Lopez Obrador welcomed Evo Morales at the National Palace

MEXICO CITY, October 21 (EFE): The President of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, received former President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, on Thursday at the National Palace in the Mexican capital.

The appointment at the Residence and Presidential Office began at 6:00 pm (23:00 GMT).

“We spoke with Evo Morales, the loyal leader of the Bolivian people and the most authentic representative of the indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean,” Lopez Obrador wrote in a Twitter message as well as a photo with Morales.

Almost two years after taking refuge in Mexico, the former Bolivian president returned to Mexican soil, and on Thursday, before meeting him, he thanked Lopez Obrador for saving his life in 2019, when he left his country denouncing the “coup”.

Morales expressed his gratitude at the opening of a political seminar in Mexico City organized by the Workers’ Party, a formation that supports Lopez Obrador’s government.

In front of delegates from several left-wing parties in Latin America, Morales recalled his surprise arrival in Mexico in November 2019.

The Bolivian recalls: “When I arrived, it wasn’t a matter of expressing my appreciation to the president and the Mexican people. When he said he saved my life, it was true. Mexico and other countries saved my life.”

Morales had called a press conference on Thursday to mark his presence in Mexico, but postponed it at the last minute to Friday.

Bolivia was mired in a social and political crisis after the October 20, 2019 elections, which were overturned by complaints of alleged electoral fraud in favor of Morales.

Following the Organization of American States (OAS) report, released in the early morning of November 10, 2019, Morales first announced new elections and resigned hours later as president, claiming to be the victim of an alleged “coup”. etat. “.

Morales arrived in Mexico on November 12, 2019 as a political student from the Lopez Obrador government after a long flight on a Mexican Armed Forces plane.

In his latest book, the Mexican president asserts that alleged Bolivian soldiers tried to shoot down the plane in which Morales took off from Cochabamba bound for Mexico with a missile.

Evo Morales only spent a month in Mexico, because after Argentine Alberto Fernandez took office, he moved to the South American country, finally returning to Bolivia after his party, the Movement for Socialism, won the elections. October 2020 Generals with candidate Louis Ars.

Morales’ asylum in Mexico has caused serious diplomatic differences with the interim government of Jeanine Añez in Bolivia, a situation redirected with the meeting last March between Lopez Obrador and the new Bolivian President Luis Ars. EFE

jmrg/laa

© EFE 2021. Redistribution and redistribution of all or part of the contents of the EFE Services, without the prior and express consent of EFE SA, is expressly prohibited.