The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, charged on Monday against the intellectuals who published a letter in which they accused him of “undermining the freedom of the press.”
“They are not going to take away my right to speak,” he said in an appearance before the media.
The controversy broke out last week when more than 650 artists and intellectuals in the country signed a letter in which they accused López Obrador of maintaining “a permanent discourse of stigmatization and mistreatment” against the media critical of his administration.
During the weekend, those related to the Mexican president responded with a letter in response that was signed by several tens of thousands of people online.
López Obrador has criticized that, while the letter from the intellectuals had been broadcast by the country’s main media, the same had not happened with that of his supporters.
The Mexican president has accused some of the signatories of the letter critical of him, such as the historian Enrique Krauze, of attacking him because under previous governments his companies had a lot of influence and allowed him to “accommodate those close to him.”
During the press conference, the president also asked that both letters be read so that “people are informed”, according to the Mexican newspaper “El Universal” and has defended that he “practices love of neighbor” and that if he hated could not rule.
