The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaumstated this Wednesday that the country “will always be there” to support Cuba with oil and humanitarian aid, amid the United States blockade and the reduction of energy supplies to the island from Caracas, after the US military intervention in Venezuela at the beginning of January.
“If Mexico can help generate better conditions for Cuba, we will always be there. It is a relationship with the Cuban people (who live) in very difficult conditions,” said Sheinbaum, in a daily press conference.
The Mexican president specified that the shipment of oil to the island is not “at the expense” of the people of Mexico, as the opposition has criticized.
“It is not at the expense, because it is really very little, of what is produced, very little is sent, but it is a solidarity support,” he assured.
Sheinbaum denies increase in “historic” oil shipments to Cuba
In line with Mexican foreign policy
Sheinbaum also recapitulated that humanitarian shipments to Cuba are part of the tradition of Mexican foreign policy, after the economic blockade of the island by the United States.
He recalled that Mexico was the only country that at the time opposed this blockade, and that since then, all Mexican governments have maintained relations with Cuba.
He pointed out that the Government of former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto (20212-2018) removed the island’s oil debt, and that former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) sent oil, both by contract and for humanitarian reasons, a policy that his administration has decided to continue.
He added that this matter is in line with Mexico’s foreign policy, marked by “fraternity.”
“And that does not have to disappear,” concluded the Mexican president.
Mexico has become the main supplier of oil and derivatives to Cuba, raising the geopolitical cost in its relationship with the United States, which promoted supply restrictions to the island from Venezuela, according to specialists consulted by EFE.
Only on the second weekend of January, the oil tanker Ocean Mariner arrived in Havana Bay, loaded with some 86 thousand barrels of fuel from Mexico, according to the Energy Institute of the University of Texas.
