Peru's President-elect Keiko Fujimori said she intends to restore diplomatic relations with Mexico, a rupture dating to November 2025. "On my part, there will be every intention to restore relations between Peru and Mexico," she told reporters as she left a public event in Lima Al Jazeera.

The remark, delivered informally rather than through an official statement, was the first substantive signal from Fujimori's camp on how she plans to address a frozen diplomatic file. Peru severed ties with Mexico after Mexico City granted political asylum to former Peruvian Prime Minister Betssy Chavez — a decision Lima's outgoing government saw as an unacceptable intervention in its domestic legal affairs. Peru went further than a routine downgrade, declaring Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum persona non grata and barring her from Peruvian territory, a step rarely taken against a sitting head of state from a country with which one otherwise maintains normal trade and diplomatic relations.

Sheinbaum, however, has framed the rupture around a different case: former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, who has been in pretrial detention since his December 2022 attempt to dissolve Congress and rule by decree. "We are going to wait," Sheinbaum told reporters when asked about Fujimori's overture, adding that Peru broke off relations "because we said that President Castillo is being held illegally. That is our point of view" Al Jazeera. Sheinbaum said she had not yet spoken directly with the president-elect.

That difference in focus matters considerably. Mexico's position rests on the Castillo case, invoking the doctrine of diplomatic asylum and, by extension, questions about due process in Peru's judiciary—an argument Lima has rejected as external meddling in a matter already decided domestically. The Chavez asylum was the immediate trigger; the core dispute concerns how far a foreign government can go in characterizing another state's prosecution of a former leader as illegitimate. Wire services worldwide, from Bloomberg to AFP to Bangladesh's BSS, carried similar reporting that framed both leaders as signaling openness to repair rather than announcing any concrete agreement—an indication of how this bilateral dispute has circulated through global news networks.

Fujimori won Peru's presidential runoff on June 7, 2026, her fourth attempt at the office and her first successful one. She previously ran unsuccessfully against Ollanta Humala in 2011, Pedro Kuczynski in 2016, and Castillo himself in 2021. She is scheduled to be sworn in on July 28, 2026, Peru's Independence Day—timing that gives her roughly three weeks to translate this stated intention into concrete action before she formally holds the powers to do so. She is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who died in September 2024 after a long illness.

The political reality facing Fujimori is more complicated than simple goodwill between leaders. Restoring relations with Mexico would require some resolution—or at least de-escalation—of the disagreement over Castillo's detention. Sheinbaum has given no indication Mexico will abandon its position that the prosecution amounts to illegal confinement. Fujimori, whose political base includes constituencies invested in Castillo's continued prosecution, needs to normalize relations without appearing to concede ground on that question. Her past electoral contests against Kuczynski and Castillo, and her family's own history with Peru's judiciary—Alberto Fujimori was convicted of human rights abuses and corruption before his eventual pardon and death—give her particular sensitivity to how foreign commentary on domestic prosecutions can be interpreted at home.

Sheinbaum's cautious "we are going to wait" suggests Mexico intends to let the incoming administration make the first formal move before committing to any reciprocal gesture, such as lifting restrictions on her travel or resuming ambassadorial exchange. Given that Fujimori does not take office until July 28, any substantive restoration—reopening embassies, reinstating ambassadors, resuming asylum-related dialogue—would likely wait until after her inauguration. This current exchange reads as an opening move rather than a settled outcome.

Whether this rapprochement holds may depend less on personal rapport between the two leaders than on whether Lima's new government finds language on the Castillo case that satisfies Mexico without unsettling Fujimori's own coalition.