By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on July 30, 2026
Photo by Luis Castillo
On Sunday, along Paseo de la Reforma, the flags of Mexico and Cuba fluttered in unison in the same breeze. The procession covered 2.6 kilometers from the Hemiciclo a Juárez to the former U.S. Embassy in a march against the blockade and in defense of Cuban sovereignty. It might have seemed like a one-off protest. In reality, it was the resurgence of a political memory that has spanned the Gulf for two centuries.
Between Mexico and Cuba, the sea has never been merely a distance, but also a route of conquests and exiles, of conspiracies, culture, and refuge. Colonial power first circulated through its waters; later, emancipatory ideas traveled through them. In the 19th century, more than 30 Cubans fought for Mexico’s sovereignty against external aggressions, and numerous Mexicans also fought for Cuba’s independence. The geography did not change; the meaning of the journey did.
José Martí, Cuba’s national hero, understood that closeness so deeply that he wrote in his private notes: “If I were not Cuban, I would want to be Mexican; and if I were, I would offer it the best of my life.” In December 1875, Amor con amor se paga premiered in Mexico, a play whose significance eventually transcended the stage. For him, Aztec soil was a place of learning, a platform, and a second homeland, while Cuba represented for Mexico a mirror of its own battles against foreign subjugation.
That relationship did not originate in palaces. It was built by migrants, musicians, exiles, activists, and poets. The Cuban José María Heredia contemplated the Mexican landscape through the eyes of an exile and wrote: “How beautiful is the land once inhabited by the brave Aztecs!”, the opening line of the poem En el Teocalli de Cholula, written in 1820. Communist leader Julio Antonio Mella found refuge and engaged in political activity here until he was assassinated in 1929 by hitmen sent by the Cuban dictatorship of the time. Later, the bolero crossed ports and radio stations until it blurred the line between what was Cuban and what was Mexican.
Politics, too, followed that path. Fidel Castro arrived in Mexico as an exile in 1955. Here he reorganized the revolutionary movement, gathered his comrades, and set sail from Tuxpan in 1956 aboard the Granma. What happened from that day on is history. The very same coast that had once welcomed conquering expeditions then became the starting point for a struggle for the island’s sovereignty.
Years later, in 1964, when most Latin American governments severed relations with Havana under pressure from the OAS—“the U.S. Ministry of Colonies”—Mexico decided to maintain its diplomatic relations.
It was not merely a gesture of sympathy. It was a position consistent with the historical experience of a country that had been invaded, stripped of part of its territory, and subjected to external pressures for decades. For Mexico, non-intervention was never a ceremonial formula, but rather a form of self-defense.
For this reason, the blockade against Cuba cannot be treated as a secondary element of its contemporary history. More than six decades of economic, commercial, and financial restrictions have shaped the lives of several generations. The siege increasingly resembles a naval blockade and, as reported yesterday before the Cuban Parliament, currently results in more than 7,000 containers loaded with medicines, food, spare parts, and technology being held up in international ports.
Beyond the Cuban case, those who defend blockades and economic pressure maintain that this is the most effective way to force countries they consider resistant to democracy to change. They argue that dialogue, cooperation, and what they call “complacency” have failed to produce progress. Their reasoning is based on the old theory that the worse things get, the greater the chances of provoking a political breakdown. The problem is that this deterioration is never distributed equitably. It falls first on the weakest and most defenseless sectors, who become collateral victims of a strategy designed far from their homes.
The aid recently sent by Mexico—more than 814 metric tons of food and basic necessities transported from Veracruz—is part of the long history of that gulf, which, far from separating the two peoples, has woven a shared memory between its shores. In March of this year, Andrés Manuel López Obrador invoked an idea from Lázaro Cárdenas: that Cuba’s fate also concerns Mexico. This is not because the two countries should be conflated, nor because solidarity erases their differences, but because Latin America knows all too well the tactic of isolating one nation to discipline the others.
The march along Paseo de la Reforma expressed that awareness. It was not merely a show of gratitude toward a government that has maintained that stance, nor nostalgia for a revolution now under siege. It was also a defense of a principle: no people should be subjugated through hunger, scarcity, or economic suffocation to force them to renounce their sovereignty. The Gulf, which bears Mexico’s name with honor, once again ceased to be a border and became a bridge.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English