The president defended that the Mexican position on Cuba is a “sovereign decision” and maintained that it should not contaminate the bilateral relationship with the United States.
CDMX, Mexico. – The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, reaffirmed this Thursday that her government will maintain the relationship and the historical policy of support for Havana, after it was suggested in Washington that Mexico should “reconsider” its support for the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes during a hearing in the United States House of Representatives.
In your morning conference this ThursdaySheinbaum defended that the Mexican position on Cuba is a “sovereign decision” and maintained that it should not contaminate the bilateral relationship with the United States.
“That relationship has always been a difference between the Government of the United States and the Government of Mexico. It does not have to influence the Mexico-United States relationship and our position is sovereign, it is a sovereign decision and it has a lot to do with the humanism that we represent,” said Sheinbaum.
In the same exchange, the president rejected the tightening of the embargo and described it as a mechanism that punishes the population. “The people do not have to suffer, the blockade is a very complex action for the people, it is the people who suffer,” he added.
Sheinbaum framed his position as historical continuity of the Mexican State, pointing out that the relationship with the Island has been sustained through different governments and recalled that Mexico maintained a unique position in the inter-American sphere in the 1960s. In that sense, he affirmed that the policy towards Cuba will remain “as it has maintained since [el presidente Adolfo] López Mateos” and mentioned that the issue has been present in the Mexico-United States relationship since 1959.
Just this Wednesday, the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives held a hearing titled “Relations of Mexico with the region”. The hearing was led by Cuban-American Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), who in her opening remarks He reproached the Mexican foreign policy of “non-intervention” and used Cuba as an example of what he described as a contradiction between discourse and practice.
Salazar stated that “in the last four months” Mexico sent to Cuba, free of charge, some 55 oil vessels/tankers that would have a value of “more than 3,000 million dollars.” In addition, he criticized the agreements for hiring Cuban doctors in Mexico, for which the Government of the Aztec country would be paying “more than 100 million dollars” to the Cuban Government and not directly to the doctors.
The legislator also maintained that these agreements violate Chapter 23 of the T-MEC due to an alleged relationship with “forced labor,” and described a scheme that has been denounced by international organizations and media, by which doctors receive only a minimum part of the payment, while the rest goes to the Cuban State.
In Mexico, the episode was reported as an explicit call from Washington for the Sheinbaum government to review its position towards the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes. The Broken Chair He noted that US “officials and legislators” proposed reconsidering the support and framed the exchange as part of differences in approach in Latin America.
