López Obrador will present Díaz-Canel with the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest distinction for a foreign Head of State

The President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, will receive this Saturday from his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest decoration for a foreign Head of State.

The protocol act, which will be held during the visit of the Cuban president to the State of Campeche, represents a new stamp for a close bilateral relationship that goes beyond the symbolic.

Since he came to power in 2018, López Obrador has been recovering the traditional Mexican harmony with Havana, cooled during the last governments.

The rapprochement has been forged with economic agreements and political winks until it reached its most intense point last year.

In strong diplomatic endorsement,

The official announcement published this Friday justifying the high award, which has also been awarded to Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela or José Mujica, is a compilation of the latest milestones in the bilateral relationship.

Cooperation has been especially intense on health issues with the arrival in Mexico of medical personnel and the purchase of the Cuban vaccine against covid for reinforcement batches.

The sending of Cuban doctors to Mexico, which exceeds 500, has been surrounded by controversy.

The medical associations denounced that the measure was more a political gesture than a solution to the deficiencies of the Mexican health system.

Both commands will visit this Saturday a medical center where one of the Cuban continents has been contracted.

Another section of the official route will be the supervision of the progress of the Mayan Train, which crosses the state of Campeche, which also has Cuban collaboration.

More than 20,000 tons of ballast, a stone used in construction, have arrived from the island.

The great Mexican publishing aircraft carrier, the Fondo Cultura Económica, is also the first foreign bookstore that has managed to open in Havana.

The Mexican statement also highlights "the different visits that it has carried out in national territory."

This week's will be Díaz-Canel's fourth trip to Mexico, some of which are especially symbolic.

For example, his invitation to the inauguration ceremony of López Obrador in 2018. Or his presence during the military parade commemorating the independence of Mexico two years ago.

The relationship was also strengthened by López Obrador's visit to Havana.

Unlike other Mexican presidents —all of them have visited Cuba since 1959, but most have done so at the end of their term, in a protocol manner—, the Morena president arrived in the middle of the legislature and after having visited the United States three times, staging that he wants to give the highest level of relations between the two countries.

On that trip, loaded with symbolism, López Obrador was in turn awarded the José Martí Order, the highest Cuban distinction.

And he also took the opportunity to firmly condemn the embargo in the US. The same thing happens in every meeting or every time Cuba crosses his agenda.

This Friday, during his daily morning conference, he has once again influenced the matter by describing the US measure as "an arrogant act and violation of human rights."

“It is medieval and contrary to what has to be sought, a friendly relationship between the peoples of the entire American continent”, he added.

The most serious diplomatic issue so far has been the absence of López Obrador from the Summit of the Americas in support of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, who were not invited by Biden.

A fight that gained special relevance because it came in the midst of the delicate negotiations between the two countries over migration policy.

Despite his proverbial reservation towards international politics, the Mexican president seems, however, willing to step on the accelerator during the second part of the six-year term with trips focused on his neighbors to the south —Central America and Cuba—, dusting off a Latin American agenda that had a first precedent during the temporary presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) three years ago.

The president of Morena is recovering, to a large extent, the special harmony that the PRI regime always maintained with the Castro government.

At least, until the distancing in the 1990s and the tension during the first right-wing PAN government in Mexico.

Diplomatic waters returned to normal during the return of the PRI to power in the past six-year term, but López Obrador has stepped on the accelerator making good one of the slogans that remained in force for decades: "by defending Cuba, you also defend Mexico and its beginning".

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