The Blockade Against Cuba Doesn’t Harm Its Government, but Its People; We Will Always Support Self-Determination: Sheinbaum

ByAlma E. Muñoz and Arturo Sánchez

This article by Alma E. Muñoz and Arturo Sánchez originally appeared in the June 17, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico City. “We do not agree with blockades, they harm peoples, not governments, and we will always be with the self-determination of Cuba, that its people not be punished, that dialogue always be sought and never violent ways out,” President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo reaffirmed.

Asked about the situation prevailing in Latin America, with a complex situation vis-à-vis the United States, she said that when there are conquests by the people, these “remain in memory and the peoples resist for their freedom, which is not that of the market, and for their rights and for democracy.” Then, she added, in “many places” in Latin America we are seeing “the resistance of the peoples in the face of authoritarianism and regressions against their rights and freedoms,” as well as the right to govern themselves.

She insisted that the ultra-right “today wants to impose itself in many places (but) it will always have a resistance, and when the people not only resist but organize themselves, there is no force that can stop them, always peacefully.” The President reiterated in this context that the ultra-right “is not against our government or a progressive, humanist government; it is against the people, against the great majorities.”

At her press conference, she mentioned that in “one” of the twenty calls she has had with President Donald Trump they have discussed the topic of the island “and I told him that Cuba — starting from the hardening of policy against it — has already opened its economy in many areas, and it would be worth taking this into account.”

I gave him my opinion, she added, “as I give it in general, and obviously always seeking a good relationship with the government of the United States, because that has always been our position, but also defending our principles, sovereignty.” But we, she insisted, “will always seek the self-determination of peoples; our Constitution says so, and we do it out of conviction.”