Mexico, Cuba breakup: once-glorious relationship hits all-time low amid insults.

Mexican relations with Cuba, a longtime ally since Fidel Castro sailed from Veracruz in 1959 to launch his revolution, hit an all-time low in May as both nations scaled back diplomatic relations and Havana accused Mexico's government of plotting against a left-wing opposition party.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The latest furor apparently was sparked by Mexico in April voting at the United Nations once again against Cuba's human rights record. Smarting from the censure, Cuba deported Carlos Ahumada, a businessman who had fled to the Communist-run island to escape charges of fraud (allegedly committed as a contractor for the Mexico City government), while implying that the case against him was more about political machinations by the federal government than a criminal investigation.

Ignoring a diplomatic protest note from Mexico, Castro used a May Day speech to rail against his former ally, saying Mexico had become a lapdog of the United States and its "prestige and influence gained in Latin America and the world ... turned to ashes."

In response, Mexico expelled Cuba's ambassador, pulled its own envoy from Havana and accused the island of interfering in its domestic affairs after two members of Cuba's Communist Party were found to have met members of Mexico's left. But in reality, the breakup was a long time in coming.

Although Mexican intellectual like to portray their nation's relationship with Cuba as an ideologically driven friendship, it was always more about pragmatism. Under a tacit deal, Cuba turned a blind eye to Mexico's brutal repression of leftist rebels in return for Mexican backing internationally.

GOING SOUTH WITH SALINAS 

Successive governments of the Institutional Revolutionary Party that ruled Mexico for seven decades until 2000 were able to reinforce their "revolutionary" credentials through their public support of Cuba and opposition to the U.S. economic blockade of the island. However, the cozy bilateral relationship started to hit the rocks during the 1988-1994 presidential administration of the modernizing Carlos Salinas. Although relations remained close at face value, Salinas took Mexico a giant leap closer to its northern neighbor--and Cuba's archenemy--with the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which came into effect in 1994.

Former President Ernesto Zedillo continued where Salinas left off, strengthening relations with the United States and criticizing Cuba over human rights violations. "As Mexico has democratized over last 10 years, opened its economy and established practically unbreakable ties to the U.S. economy, it also changed its stance toward Cuba," Federico Estevez, a political science professor at the Mexico's Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM), told BUSINESS MEXICO.

Cuba retains one of the largest embassies in the Mexican capital and for years has received subsidized oil and other goods from Mexico, according to Estevez, but the island has little to offer in exchange except for the romantic notion of independence from Washington and the world's finest cigars. "The truth is, there's very little left in Cuban relations that can still be exploited," said Estevez. Meanwhile, the United States is now Mexico's top trading partner and buys over 85% of its exported goods.

The election of a conservative government in July 2000, ending the PRI's 71-year grip on the country, marked the beginning of the end for Mexico's ostensibly pro-Cuba foreign policy. President Fox and his former Foreign Relations Secretary Jorge Castaneda made it a priority to cement Mexican-U.S. ties, setting Mexico on a certain collision course with Cuba.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE GUEST

Castaneda, a former Marxist-turned-ardent-U.S. supporter, pushed human rights to the top of the agenda and further alienated Castro by condemning Cuba's rights record and by opening the door to Cuban dissidents. Then in March 2002, Castro stormed out of a UN development summit in Monterrey after Fox asked him to leave before U.S. President Bush arrived so as not to cause a diplomatic embarrassment. When Fox denied he had made such a request, Castro in a fit of pique released a taped telephone conversation, which proved his point and made Fox look foolish and inept.

The incident left Castro with little loyalty to his one-time ally. So when the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was plunged into a corruption scandal over videotapes showing its members engaged in bribes, Castro had no compunction about backing the claim by Mexico City's popular PRD mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of a government conspiracy.

"It was certainly a godsend to AMLO [Lopez Obrador]," said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

The mayor accuses Fox's government of plotting to discredit him ahead of the 2006 presidential race in which he is the frontrunner, with some 70% of the vote according to opinion polls. The brouhaha revolves around a video broadcast nationwide showing Carlos Ahumada handing over US$45,000 to a close ally of the mayor.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque weighed into the mounting diplomatic crisis between the two nations, telling a press conference in Havana that Ahumada had admitted he gave the video to top Mexican officials for use in a smear campaign against Lopez Obrador in return for immunity from prosecution. Fox's government then supposedly reneged on the deal.

"The Mexican government is trying to distract the attention of Mexican public opinion from serious events relating to Carlos Ahumada and the growing suspicions that a plot exists," said Perez Roque.

SO MUCH FOR LATINO FRATERNITY

The federal government and the PRD, the country's third-largest party, have all but broken off relations, each almost daily digging up fresh claims of links with Ahumada, who is safely behind bars and has not held any press conferences to give his side of the story. "The problem for the government is not that Cuba is important, but that it diverts attention from anything important they might be trying to accomplish," said Grayson.

Thousands of Mexican intellectuals and supporters of Cuba have taken to the streets of Mexico City to protest Mexico's treatment of its old friend. Mexico's chattering classes blame the nose dive in relations with Cuba on Castaneda's open provocation of Cuba during his time as foreign secretary in Fox's National Action Party (PAN) government.

Critics say he used his position to curry personal favor with the United States and with Cuban dissidents in Florida, whom many believe are helping him with his presidential campaign for 2006. "It just so happened that the PAN's ideology dovetailed with Castaneda's ambitions so it was not hard for him to convince a PAN president that Cuba should be taken to task for its human rights violations," said Grayson.

Supporters of the former, non-interventionist policy toward Cuba argue that Mexico was better positioned in the old days to be a regional leader and mediator between Latin America and the United States. When Fox took power, he made a point of traveling to Latin America early on and talking up the Latin fraternity.

However, Estevez said that was an impossible dream. "The truth of regional politics is that Latin America is split, in geopolitical terms and economic terms." Leftist governments in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela have maintained a distance from the United States and promoted regional trade ties, while Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Central America are decidedly in the right-wing, pro-U.S. camp.

However, in recent days, Mexico has appeared to want to make amends with Cuba. Fox was quick to blast a stiffening of U.S. anti-Cuba policy, saying Mexico wanted no part in such a plan that was "against Cuban sovereignty."

Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez has said his country has "a hand extended" toward Cuba and that he hoped to meet Perez Roque at a summit in Guadalajara at the end of May. Cuban officials have also expressed confidence the disagreement can be overcome.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

What is certain is that while Mexico may pay lip service to its old friendship with Castro's increasingly isolated regime, the days of the two countries being true comrades are over.

Nadia Tate is a Mexico City-based freelance writer.