Cuban Prez thanks Mexico for support amid US sanctions

Mexico City : Visiting Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has thanked Mexico for its support and solidarity amid stiffer economic, trade and financial sanctions imposed by the US against the Caribbean island nation.

“Cuba faces a campaign of hatred, disinformation, manipulation and lies on influential digital platforms that ignore ethical boundaries. That is why Mexico’s solidarity provokes admiration,” Xinhua news agency quoted Diaz-Canel as saying on Thursday.

He made the remarks in a speech marking Mexico’s Independence Day celebrations to which he was invited as a special guest.

The Cuban leader said the visit carried special fraternal significance as his country continues to suffer “a criminal war, with a hardened US economic blockade amid the Covid-19 pandemic”.

“Cuba will remember Mexico’s show of support, its pronouncements against the (US) blockade and its calls for the UN vote against the criminal policy to become a concrete reality,” Diaz-Canel said.

The President also recalled that Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not sever ties with Cuba when it was expelled from the Organization of American States in 1962.

“I pay tribute to the sustained, invariable, passionate and unwavering solidarity that we always find in this land, which all Cubans love as our own,” Diaz-Canel added.

On his part, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador again urged Washington to end its more than half-century trade embargo against Cuba, calling the sanctions policy “perverse”.

Also addressing the Independence Day celebrations here, Lopez Obrador admonished that nations should not take advantage of the “misfortune of other peoples” to further their own agenda.

The Mexican leader said he hoped his US counterpart Joe Biden has the “political sensitivity” to put an end to the “injustices” that have been committed against Cuba by sanctions designed to destroy the island’s economy and cause social upheaval.

Lopez Obrador also praised Cuba for withstanding decades of the US sanctions, saying: “Having resisted 62 years without submission is an indisputable historical feat.

“The government that I represent respectfully calls on the US government to lift the embargo against Cuba, because no nation has the right to subdue another people, another country.”