MEXICO CITY (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th January, 2020) Temporary Mexican charge d'affaires Edmundo Font has arrived in Bolivia to replace expelled Ambassador Maria Teresa Mercado, Mexico's Secretariat of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.
On Tuesday, Mercado left Bolivia after being declared a persona non grata following the December 27 incident at the Mexican embassy, when some people accompanying two Spanish charges d'affaires allegedly tried to sneak in the diplomatic mission hiding their faces. Bolivian Interior Minister Arturo Murillo accused the Spanish diplomats of offending Bolivia and trying to smuggle out allies of Bolivia's former President Evo Morales, who had taken asylum in the Mexican embassy.
"The government of Mexico via the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs informs that today, career ambassador Edmundo Font who will be accredited as a new charge d'affaires ad interim in the Embassy of Mexico in La Paz, has arrived in Bolivia," the secretariat said in a statement.
Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister Maximiliano Reyes Zuniga expressed his confidence in the new appointee.
"I am sure that Ambassador Edmundo Font will be successful in the mission entrusted [to him] by @SRE_mx [Secretariat of Foreign Affairs] in [Bolivia] defending the foreign policy principles of [Mexico] and always dedicated to the international law," he wrote on Twitter.
The Mexican Embassy harbors nine former Bolivian officials from Morales' defunct administration. They fled to the diplomatic mission after the Bolivian president was ousted by the military following weeks of unrest over his reelection in October.
