Mexico will send a shipment of food and basic products to Cuba this week as humanitarian aid, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has revealed. The president has confirmed that oil shipments from the Mexican coast to the island are suspended, but has stated that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is negotiating with its counterpart in Washington so that the supply of hydrocarbons can be resumed.
“This week we are planning humanitarian aid to Cuba, it is aid that the Secretary of the Navy will provide, with food and other products, in which we diplomatically resolve everything that has to do with the shipment of oil for humanitarian reasons,” Sheinbaum mentioned this Sunday, during his tour of the State of Sonora. The shipment of food, belongings and basic products will be managed by the Secretary of the Navy.
The Trump Administration published a decree this week that imposes tariffs on countries that deliver oil to Cuba. The American president ordered, after his country’s intervention in Venezuela, to stop the shipment of crude oil to the island. Mexico then became the largest supplier of hydrocarbons to the Caribbean country, however, it stopped shipments in mid-January due to threats from the Republican.
Trump and Sheinbaum spoke by phone Thursday morning about the review of the free trade agreement (USMCA). Hours later, the Trump Administration published the controversial decree that was interpreted as a message to the Mexican Government. Sheinbaum denied on Friday that the topic had been broached in the phone call. However, Trump assured on Saturday that he asked Sheinbaum to stop the shipments. “Cuba lived on money and oil from Venezuela, and none of that is coming now. And then, the president of Mexico, President Sheinbaum, was very good. I told her: ‘Look, we don’t want them to send oil there,’ and she is not sending oil,” the American told the press.
“We never talked to President Trump about the oil that is sent to Cuba,” the president insisted this Sunday. “When the topic was raised,” Sheinbaum noted, “it was in the conversation that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs (Juan Ramón de la Fuente) had with the Secretary (of State of the United States), Marco Rubio.”
Mexico has been sending oil to Cuba since 1993, but since 2024 the volume of shipments has significantly increased. Sheinbaum has explained in recent weeks that the Mexican Government makes two types of shipments: those for humanitarian aid and those for contracts signed by Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) with the Cuban regime. The little data available suggests that Mexico sent a fifth of the oil the island needs, about 17,000 barrels a day.
Sheinbaum has warned that the United States ban could aggravate the crisis that has been going on for months in Cuba. The Mexican president affirmed on Friday that her Government was going to continue looking for some way to help Cuba in the face of the deep shortages that the population of the Caribbean island is already suffering.
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