In a move that has ignited a fierce debate over national sovereignty, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed this week that state oil company Pemex has suspended planned crude oil shipments to Cuba.
While she insisted the decision was “sovereign,” the announcement is widely seen as a capitulation to intense pressure from the Trump administration, which has vowed to strangle the island’s economy following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
For Sheinbaum, it is the latest example of the tightrope she must walk: appeasing her neighbor to the north without completely severing Mexico’s historic foreign policy pillars.
Historic friendship
Mexico’s solidarity with Cuba is a decades-old cornerstone of its independent foreign policy. Since the 1959 revolution, Mexico has maintained diplomatic and economic ties, most recently welcoming Cuban medical professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic — a move that drew quiet disapproval from Washington. This history makes the suspension of oil, a critical lifeline now that Venezuela has stopped supplies, a significant symbolic rupture. Sheinbaum’s own words underscore the contradiction. Just days before the suspension was reported, she defended oil shipments to Cuba as a “sovereign and humanitarian” act of solidarity.
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