Cuba, the thorn in the side of US-Mexico relations

U.S. President Donald Trump is in the midst of a full-blown offensive in the Americas. Mexico, the star pupil, has so far weathered the Republican leader’s most aggressive policies, which are currently focused on Venezuela and Colombia, but the balance is, as always, fragile and temporary. Trump’s Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, rebuked Mexico this week for supporting Cuba at the United Nations General Assembly, which every year since 1992 has called for an end to the U.S. embargo against the Caribbean nation. This year’s vote resulted in the lowest support for the Cuban government so far this century, but it had, as always, the backing of Mexico, a long-standing ally in the region. The Mexican position is no surprise, but the reaction north of the border has been harsher than usual. “As a friend of Mexico, I am saddened,” said Landau, who also served as ambassador to the country.

The Mexican government, in reality, hasn’t budged. Its relations with Cuba have been relatively stable for over 65 years, regardless of who was in power. Today, President Claudia Sheinbaum sends oil and receives doctors, just as her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also of the Morena party, did before her. Even before them, however, Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI party forgave a large portion of Cuba’s debt to Mexico, in a rapprochement in relations that only cooled during the conservative PAN administrations.

“The Mexican Revolution served as an example for the Cuban Revolution and was a legitimizing process for Mexico’s foreign policy in the region,” notes Pía Taracena, an expert in international affairs at the Universidad Iberoamericana. In the international landscape that emerged at that time, with the Cold War as a backdrop, “Mexico acted as a bridge or a channel” between Cuba and the United States, emphasizes the historian David Jorge. “Ultimately necessary for both sides,” she adds. This allowed Mexico “to reinforce its status as a trusted neighbor as well as a leading regional actor.”

Today, the situation is different, and the words of the Mexican ambassador to the UN, Héctor Vasconcelos, have not gone down well on the other side of the Rio Grande. The Mexican representative accused the United States of being in “continuous defiance” of “the majority will of the international community.” “It seems we still cannot escape the prejudices and intolerances that characterized Cold War politics, which have proven their undeniable failure,” he stated in a speech in which he spoke—as Sheinbaum often does—of a “blockade,” a term that particularly irritates those north of the border, who prefer the word “embargo.” “If we are going to talk about U.S. policy toward Cuba, let’s at least do it based on reality and not on fantasies,” said Landau, who has lately been threatening to revoke visas from his opponents.

The United States’ complaints foreshadow a changing of the guard. “[Landau] is marking the return of the Trump Administration 2.0, in which there is no accepting any perspective contrary to its tenets, regardless of where it comes from. Anything outside its own rhetoric is framed as unacceptable, despite the friendship, as he says,” notes Abelardo Rodríguez, an international relations expert at the Ibero-American University. “We are at the end of one cycle and the beginning of another, in which the United States is seeking to recover lost ground throughout the hemisphere, invoking the Monroe Doctrine.”

The question then, Rodríguez poses, is how long this triangular relationship can be maintained in which Mexico acts as a hinge between the two nations —a “transcendental element in Mexico’s foreign policy,” and even for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has “a personal affinity with the Cuban revolution since childhood,” the expert says. For now, Mexico has emerged unscathed from a relationship that has begun to take its toll on other countries following the appointment as State Secretary of Marco Rubio, whose Cuban heritage has served as a declaration of intent by the Trump administration.

Mexico sends hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil and diesel to Cuba, which in turn sends hundreds of doctors to Mexico, whose shortage of specialists worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sheinbaum has repeatedly defended both policies, which reaffirm the relationship between the two countries despite pressure from the United States. “Humanitarian aid, in any case, Mexico will always provide, always, to Cuba and to other countries that need it,” the president said this October regarding the fuel shipments. “Collaboration, coordination, but not subordination. Mexico defines its own foreign policy,” she also said in June, regarding the hiring of Cuban doctors, an issue on which Rubio is pressuring other countries in an attempt to cut off a source of funding that helps keep Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government afloat on the island.

In February, the Secretary announced a policy restricting visas for those who supported Cuba’s labor export program, particularly its medical missions, which the United States considers forced labor. In June, the warning was extended to Central American governments that “exploited” Cuban professionals, and in August, two Brazilian officials, Mozart Julio Tabosa Sales and Alberto Kleiman, lost their visas for their role in implementing the Mais Médicos program in their country, which employed Cuban doctors.

The Trump administration is tightening the noose around Cuba, effectively isolating its relations with other countries in the Americas. So far, it has turned a blind eye to Mexico, which has maintained a clear, albeit cautious, distance from its northern neighbor. Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a member of the Morena party, made a particularly conspicuous display of closeness with Havana. He visited the country on several occasions and awarded Díaz-Canel the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest distinction bestowed upon a foreign head of state, in 2023, when the Democrat Joe Biden was in the White House. “By defending Cuba, you are also defending Mexico,” has been the Mexican administration’s philosophy since the PRI era. López Obrador revived and expanded upon it. Sheinbaum is now trying to continue it, but Abelardo Rodríguez warns: “We are just entering this new context. It will be very difficult for the president to maintain that continuity.”

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