Professor Santiago Pérez Benítez is the author of "El Fin de la URSS y Cuba," in Cuba en Crises: Perspectivas Economicas y Politicas (1994).

Megan Lardner

Cuban-Mexican political relations, characterized by Cuban Professor Santiago Pérez Benítez as subtle and complex, have lost forward momentum through the 1990s in response to changing international influences and internal politics in both countries.

"The pace of activism in the relations between Cuba and Mexico has stopped," said Pérez, a researcher for the University of Havana's Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales and the Cuban Foreign Ministry. "What used to be a very active, very engaging foreign policy has been reduced because of internal problems and because of relations with the U.S.," he told an assembly of some thirty students and professors at the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley today.

The unique political relationship between Cuba and Mexico is rooted in the proximity of the two countries and Mexico's response to the U.S. economic embargo of the island following Cuban President Fidel Castro's rise to power in 1959. The Mexican cities of Veracruz and Merida are two of Havana's nearest mainland neighbors, said Pérez - who added that so is Miami. Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not break relations with Cuba after the embargo, Pérez said. In spite of that bond, which sparked trade and diplomatic relations between Cuba and Mexico, the relationship has changed in the 1990s due to internal and external influences.

One predominant influence is the United States. In 1995, President Castro outraged Mexicans by saying that Mexican children knew more about the cartoon character Mickey Mouse than they did about their own country's history. The passage of the controversial U.S. Helms-Burton Act in 1996 also affected Cuban-Mexican relations and the economy of both countries, Pérez said. The Act threatened foreign investors with legal suits and the denial of visas to the U.S. if they bought and developed property in Cuba claimed by a Cuban citizen or a U.S. citizen-to-be.

"The Helms-Burton influence was not only the effect of pulling out but also the effect of restraining possible investments (for Mexico)," Pérez said.

Hoping to stay on good terms with the U.S., most Mexican investors have steered clear of Cuba, providing seductive opportunities for European and some Asian countries to snatch up Cuban land for development, Pérez added. In one instance, a Mexican company abandoned a $400 million project to an Italian company. And though it used to rank first in investment in Cuba, Mexico has slipped to sixth or seventh, behind countries like Canada, China and Spain, Pérez said.

The resulting loss of Mexican influence in Cuba has occurred at a time when Cuba is gaining more autonomy after suffering near-economic disaster in the early 1990's when aid from the former Soviet Union ended, Pérez said. Thus, Cuba does not need Mexican help as desperately as it did in earlier years, and is less isolated in the international scene than before.

For its part, internal politics within Mexico have also led to weaker political ties between Cuba and Mexico, according to Pérez. The 1995 economic crisis in Mexico, which led to the devaluation of the Mexican peso, caused the country to pull out of investments and to focus on its own political and economic structure, the speaker said. Social unrest - internationally recognized through the Zapatista rebellion in southern Mexico - also created internal tensions which preoccupied Mexican officials, Pérez said.

But Pérez's prognosis was not negative for the next millennium. Candidates for the 2000 elections in Mexico have visited Cuba, a move that reflects the ties between their constituents and Cubans. He said that the results of the election will dictate future relations between the two countries, although in the coming year Mexican politicians will be focusing on the domestic front. Though relations appear stagnant arriving at the end of the century, Pérez said, "There is room for increasing Mexican-Cuban relations."