...Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently embraced an unfounded smear campaign against civil society organizations (CSOs) and international foundations that have supported initiatives and decisions that—on legal grounds—challenge or oppose the “Mayan Train” mega-project in the Yucatán Peninsula and other states in southeastern Mexico. It seems that the president is beginning to suffer from the binary and decidedly authoritarian political syndrome seen in many Latin American rulers: either you’re with me or you’re against me.

At an August 28, 2020 press conference, the President of Mexico mentioned—complete with names, charts, and figures—the donations that some civil society organizations (CSOs) receive from international foundations, implying that our support for initiatives that question or oppose the “Mayan Train” mega-project is based not on a genuine desire to protect the human rights of potentially affected indigenous communities, the right of access to public information, or the environment, but on mere financial interests. The president repeated similar accusations in his press conferences of September 3 and 4, 2020...