Pedro Salmerón, who had been appointed as Mexico’s ambassador to Panama, declined his post.
The notification was made through a letter addressed to the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Pedro Salmerón, who had been appointed as Mexico’s ambassador to Panama, resigned his post this Tuesday, amid a wave of criticism, after being singled out for sexual harassment.
The notification was made through a letter addressed to the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, where he states that by turning the proposal for his appointment into an issue of gender and international politics, he has believed it pertinent to make his resignation to the position available to him. was offered.
“I appreciate your words and your defense: your friendship and trust are much more important to me than any position or job. I never looked for them: I accepted them to serve the Republic and a government that, despite the fact that it is transforming the country and has 70% of popular approval (or precisely because of that), arouses the anger of those who benefited from corruption , the illegal privileges and the injustice of the old regime”, says Salmerón.
In the text, Salmerón, who is a historian, recalls how a text of his authorship “was blatantly distorted” to provoke a “media lynching” against him, which sparked the proposal made by the president to appoint him as Mexico’s ambassador to Panama.
“Let me make a parenthesis: on these painful accusations I have reflected and been silent for months. Now I will begin to write about issues related to my person and my dignity, taking into account the fundamental aspects that women and men are debating today, calling for the construction of new masculinities. I will also write soon about the legal and political aspects of this debate”, he stresses.
The Mexican president in his daily press conference criticized Panamanian Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes for opposing the appointment.
“It turns out that we proposed him for ambassador in Panama and, as if it were the Holy Inquisition, the minister or chancellor of Panama was dissatisfied,” Obrador said.
Salmerón’s appointment as ambassador to Panama has caused controversy since January 17, when López Obrador included him on his list of nominees for foreign service, despite the fact that young people accused him of sexual harassment while he was a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). ).
The president complained about the pressure from feminists in Mexico and Panama towards Mouynes, who last week revealed that he had already expressed his “position” to the Mexican government in a document that López Obrador now promised to reveal.
“Now I have it and he asked us not to send the approval request. I am very sorry because it is the land of Omar Torrijos, who returned sovereignty to Panama, but Omar Torrijos thought otherwise,” said López Obrador.
Salmerón, accused of being close to Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, wife of López Obrador, had already caused controversy in 2019, when he resigned from the National Institute of Historical Studies of the Revolutions of Mexico (Inehrm) after calling assassins of a businessman “brave young people”. . Despite the accusations against him, López Obrador defended him on Tuesday as “a first-rate historian, one of the best in the country, a scholar of the history of Mexico,” for which he offered to integrate him as an archival advisor to the Presidency.
The president thanked Salmerón when exhibiting the letter in which he resigns the appointment, but denounced that “without a doubt there is a conservative component in all this.” “Pedro sent us a letter because there was a scandal, imagine if there is no formal complaint, nothing more because of the lynching campaign, led by (the political scientist) Denise Dresser accusing him of sexual harassment, then Pedro very sensibly, responsibly ( resigned),” he said.
Instead of Salmerón, Mexico proposed Jesusa Rodríguez, who was a senator of the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena), known for her feminist, indigenist and pro-marijuana positions.
“We are going to present a proposal, to see if the Government of Panama accepts it, I do not think that the president of Panama (Laurentino Cortizo) is aware of it, I think that this has more to do with the chancellor,” said López Obrador.
