press conference.

The chancellor explained that this decision has been taken “in the face of this unfriendly act and taking into account the repeated actions in which the current and previous presidents (Claudia Sheinbaum and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, respectively) of that country have intervened in the internal affairs of Peru.”

De Zela maintained, in this sense, that the Peruvian Government today has “learned with surprise and with deep regret that former Prime Minister Betssy Chávez, alleged co-author of the coup d’état what former president Pedro Castillo intended to give” It is located in the embassy of the North American country.

“I want to deeply regret that the Mexican Government persists in its mistaken and unacceptable position, which has reached the point of forcing us to break diplomatic relations with a country with which until before these events we had a fraternal relationship and multiple coincidences,” he remarked.

The chancellor clarified that the breaking of diplomatic relations “does not mean” that “consular relations” with Mexico have been broken.

De Zela also said that now what “has to happen is to receive a formal communication from the Government of Mexico to begin the process” of eventual asylum for Chávez, something that has not yet happened, he said.

Betssy Chávez is being prosecuted by the Peruvian Justice for her alleged participation in the failed coup attempt carried out on December 7, 2022 by the then president Pedro Castillo, of whom she was prime minister.

Chávez was released at the beginning of last September while she was in a clinic in Lima, where she was admitted for showing signs of dehydration after the hunger strike she maintained for 12 days in the prison where she had been detained since June 2023.

The Constitutional Court (TC) had ordered his immediate release shortly before, determining that he had been the victim of arbitrary detention when the Prosecutor’s Office did not request the extension of his preventive detention in time.

Both the current president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaumlike his predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obradorhave demanded on several occasions the freedom of Castillo, considering that it was he who actually suffered a coup d’état that they attribute to the Peruvian power groups that dominate Congress.