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If Mexico doesn’t apply its law, it will abdicate
its independence
• Mexican
intellectuals and activists condemn the deference
shown by their country’s highest authorities to the
extraterritorial application of the yankee Helms
Burton Act
BY
PEDRO DE LA HOZ—Granma daily staff writer—
WHEN the United States, with its
usual arrogance, adopted the legal aberration known
as the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, Mexico – like
several other countries – approved legislation to
prevent that interventionist and extraterritorial
law from having a domestic impact.
 Ten years later, in reaction to
the eviction of Cuban citizens from the María Isabel
Hotel Sheraton, to date the Mexican government has
refused to apply that “antidote” law, which includes
sanctions for those who disobey it, according to
outstanding Mexican intellectuals and social
activists visiting the Cuban capital.
Invited to participate in the
panel discussion “Intellectuals for Sovereignty and
against the Empire” at the José Martí
Anti-Imperialist Tribunal, they criticized what they
consider to be a deferential and servile attitude on
the part of their country’s highest authorities in
the face of the Bush administration’s aggressive
policies against Cuba and against the Mexican people
themselves.
Former diplomat Gustavo Iruegas,
with vast experience in the field, was emphatic when
he said “If Mexico does not apply its law, it will
abdicate its independence.”
More than 400 intellectuals and
social leaders from that country, joined by
prominent individuals from other Latin American
countries, delivered a letter to the Mexican
Ministry of Foreign Affairs qualifying as outrageous
the lack of response from the Vicente Fox government
to the eviction of the Cubans. The letter also
points out the clear violation of national
sovereignty explicit in the application of the
Helms-Burton Act and demands that the executive
express an energetic protest to Washington via a
diplomatic note in defense of national dignity and
decency.
The United States has decided to
utilize Mexico as a platform to hold up its efforts
to undermine the Cuban government. Uruguayan
journalist Carlos Fazio, a columnist for the Mexican
daily La Jornada, cited as precedents the
cancellation by Sheraton itself of a business deal
with Cuban tourist companies in late 1992, and the
breaking of a contract for tires with Cuba by the
national affiliate of Goodyear in 1993; in both
cases, they were frightened by the recently-passed
Torricelli Act.
Fazio also noted U.S. attempts to
orchestrate from within Mexico channels of
logistical support for mercenaries in the service of
the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
According to panelists, the
Sheraton case is yet another example of the U.S.
rulers’ scorn for the people of Juárez’s homeland.
Anthropologist Gilberto López y Rivas, one of the
founders of the In Defense of Humanity Network of
Networks, affirmed that the empire is using
immigrants and their children as cannon fodder in
its current wars. In Iraq alone, more than 200 fatal
casualties are of U.S. soldiers with Mexican roots.
Iruegas referred to the legal and
moral monstrosity implied by the existence of the
wall that the United States is building along its
southern border, and Fazio warned of the perspective
of converting Mexico and Central America into a
Bantustan as a result of the northern power’s
immigration policies.
“Defending Cuba’s dignity is
defending Mexico’s own dignity,” stated social
activist Martín Hernández, a Christian who is a
disciple of the doctrines of archbishops Oscar
Arnulfo Romero and Sergio Méndez Arceo. “Cuba’s
example pursues us, presses us and is demanding of
us in our struggles,” he affirmed.
Another bearer of that deep
solidarity of the Mexican people for Cuba was Miguel
Alvarez from the Service and Consultancy for Peace (SERAPAZ),
who highlighted how the construction of social
alternatives to imperialism and neoliberalism in
Mexico must inevitably include a rethink of the
notions of dignity and sovereignty and relations
with the United States.
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