Peru’s Foreign Minister Hugo de Zela told Reuters on Wednesday night that a team of jurists was analyzing the case to have a “state decision” on safe passage for Betssy Chávez.
“It is an analysis that we have asked to be done quickly, but with the necessary pause to do it well. I hope that within the week this study will be completed,” said De Zela at the Foreign Ministry headquarters in downtown Lima.
The chancellor hopes to travel to Colombia on Saturday, November 8, to participate in a summit of the CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and the European Union.
Why does Peru break diplomatic relations with Mexico?
Although Peru and Mexico did not have respective ambassadors since the beginning of 2023 in a dispute over the Mexican government’s support for the dismissed Castillo, the new level of relations occurs weeks after José Jerí took office as interim president of Peru, following the dismissal of Dina Boluarte.
Mexico has held Castillo’s children and wife in political asylum since the end of 2022, when the former president was expelled and arrested to face prosecution for the crime of “rebellion” after trying to dissolve Congress.
De Zela affirmed that the jurists of the Foreign Ministry are evaluating the terms of the “Caracas Convention of 1954”, which Mexico cited to give diplomatic asylum to Chávez, who was being prosecuted for the alleged crime of conspiracy against the State and participation in the attempt to close Congress.
“We have the interest of having good relations with all the countries in the region and there is always Peru’s will for this to be the case, as long as it is clearly understood that there can be no intervention in internal affairs,” he said.
Peru broke relations with Mexico on Monday due to the northern country’s “unfriendly act” in granting asylum to Chávez, for whom the Peruvian prosecutor’s office has requested 25 years in prison.
Chávez, who has denied the charges against her, had been in prison since June 2023 and was released by a judge in September of this year to take up her defense in freedom.
“Mexico has built a kind of parallel reality where there is political persecution that does not exist,” said de Zela.
The chancellor stated that the government will try to “minimize the negative effects” that the rupture of relations between two countries that are part of the Pacific Alliance, an economic bloc that also includes Chile and Colombia, may bring.
“We are making all kinds of efforts to contain this issue within the political sphere and try to ensure that it does not affect the commercial sphere, tourism and especially that it does not affect the consular area of both countries,” he said.
Bilateral trade between Peru and Mexico totaled some 2,507 million dollars last year, with a balance in favor of the northern country that exported 1,620 million dollars and imported 888 million dollars, according to data from the Government of Lima.
