by Arturo McFields, Opinion Contributor for The Hill.
For 30 years, the Soviet Union was the main supporter of Cuba’s communist dictatorship, pumping into it more than $29 billion worth of money, weapons, food, oil, and technology — a debt that Russia ultimately wrote off. In the 1990s, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela became Cuba’s new lifeline for Cuba, contributing $35 billion over 15 years in oil alone.
With Venezuela in shambles, Mexico, the main U.S. trading partner, has become Cuba’s new lifeline, sending food, oil, and anything else it can to support the longest-standing dictatorship in the Americas. Yet nothing is enough. Nothing can rescue Cuba’s failed communist economy.
Mexico promotes nonsense diplomacy in favor of Cuba. In 2023, Mexico even blackmailed the U.S. by saying that it would cooperate on the migration crisis but would also like the U.S. to resume talks with Cuba. In 2022, Mexico rejected a presidential invitation to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, solely because the dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela were not invited.
Although few Americans have noticed, Mexico is experiencing an extremely violent period. In less than a month, two car bombs exploded, a priest was murdered and a mayor was decapitated. States such as Sinaloa have seen nearly 60 straight days of chaos and crime. Despite all this, Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has made the crisis in Havana her main priority.
In 2023, then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador guaranteed 5.4 million barrels of oil to Cuba, a national record. The supply, valued at $391 million, is a solidarity support to the dictatorship that has 1,100 political prisoners and has gone 65 years without free elections. Those are the values that Mexico’s government evidently honors and admires.
Click here to read the complete, original article by Arturo McFields, Opinion Contributor on The Hill
Source: The Hill
