SANTIAGO – Cuba stoked tensions across Latin America on Tuesday by blocking a former Chilean minister and one of Mexico’s ex-presidents from traveling to the island to attend an award ceremony hosted by political dissidents.
La #SRE lamenta la decisión del gobierno de #Cuba de no autorizar la visita a La Habana del expresidente @FelipeCalderon.
— SRE México (@SRE_mx) February 21, 2017
Chile said it was recalling its ambassador to Cuba for consultation and asking the Cuban government why Mariana Aylwin, a former education minister and daughter of an ex-president, was blocked from entering Cuba on Monday night.
Aylwin was traveling to the island to receive a prize on behalf of her father. The event, planned for Wednesday, was organized by the Latin American Network of Youth for Democracy, a group opposed to the Communist government.
Gracias Cancillería y Pdta @mbachelet, sólida respuesta a prohibición de viajar a Cuba q me afectó. Chile defiende principios democráticos.
— Mariana Aylwin (@maylwino) February 21, 2017
Cuba opposes anything that legitimizes dissidents, which it claims are funded by U.S. interests. The government is bracing for a tougher U.S. approach to the island under President Donald Trump.
“Exercising the right [to travel between nations] should not be interfered with, especially given that Chile has recognized the feats of various figures in Cuban history and politics,” Chile’s Foreign Relations Ministry said in a statement.
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón tweeted on Tuesday that Cuban immigration prevented him from boarding a flight from Mexico City to Havana to attend the same meeting.
@RosaMariaPaya lamentablemente no podré estar con Uds en el homenaje a tu admirado padre. Inmigración de Cuba solicitó que no me documenten.
— Felipe Calderón (@FelipeCalderon) February 21, 2017
Aylwin was prevented from checking in to her flight in Chile’s capital, Santiago, apparently at the request of the Cuban authorities, she told journalists on Tuesday.
Calderón, from Mexico’s conservative National Action Party (PAN), ruled Mexico from 2006 to 2012 and improved relations with Cuba, which had been severely tested by his predecessor.
Mexico’s foreign ministry said on its Twitter account that it “regretted” Cuba’s decision to block Calderón’s entry.
The group, known as JuventudLAC, has also invited Luis Almagro, the head of the Organization of American States, which suspended Cuba in 1962 for being Communist. It agreed in 2009 to lift the ruling, but Cuba declined to rejoin the Washington-based group, which it deems an instrument of its former Cold War foe the United States.
“The behavior of the Cuban government is deeply gross, vulgar and rude,” Rosa Maria Paya, the group’s leader and daughter of dissident Oswaldo Paya, who died in 2012, told Chilean media.
“We have all received information that [invited guests] are receiving pressure from the Cuban government.”
Mariana Aylwin is seen as an ideological leader of the most conservative segment of Chile’s center-left ruling coalition. Her father was Chile’s first democratically elected president after the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
