The Cuban Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa spoke last Friday at the expanded meeting of the Eurasian Economic Supreme Council, held at the Independence Palace in Astana, Kazakhstan, to promote Cuba as an ideal regional logistics center for the countries of the bloc to enhance their presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The central proposal revolved around the Mariel Special Development Zone, which the regime presents as a gateway for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) to the region.
"At this fifth Euro-Asian Economic Forum, Cuba presents the practical implementation of a regional productive logistics center in the Mariel Special Development Zone, which can be integrated into the efforts of the Euro-Asian Economic Union to expand the network of international multimodal logistics centers, thereby enhancing trade and economic cooperation with Latin America and the Caribbean," stated Valdés Mesa before the heads of state of the five member nations of the bloc and the observer countries.
The vice president argued that "the Union can benefit from Cuba's privileged geographical location, its advantageous tariff agreements in the region, and its potential for constructing industrial production facilities in the Mariel special development zone, which has a constantly growing port and customs infrastructure."
In addition to Mariel, Valdés Mesa mentioned areas of common interest such as renewable energy, agriculture, health, biotechnology, digitalization, artificial intelligence, and e-commerce.
Valdés Mesa's participation —the second in command of the regime— elevates Havana's diplomatic standing with the bloc compared to previous visits.
In March, the Deputy Prime Minister Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga had already participated in the Euro-Asian Intergovernmental Council in Shymkent, where he presented the Mariel project as a logistics hub and announced that it would be taken to the Euro-Asian Economic Forum.
The day before the Supreme Council, Cuba and the EEU signed the Joint Action Plan 2026-2030 during the fifth Eurasian Economic Forum, an agreement that Valdés Mesa highlighted in his remarks.
The speech came at a time of heightened pressure from Washington on Havana. The Cuban vice president denounced that "so far this year, only one ship with 100,000 tons of crude has arrived in our country, thanks to the assistance of the Russian Federation."
He also stated that the U.S. president has signed "two executive orders that reinforce to extreme and unprecedented levels the extraterritorial effects of the blockade."
This context of maximum pressure coincides with parallel negotiations between Havana and Washington: on May 15, there was a meeting between the CIA director and Cuban representatives, amid an energy blockade that Valdés Mesa himself described as an attempt to "deprive us of the legitimate right to economic and commercial relations with all nations of the world."
After his intervention in the Supreme Council, Valdés Mesa maintained a busy agenda in Kazakhstan: on his last day, he was received by Yerlan Koshanov, the president of the Lower Chamber of the Kazakh Parliament, accompanied by the Cuban ambassador Alfredo Nieves Portuondo and Alejandro Simancas Marín, deputy director general of Bilateral Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The deadline for foreign companies to cut ties with GAESA or face secondary sanctions from the United States is next Friday, June 5th, making the search for alternative economic alliances an urgent priority for the regime.
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