LATAM: Cuba’s Ties with Region Shaken by Rows with Uruguay, Mexico

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 24 2002 (IPS) - Cuba’s process of forging closer links with Latin America appears to have been weakened by Uruguay’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with the island, and the rising tension with Mexico and other governments in the region.

However, Cuban President Fidel Castro did not appear surprised Tuesday night when he read a news dispatch on state television reporting the decision that had just been reached by his Uruguayan opposite number, Jorge Batlle, who Castro had called “a lackey of the United States.”

Castro was upset with Uruguay for sponsoring the resolution criticising Cuba’s human rights record that was approved last Friday by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

But the president reiterated that the remaining shipments of the 800,000 meningitis B vaccines donated to Uruguay to protect children from an outbreak of the disease “are guaranteed.”

“We don’t help governments. We help people. We will never feel contempt for the people of Uruguay,” said Castro in his nearly four-hour televised speech, most of which was dedicated, for the second day in a row, to the rift with the Mexican government of Vicente Fox.

Castro also said that Uruguay had “a murderous health minister who allowed children to die simply to avoid acquiring the vaccines from Cuba, the only country that produces them in proper conditions, as they were informed by France’s Pasteur Institute.”

The Batlle administration was offended by a series of insults from the Cuban government, including Castro’s description Monday of the Uruguayan leader as “an abject Judas.”

The motion against Cuba proposed by Uruguay and co-sponsored by several other Latin American countries as well as Canada in Geneva passed by a vote of 23-21, with nine abstentions.

“It makes no sense to maintain relations with Cuba in these terms,” said Batlle, who had already recalled Uruguay’s ambassador to Havana, Enrique Estrázulas, in response to remarks by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque prior to the vote in Geneva.

The Uruguayan president criticised Cuba Tuesday for belonging to the UN Human Rights Commission and not abiding by its resolutions.

Batlle also said that the tone of the offensive statements by Cuban officials had continued to escalate, and that insults were proffered by a number of officials, including Pérez Roque, and finally by Castro himself.

“The Uruguayan government considers that, above and beyond any discrepancies, diplomatic relations between countries must be governed by a climate of respect,” said Batlle, explaining his reasons for severing ties with Cuba.

Castro has also had harsh words for the governments of Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru for backing the resolution, which “invites” Cuba to accept a visit by a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, to assess the situation of civil and political rights here.

But the case that most annoyed the Cuban leader was that of Mexico, which abandoned its habitual practice of abstaining from voting against Cuba in the UN Human Rights Commission, and voted in favour of the Uruguay-sponsored motion, which authorities in Cuba say was the brainchild of the United States and Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda.

Castro said he would not accept the visit of a UN rapporteur on human rights, and challenged anyone to present evidence of a single case of forced disappearance, torture or extrajudicial execution in Cuba – practices that have been more or less prevalent in much of Latin America for decades.

In Castro’s view, the representative democracies that everyone is trying to push on Cuba are a “fiction,” characterised by millions of illiterate people, poverty, marginalisation and slums, unemployment, violence and mind-numbing advertising.

He cited the example of Mexico, which according to Castro has 47 times more illiterate people and 82 times more children who do not go to school than Cuba, and an infant mortality rate 4.5 times higher than Cuba’s.

In Mexico, there are one million Indians who do not know how to read or write, and 58 percent of the children in indigenous communities are malnourished, while only 37 percent of the economically active population has a steady job, he said.

“Our (socialist) system is incomparably superior, and what they believe is marvellous does not stand up to the slightest comparison. Human and social rights – there is not one single aspect in which we aren’t four laps ahead,” he asserted.

The traditionally close, friendly diplomatic relations between Mexico and Cuba have been stormy since last year, when Havana accused Mexican Foreign Minister Castañeda of promoting a human rights motion condemning Cuba in Geneva.

In February, both Fox and Castañeda had promised that Mexico would not sponsor any motion against Cuba in the Human Rights Commission, and that its vote would be similar to last year’s.

Castro’s televised address followed the airing Monday of a private telephone conversation that took place between himself and Fox on Mar 19, in which the Mexican president urged Castro to shorten his attendance at the International Conference on Financing for Development, convoked by the UN in Monterrey, Mexico last month.

The conversation showed that Castro was telling the truth when he stated that his abrupt departure from the international conference – before U.S. President George W. Bush arrived – was due to a request by high-level Mexican officials.

“A conversation between two heads of state is not a love letter, it is a political conversation. There is very little that is private about it, it isn’t a confessional secret,” said the Cuban leader, in response to the Fox administration’s irritation over the recording and disclosure of the conversation.

Although Mexico was offended, it said diplomatic ties would be maintained, “despite Cuba’s lies and offenses.”

The communique released by the Fox administration added that “the Mexican government does not record or divulge the content of conversations, and much less those which were previously agreed upon as private.”

But Castro maintained that “all governments record conversations,” although he clarified that this was the first time he was “regrettably” forced to divulge an exchange with another head of state.

“Diplomacy wouldn’t even exist if you didn’t have a record of the conversations that you have held. History wouldn’t exist…There wouldn’t be anything, everything would be swept away by time, and would be forgotten the next day. Governments have a need (to do that), and denying that is hypocrisy,” said Castro.

Former Mexican president Miguel de la Madrid said Tuesday at a meeting of former Latin American presidents in Chile that the conversation revealed by Castro “throws into doubt the independence of Mexico’s foreign policy.”

Former Colombian president Ernesto Samper also said in Santiago that “President Castro is right,” because no country, no matter how powerful, can decide who does and does not attend a United Nations event. However, he added that it was not appropriate for Castro to make a private conversation public for political reasons.

Until Uruguay broke off relations, El Salvador was the only Latin American country with no ties to Cuba, since Honduras reestablished diplomatic relations with this Caribbean island nation on Jan 16.

Uruguay had reestablished relations with Cuba in 1986, one year after the end of a 12-year military dictatorship in the Southern Cone country, which interrupted ties.

In the 1960s, Mexico was the only country in the region that refused to follow the Organisation of American States (OAS) mandate to sever ties with Havana, after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution.

In the decade or so since it lost its close political ties and privileged economic relations with the now-defunct Soviet Union and east European socialist bloc, Cuba has forged closer multilateral and bilateral links with the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.