By Patricia Grogg and Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Feb 28 2002 (IPS)

Cuba’s security forces maintained blockades Thursday on the streets around the Mexican Embassy here after 20 citizens crashed through the gates aboard a bus the evening before. The would-be émigrés were apparently motivated by broadcasts they heard on the U.S.-run Radio Martí.

Only residents of the neighbouring blocks, after showing identity cards, were allowed past the barriers the police had set up after the stolen bus rammed its way into the diplomatic compound.

Security was beefed up at all embassies and diplomatic offices throughout Cuba, including the U.S. Special Interests Section, to prevent any further incidents.

The group of would-be emigrants includes one minor, though most are young adults ages 18 to 25, a police force representative told IPS. They remain inside the Mexican Embassy.

The Fidel Castro government described the people involved as “lumpen, anti-social elements.”

“At the Mexican Embassy in Cuba there are now between 15 and 20 people. They are being treated well, but do not have asylum status,” Mexico’s Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda said in a radio interview in his country Thursday.

Castañeda said that if the asylum-seekers are, “as they appear to be, jobless and want to come to Mexico for economic reasons, it is going to be very difficult. We want them to leave the embassy because in reality they have no business there.”

He added that they are being advised of their rights and that if they want a visa to travel to Mexico they must apply for one through regular channels.

The incident occurred at 9:30 pm local time Thursday, when the group took over a public bus and forced the driver to drive at high speed and crash through the embassy gates.

“The Mexican Embassy is open to all who want to leave,” was the rumour that spread through Havana and served as the detonator for the incident.

In an official statement, the Castro government directly blamed Radio Martí, a station belonging to the U.S. government that broadcasts to the island from the U.S. city of Miami.

“This is a gross provocation that was openly organised by the official broadcaster of the U.S. government,” says the communiqué.

The invasion of the Mexican mission was apparently motivated by press reports of statements that Castañeda had made, and which Radio Martí broadcast repeatedly Wednesday, accompanied by analysis from the station’s political commentators, who are largely anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

“The doors of the Mexican Embassy in Havana are open to all Cuban citizens, to all Latin Americans, just as Mexico is,” the Mexican official had stated Tuesday during the inauguration in Miami of the Mexican Cultural Institute.

The foreign minister also said that there are no longer relations between Mexico and the Cuban Revolution, but rather between Mexico and the Republic of Cuba. This assertion had been made previously when Mexico’s President Vicente Fox visited the island Feb 3-4.

Castañeda’s actual words had not been published in the state- run Cuban press and, according to a government declaration Thursday, the Mexican official’s statements were manipulated by Radio Martí, which broadcast “the false and treacherous” version eight times.

The radio issued “an open call to occupy the Mexican Embassy in Cuba,” says the communiqué, and charges that the broadcasts “were framed in such a way to be interpreted that diplomatic relations between Mexico and Cuba had just been broken.”

Castañeda himself shared the Castro government’s position. He said “radical elements” in Miami had twisted his words.

The Mexican Embassy in Cuba, as in other capitals, is open to different currents of opinion, stated Castañeda.

He pointed out that when President Fox visited Cuba he met “with activists for human rights and democracy” (who oppose President Castro). Such acts are normal, and Mexico and Cuba today maintain a good relationship between States, he said.

Mexico was the only Latin American country to maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba after the island was separated from the Organisation of American States (OAS) in the early 1960s.

The bilateral relations took a new direction under the Mexican government of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), when for the first time there was talk critical of Cuba, particularly on the matter of human rights.

Fox reinforced that stance when he met in Havana with members of the internal dissidence movement and when he presented Castro with a list of six political prisoners that Mexico wants to see released.

“Certain sectors (Cuban exiles) in Miami have not forgiven the fact that the Fox government has not turned into one that is willing to confront Castro,” Castañeda said.

Numerous people tried to walk onto the Mexican Embassy grounds following the Wednesday-night bus incident, taking advantage of the confusion and the breach in the wall around the two-storey building. But special police brigades held them back, and some used violent means, according to witnesses.

The Havana correspondent and photographer for Reuters news agency, Andrew Cawthorne and Alfredo Tedeschi, were beaten as they tried to report on the incident at on location.

Around midnight, when calm had been restored, pro-government groups mobilised around the embassy. President Castro visited the site accompanied by Vice-president Carlos Lage, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, and other officials.

Sources on the scene said Castro entered the Mexican mission and met with the asylum-seekers for approximately 20 minutes, however the official news Thursday did not mention such a meeting.

The Cuban government did not make any reference to what measures might be taken if the group leaves the embassy, or if officials are considering allowing the 20 to leave the country.

A similar incident occurred in November 1996 when a large group of people attempted to enter the Spanish Embassy after ambassador- designate José Coderch said that the doors of the diplomatic mission would be wide open to dissidents.

That episode did not result in any major disturbances. A human blockade prevented access to the building for several days, and a communiqué issued by the Spanish consulate stressed that the requirements for travel to Spain remained the same.

In 1980, 10,000 people broke into the Peruvian Embassy, seeking asylum. That incident ultimately led to the opening of the port of Mariel, outside Havana, which channelled the emigration of some 125,000 people, most of whom left aboard unstable rafts and boats.

Elizardo Sánchez, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which has been declared illegal by the Castro government, commented that the conditions in Cuba today are ripe for situations like that at the Mexican Embassy.

“The island’s potential for emigration is one of the highest in Latin America,” said Sánchez, who met with Fox and Castañeda here on Feb 4.

Specialised sources estimated that Cuba’s migratory potential in the last half of the 1990s was 450,000 to 800,000 people, of a total population of 11 million.

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