Luis Rubio: Why Cuba Is Back at the Center of Mexican Politics Luis Rubio - Worldcrunch
go to original February 12, 2014

The presidents of Cuba and Mexico on Pena Nieto's recent visit to Havana (BBC News)

MEXICO CITY — Security became central in the Mexican government's logic toward Cuba the day Fidel Castro set out from the Veracruz coast, to forge a revolution in Cuba.

In the early years of the new Cuban regime, such security concerns translated mostly into mutual, diplomatic and political support in return for exempting Mexican territory of any Cuban guerrilla activity. Thus it was security in the form of domestic peace, in spite of the Cuban revolution's impact on domestic politics, which ultimately prompted a rapprochement between the governing powers and the political Left in Mexico.

In the 1960s and beyond, Cuba's fate was largely tied to the Soviet Union, then to its collapse and the inevitable aging of its own leadership. As the revolutionary spirit transformed into a logic of survival, the Cuban government began an economic opening that, without much involving the population, attracted foreign tourism and investment in the oil and mining sectors. The inevitable effect on Mexico was to mitigate its perception of Cuba as a security risk.

Whatever happens in Cuban politics in the coming decades will have an enormous impact on Mexico. No other country provokes such passions inside Mexico. Discussions around President Enrique Peña Nieto's recent visit to Cuba speak for themselves: on whether or not he was legitimizing a dictatorship, if he should meet with dissidents or understood that we were no longer a part of Latin America? We have nothing similar in our relations with the United States.

While I respect the critics, I believe they are missing the point.

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