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The second-in-command of the Cuban embassy in Mexico, Johana Tablada de la Torre, admitted yesterday that the regime does not rule out the possibility that Washington is pressuring the government of Claudia Sheinbaum to do without the 3,140 Cuban doctors deployed in the country, although she considered that this pressure "is not an issue today for Mexico."
Tablada made the statements in an interview with El Sol de México, where he also addressed President Donald Trump's military threats against Cuba, the halt of Mexican oil shipments, and the future of bilateral relations.
The diplomat acknowledged that countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica, and Guyana have already announced the end of their contracts with Cuban medical missions following pressure from Washington, but she is confident that Mexico will take a different path.
"There is pressure, but I feel that it is not a problem for Mexico today. I have no doubt that there has been pressure from the United States, as there have been occasional statements, but I believe that, as in many matters, Mexico has acted in accordance with its national interest, its sovereignty, its autonomy, and the real need that exists; they wouldn't be here if they weren't needed," Tablada affirmed.
The regime official also revealed that Washington has threatened to revoke visas for high-ranking officials from countries that maintain ties with Cuban medical missions, a pressure that, according to her, could deter many in any nation, but not in Mexico.
"There is pressure, there is a threat because the United States has clearly stated that high-ranking officials in countries associated with Cuban doctors will lose their visas. Of course, that makes more than one person feel weak in the knees, but I believe we don't have those circumstances in Mexico," he noted.
Tablada also accused the State Department of annually funding contracts with resources from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to document "alleged violations" against Cuban doctors, labeling these efforts as a campaign to "establish opinion matrices that are far from the truth."
What Tablada omitted is that organizations like Human Rights Watch, the UN, and the European Parliament have documented that the regime retains between 70% and 90% of the salary paid by the receiving countries, leaving professionals with barely 200 dollars a month out of the approximately 5,125 dollars that Mexico pays for each one.
Between 2022 and 2025, the Mexican government transferred more than 105 million dollars directly to the Cuban regime through IMSS-Bienestar.
The congressman Díaz-Balart accused Sheinbaum of being an accomplice to human trafficking for maintaining the program, while the Mexican president has defended it as a "beneficial" and legitimate agreement.
Regarding the halt of crude oil shipments from Mexico to Cuba since January 2026, Tablada stated that "the contracts were not canceled, only suspended" and expressed confidence that Sheinbaum will resume the supplies, although he acknowledged that he does not have details on when this could happen.
Cuba has accumulated a debt of over 1.5 billion dollars with Mexico for crude oil and diesel, adding strain to a bilateral relationship that the Havana regime is working hard to maintain as one of its few regional supports amid the maximum pressure from the Trump administration.
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