López Obrador and the Cubans

The landslide victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador It has already unleashed the first reactions among Cubans divided into two main tendencies: those who predict a Bolivarian disaster and those who hope for the end of the regime in Mexico; plus a minority group that is committed to respecting the results of the polls and waiting for the elected president to govern.

Mexico, 120 million inhabitants and 40 million emigrated to the USA, was fed up first with the hegemonic PRI and now with the two-party system; But this does not mean a blank check for López Obrador, whose first challenge is to satisfy all the currents that make up the MORENA coalition and who - logically - will pressure to obtain positions in an elephantine narco state.

Donald Trump has acted reflexively and has been one of the first to congratulate AMLO and express his willingness to work together; knowing that both leaders enjoy the advantage of having won against the system and speaking clearly, which can portend a different relationship, hence the North American has extended his hand.

Trump knows that a good part of northern Mexico is totally pro-Yankee and - logically - he fears that AMLO's victory will generate a stampede effect among those Mexicans who do not trust the authoritarian traits and the dalliances of the president-elect with the left in the region. , including the Cuban government, who will attend the party with public excitement, but missing those glorious years of collaboration with the PRI.

Perhaps the first history of collaboration between Castroism and the PRI dates back to 1955, when Fidel Castro and Fernando Gutiérrez Barrio met, one of the main agents of the defunct Federal Security Directorate (DSF), of which he became head. , subordinated directly to the Minister of the Interior.

That was a unique relationship because in Mexico, Gutiérrez Barrio was the scourge of communist leaders, students, workers, peasants and indigenous people; but Castro always distinguished him as an honorable friend and “decent man.”

An old rumor has been running for years through the discreet corridors of Cuban, North American and Mexican Intelligence: the then head of the KGB center in Mexico, Nikolai Leónov, closely followed the preparations for the Granma expedition and observed, from a dock nearby, the departure of the yacht with the 82 expedition members to Cuba.

This information has never been corroborated due to the secrecy of the security apparatus of the three countries, but Leónov (today Lieutenant General (R) and author of biographies of Fidel and Raúl Castro, whom he met in Europe in 1953, He usually smiles when asked about the subject and remembers that his favorite chair was a gift from Fidel Castro, whom he accompanied on his first trip to the USSR (1963) to heal the wounds caused by the Missile Crisis (1962).

The relations of the Mexican PRI with Castroism were mutual collaboration in every possible way, making public display that Mexico was the only country in the region that did not break with Cuba in the 60s; but both knowing that, in exchange, the CIA installed its largest center for Cuba in the Federal District and, through Mexico, channeled its anti-Castro intelligence and subversion work.

During the first Ibero-American Summit (Guadalajara, 1991) there was a tense scene that ended in laughter, when Castro confessed that Mexico had been the only country where Cuba had not supported the guerrillas, in gratitude for the solidarity received and Salinas de Gortari said: "goodness".

In recent years, Mexico even kidnapped former Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) officer Pedro Riera Escalante, who had defected, and put him on a plane to Cuba; thus paying for the services provided by Havana by offering refuge to Carlos Salinas de Gortari and arresting the businessman Carlos Ahumada, who sang the traviata about political corruption in the neighboring country, recordings that Cuba then discreetly passed on to the then Mexican government.

But now we are in 2018, López Obrador will take office in December and Havana, no matter how much everyone insists on denying it, has been defending the thesis of the postponed armed revolution for years and suggesting that it be won at the polls, that Then there will be an opportunity and institutional frameworks to collaborate by charging because the era of royalties is over and Cuba has learned this with the structural poverty of its citizens.

Havana will act before López Obrador with the pragmatic caution that it usually always acts in these cases and will not hesitate to negotiate advantageous agreements if the new Mexican government comes within reach, as happened with Hugo Chávez, who was the one who sought and surrendered to Castro. and not the other way around.

Cuba has had no influence whatsoever on AMLO's victory, which has been driven by the boredom of the majority of Mexicans with the policies of the PRI and the PAN, the major losers in the contest. Havana, furthermore, already has diplomatic relations with the USA and nothing will endanger that relationship, now strained by the “sonic attacks” and Trump's corrections, but which was Castro's most desired objective for years.

López Obrador has achieved an incontestable and democratic victory; in his mind he has to choose a path like that of José Múgica in Uruguay or take to the mountains with excessive public spending and policies that scare away investors and businessmen. It will be your responsibility, not Cuba's.

Although there will be no shortage of entrepreneurs, as happened and happens in Venezuela, who stick to their guns and create new companies to manage the copious public resources that AMLO is expected to use to combat poverty. Money is very cowardly, but when it sees a vein it becomes brave because it has no ideology.

Paradoxically, when some Cubans become tragic with the electoral victory of a leftist in Latin America and attribute an essential role to Havana, they are -without realizing it- magnifying the myth of Castroism as a geopolitical power that it never was, although it had the ability to handle itself as balance in regional geopolitical balances and generate prestige in the Third World for the work of its soldiers, doctors and teachers, among others.

Cuba's problem is not AMLO or Maduro, but the absence of freedom, poverty and strong dependence on an external energy supplier, since the fall of the USSR abolished the Pact of San José, where Venezuela long before Chavismo was protagonist alongside the USSR.

We will only know if the majority of Mexican voters were right or wrong in electing López Obrador over time. What we Cubans need is to be able to choose between different parties, separation of powers, a price system and a de-ideologized education, which are the bases of freedom and prosperity; The rest are myths and tales of paths that – insistently – insist on attributing non-existent merits to Castroism and its epilogue.