Former Mexican Minister Blasts Peña Nieto for Weak Response to Cuban Censorship

By: Elena Toledo - 

Jorge Castañeda called the Mexican government’s reaction toward Cuba’s hostility “weak.” (Vívelo Hoy)

Mexico’s former Foreign Minister had some harsh words for the current administration’s handling of recent attempts by Cuban officials to stifle events that shed the regime in bad light.
On Wednesday, former Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda described Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration as “weak” regarding its position on Cuba’s recent attempts to block a ceremony in the honor of dissident Felipe Calderon, most specifically by preventing former President Felipe Calderon from attending.
“I consider it unfortunate and condemnable for the Cuban government to deny entry to a former Mexican President,” Castañeda said in a television interview.



Castañeda also stated that “a former president is not an ordinary person. They have important relationship with the Mexican State, a diplomatic passport, a pension for life, a small security team, which applies in all countries in which someone was elected democratically.”
It is an “unfriendly, very hostile act on behalf of the Cuban government toward Mexico and it seems to me that the Mexican government’s response, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government, was very weak,” he added.
“They only regretted the fact that they did not call the Cuban ambassador of Foreign Affairs to deliver a note of complaint,” said the former foreign minister, who served in the Vicente Fox administration.
Castañeda also stressed that “Cuba is a dictatorship, and dictatorships prevent acts of support and solidarity or remembrance of people who opposed them.”

Former President Calderon could not board the plane to Havana to attend a tribute to the deceased dissident Oswaldo Payá. The fromer president described this measure as “sad, despotic, outrageous and silly” in addition to ensuring that the Cuban regime “shattered” the expectations that “things would change” on the island.