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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his partner Cilia Flores, along with the new Mexican presidential couple, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller. Mexico, 1 December 2018. daniel aguilar / Lopez Obrador's Press Office / AFP

While many heads of state in the Americas have hastened to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela, the Mexican head of state is one of the few who refused to do so . Andrés Manuel López Obrador continues to consider that in Caracas, Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president, democratically elected.

With our correspondent in Mexico, Patrick John Buffe

Although Mexico acknowledges that it is following the situation closely, it considers that there is no change in its diplomatic relations with Caracas, nor with the government of Nicolás Maduro. It thus applies the new principles established by President López Obrador , the non-intervention and the search for peaceful solutions to conflicts.

This is the same position of neutrality already adopted by Mexico earlier this year in the Lima group . He was the only one not to sign a statement where 13 of the 14 member countries did not recognize the Venezuelan president's second term.

Because of this decision, López Obrador had been accused of supporting Nicolás Maduro. To which he replied that Mexican foreign policy was not governed by sympathy, but by constitutional principles such as non-intervention.

According to critics, the Mexican head of state, elected with more than 53% of votes in July in a single-round presidential election, seeks to hide behind these principles of foreign policy to avoid friction at the international level. Because he thinks he already has enough problems to solve inside his country not to be created outside.

►Listen on RFI: Nicolás Maduro increasingly isolated