Comments further stoked diplomatic row between Mexico and Bolivia, which has descended into personal insults

This article is more than 8 months old

This article is more than 8 months old

Mexico’s president has called on police in Bolivia to stop harrassing diplomats at his country’s embassy in La Paz and allow nine former officials holed up there – all allies of former leader Evo Morales – to seek asylum.

“The right to asylum has to be guaranteed,” Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at his daily press conference on Friday. “We hope they act sensibly and they don’t invade our diplomatic representation in Bolivia. Not even Pinochet did that.”

His reference to the late Chilean dictator further stoked a diplomatic row between Mexico and Bolivia, which has descended into personal insults, rallied political bases in both countries and sharpened Latin American’s left-right divide.

Bolivia's Evo Morales lands in Argentina after being granted asylum Read more

Amlo – as the Mexican president is known – has championed a foreign policy of non-intervention. But his government has been outspoken on Bolivia, where Morales was forced from office after being accused of rigging his re-election 20 November.

Mexico offered Morales asylum and sent a jet to fly him out of Bolivia, although he has since relocated to Argentina. Just before Christmas, Mexico accused the interim Bolivian government of surrounding the Mexican embassy in La Paz. It later announced plans to take Bolivia to the International Court of Justice.

Bolivia responded that Mexico requested the police protection and said it would defend itself in court. Arrest warrants have been issued by Bolivia’s rightwing government against five of the nine officials in the Mexican embassy, according to media reports.

Tensions ratcheted up further on Friday when police prevented two Spanish diplomats from entering the embassy, the Mexican foreign ministry said in a statement

The Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, tweeted a Boxing Day call for “national unity” after a former Bolivian president unleashed a barrage of “adjectives and insults toward Mexico and its president”.

The former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga called Amlo “submissive to Trump, Castro and Maduro” – a reference to the Mexican leader’s dealings with Donald Trump and willingness to crack down on migrants to avoid US sanctions.

The historian Harim B Gutiérrez said previous Mexican governments “maintained legitimacy at home while making big concessions to the United States” by staking out independent positions such as not breaking relations with Cuba after the 1959 revolution.

“It serves (Amlo’s) purposes to challenge the Latin American right at this time,” said Gutiérrez, a professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City. “That allows the López Obrador government to have something to compensate for its subordination to Trump’s migration policies.”