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 present Cuba as an ideal regional logistics hub for the countries of the bloc to expand their presence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The central proposal revolved around the Mariel Special Development Zone, which the regime presents as the gateway of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) to the region.
"At this fifth Eurasian Economic Forum, Cuba presented the practical implementation of a regional productive logistics center in the Mariel Special Development Zone, which can be integrated into the efforts of the Eurasian 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 block and the observer countries.
The vice president argued that "the Union can benefit from Cuba's privileged geographic location, its advantageous tariff agreements in the region, and its potential for building 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 number two of the regime— raises the diplomatic status of Havana with the bloc compared to previous visits.
In March, the Deputy Prime Minister Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga had already participated in the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council in Shymkent, where he presented the project of Mariel as a logistics hub and announced that it would be taken to the Eurasian Economic Forum.
On the eve of the Supreme Council, Cuba and the EAEU signed the Joint Action Plan 2026-2030 as part of the fifth Eurasian Economic Forum, an agreement that Valdés Mesa emphasized in his speech.
The speech came at a time of intense 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 entered our country, thanks to the assistance of the Russian Federation."
He also stated that the U.S. president has signed "two executive orders that significantly and unprecedentedly strengthen the extraterritorial effects of the blockade."
That high-pressure context coincides with parallel negotiations between Havana and Washington: on May 15, a meeting took place between the CIA director and Cuban representatives, amid an energy blockade that Valdés Mesa himself described as an attempt to "deprive us of our legitimate right to economic and commercial relations with all nations of the world."
After his intervention at the Supreme Council, Valdés Mesa maintained a busy schedule 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, the deputy director general of Bilateral Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The deadline for foreign companies to sever operations with GAESA or face secondary sanctions from the United States is next Friday, June 5, making the pursuit of alternative economic partnerships an urgent priority for the regime.
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