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Cuba used to get a lot of oil from Venezuela, but ever since the U.S. began its blockade on that country, those shipments have plummeted. The island is having constant blackouts. And now the Trump administration, which wants to topple the Cuban government, has turned its focus to Mexico, which has become Cuba's biggest provider of oil. NPR's Eyder Peralta reports.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Just days after the U.S. seized President Nicolás Maduro, Republican Representative Carlos Gimenez took aim at a new target. In front of a chart, he showed that over the past five years, most oil shipped to Cuba came from Venezuela.
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CARLOS GIMENEZ: Now, as Venezuela has started to drop their contribution, Mexico started to pick things up.
PERALTA: Indeed, Kpler, a global trade tracker, found Mexico had increased its oil shipments to Cuba and had become its most important provider. Russia and China's contributions were negligible. Representative Gimenez then issued a threat.
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GIMENEZ: I believe that a government that's actually helping the adversaries of the United States - we ought to take that into consideration when the terms of our negotiations are being considered.
PERALTA: The Mexico-Cuba relationship is complicated. Ricardo Pascoe Pierce, who served as Mexican ambassador to Cuba in the early 2000s, says it has survived U.S. pressure and goes back decades. Even during the Cold War, Mexico maintained functional relations with Cuba. In part, Pascoe says, It's symbolic of a deeply held belief that Mexico should remain unaligned.
RICARDO PASCOE PIERCE: It permits you to be able to kind of hold the superpowers at a distance, because if you don't hold them at a distance, they're absolutely overbearing.
PERALTA: Mexico, says Pascoe, has always played both sides. Cuban revolutionaries would be allowed to fly through Mexico, and Mexico would then pass their pictures and information to the CIA.
PASCOE: So Mexico played this dual role of pleasing everybody. Let's put it that way.
PERALTA: But in the '90s, Mexico decided to sign a free trade agreement with the United States. And since then, it has become structurally dependent on the North, says Pascoe, making U.S. demands way more meaningful.
PASCOE: It's difficult for Mexico to play the duality.
PERALTA: Right now, says Pascoe, Mexican oil exports are not significant enough to keep Cuba afloat the way Venezuela did. But one thing is clear, he says - if there comes a time when Mexico has to choose between Cuba and the U.S., it will have to pick the U.S. So the oil Mexico is sending to Cuba may well be the last expression of that lasting relationship.
PASCOE: I think this is sort of a historic hiccup at the end of a long road.
PERALTA: The Mexican government, for its part, insists that it will keep supporting Cuba. It's a humanitarian imperative, President Claudia Sheinbaum said. Plus, she added, a sovereign country gets to decide how it uses its resources. Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Mexico City. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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