A group of 65 academics, politicians and intellectuals who identify themselves as center-leftist have criticized President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for decorating Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel with the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico’s highest honor awarded to a foreign citizen.
A statement by the group noted that they were “baffled” and “saddened” by the accolade, which took place during Díaz-Canel’s visit to Mexico last week.
“There are no acceptable dictatorships of the left and abhorrent dictatorships of the right,” the statement said. “A dictatorship is just that: a regime where people do not have civil and political liberties to be able to decide the course of their lives.”
The group also highlighted the findings of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which in November of last year revealed that 1,034 Cubans are currently in jail for political reasons, many of them young people arrested in July 2021 during protests triggered by a shortage of food and medicines amid the Cuban government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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