Mexican president’s medal to Cuban dictator is an outrage. His words at the ceremony even worse | Opinion

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If you are outraged that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador decorated Cuba’s dictator Miguel Diaz-Canel with his country’s highest medal for foreigners, you should hear what the Mexican leader said during the ceremony.

It’s so ridiculous, it’s almost funny.

At the Feb. 10 ceremony in Mexico’s southern city of Campeche, López Obrador bestowed the Order of the Aztec Eagle on the Cuban ruler and claimed that the island, which has hundreds of political prisoners and does not allow free elections, has a “profoundly humane government.”

It gets worse. López Obrador also made the bizarre claim that Cuba’s dictatorship “is backed by an indomitable people.”

Really? Cuba has not allowed a free election in 64 years. Not only that, but the dictatorship does not allow any opposition parties or independent media.

In his speech, the Mexican president also vowed to “lead a more active movement” by all countries to support Cuba, and to demand that the U.S. government lift its trade sanctions on the island. The two presidents also discussed renewing the deal whereby Cuba sends medical missions to Mexico.

There are an estimated 610 Cuban doctors working in at least 10 Mexican states. Under an agreement that human-rights activists describe as modern slavery, Mexico pays the Cuban government for such missions, and the Cuban regime pays the doctors a fraction of that money.

Cuban defectors from those medical mission have said that they were paid between 10% and 25% of their salaries, and that the Cuban government and the Pan American Health Organization kept the rest.

López Obrador’s love fest with Cuba’s dictatorship is nothing new. He has held five official meetings with Diaz-Canel, in Mexico and in Cuba, since taking office.

But the Mexican president’s claim that Cuba has a humane government could hardly be more ill-timed. Diaz-Canel is holding the highest number of political prisoners in Cuba’s recent history and just a few weeks ago passed some of the most repressive laws against free expression in the world.

Cuba had 1,034 political prisoners in November, more than any other Latin American country, according to Prisoners’ Defenders human rights group, based in Madrid.

Following massive anti-government protests in 2021, the largest in decades, the Cuban regime sentenced about 700 demonstrators to up to 30 years in prison, most of them for participating in peaceful demonstrations.

In December, Cuba enacted a new penal code that imposed even harsher punishment on independent journalists, human-rights activists, protesters, social-media users and opposition figures. Among other things, it increases prison sentences for “public disorder,” “resistance” and “insulting national symbols.”

Some Cuban human-rights activists fear that, as part of his campaign to lead an international crusade in support of Cuba, López Obrador may have recently asked President Biden to relax further U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

Biden was caught on mic after his State of the Union address to Congress last week telling Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, a Cuban American who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Bob, I gotta talk to you about Cuba.”

The president’s remark is fueling speculation that the administration may extend an olive branch to Cuba as part of a deal with López Obrador under which the Mexican president would accept more U.S. deportees.

Biden’s Democratic Party is under pressure to slow the flow of undocumented immigrants to win the 2024 elections and can only do so with Mexico’s help. At the same time, the Democrats seem to have given up hope of winning Florida in upcoming elections, in part because the Cuban-American vote has shifted towards Republicans.

Let’s hope that Biden, who, unlike former President Trump, has made the defense of democracy a pillar of his foreign policy, doesn’t throw a lifeline to the Cuban regime in exchange for nothing. Previous unilateral U.S. gestures to Cuba during the Obama administration, which many of us supported at the time, were not reciprocated with any political opening on the island.

Biden should not reward Cuba’s repression. That’s exactly what López Obrador did, and for which the Mexican president should go down in history as an accomplice of one of the world’s most retrograde and brutal dictators.

Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show on Sundays at 7 pm E.T. on CNN en Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera