Americas

Americas

Castro holds first state visit to Mexico

07 November 2015 00:34 (UTC +04:00)

President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has sought to reset ties since taking office in December 2012, welcomed Castro at the Yucatan state government palace in the eastern colonial city of Merida.

After a review of troops, the two leaders went into private talks, where they were expected to discuss a range of issues, including a recent surge of Cuban migrants in Mexico.

Castro and Pena Nieto were due to sign agreements related to education, tourism, business and immigration, and address the media later in the day.

Pena Nieto has sought to improve ties with Cuba since he took office in December 2012. It is Castro's first state visit to Mexico since he succeeded his brother Fidel in 2006.

Relations were marked by tensions between Fidel Castro and conservative Mexican governments that were in power from 2000 to 2012.

But Mexico's centrist government is now seeking to seize on Cuba's modest economic reforms, with Mexican companies lining up to invest there.

In 2013, Pena Nieto's government forgave 70 percent of Cuba's $487 million debt to Mexico and gave the island 10 years to repay the rest.

The diplomatic reconciliation between the United States and Cuba has raised the prospect of new business opportunities on the island, though the US embargo remains in place.

In May 2014, Mexico sent a business delegation to Havana representing 48 companies. It also opened a Havana office for its trade promotion agency, ProMexico.

Mexico has several investment projects in Cuba's Mariel mega-port.

he US-Cuba rapprochement has had another effect for Mexico, as thousands of Cubans have been entering the country on their way to the United States.

The surge is driven by fears among Cubans that the US-Cuba detente will prompt Washington to stop giving them automatic visas when they step on US soil.

Mexican government figures show that nearly 6,500 Cubans were taken to migration centers in the first nine months of this year, three times more than in all of 2014.

Castro and Pena Nieto are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on how to deal with the flow of migrants.

Castro's visit seals a warming of relations between two nations that have had close ties in past decades.

Under the PRI, Mexico and Cuba enjoyed special ties. The Castro brothers lived in exile in Mexico in the 1950s and sailed to Cuba from the eastern state of Veracruz to launch their guerrilla revolution.

Mexico was the only Latin American country to resist US pressure to break relations with communist Cuba during the Cold War.

But relations turned sour under Vicente Fox's 2000-2006 presidency, which voted to condemn Cuba at the UN Human Rights Council.

At a UN poverty summit in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey in 2002, Fox urged Fidel Castro to leave early to avoid an awkward encounter with then-US president George W. Bush. Fox notoriously told Castro to "eat and leave."

It was Fidel's last visit to Mexico. Raul Castro traveled to the resort of Cancun in 2010 for a Latin American summit.

"It's very good that relations between Mexico and Cuba are normalizing, but it's not as important as in the past for either country," said Rodrigo Salazar, political expert at the Latin American Social Sciences Faculty.