Illustrative photo. Cuba's diplomatic relations - Cubaminrex

Mexico City, Feb 11 (RHC) Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel begins an official visit to the Mexican state of Campeche on Saturday to meet for the fifth time with his host Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

It is the fourth visit that the Cuban leader makes to this country in the four years of President López Obrador's administration.

The first was on December 1, 2018 when the founder of the Morena Party took office after winning the presidential elections of July that year with one of the highest votes the country can remember, exceeding 30 million votes.

The following year, in October, Díaz-Canel returned to Mexico for an official visit in which both presidents pledged to strengthen the relationship between their countries.

The annual cycle of personal meetings was broken by the Covid-19 pandemic that hit Mexico very hard and contingents of Cuban doctors were sent by Díaz-Canel to support the Mexican government and people at the worst moment of the disease.

This cooperation continues by sending Abdala vaccines in these last stages of the SARS-CoV2 scourge, which is the one that is being given as a reinforcement to the population at this moment.

Once the pandemic began its descent, the Cuban president returned once again to Mexico City as a special guest of López Obrador during the national independence celebrations in 2021.

The fourth meeting between the two presidents took place in April 2022, in Havana, when López Obrador traveled to Cuba for a brief official visit loaded with much symbolism, after he visited Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Belize.

There, the Mexican president strongly condemned the US blockade of Cuba and reaffirmed his defense of the government headed by Díaz-Canel and those of Nicaragua and Venezuela.

It coincided with his condemnation and criticism of the failed Summit of the Americas convened by Joe Biden in Los Angeles, to which he did not invite those three governments, and in solidarity with them, López Obrador did not participate in the meeting.

In this fifth meeting in Campeche, both rulers will address the subject of Cuba's medical-health collaboration in the national health programs run by the Mexican Social Security Institute.

There will be an official reception at Naval Region 7 with IMSS personnel and Cuban doctors as a gesture of gratitude from the Mexican government and for the collaboration between the two leaders.

Díaz-Canel will be decorated with the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, in the degree of Collar, by President López Obrador.

In a private meeting, both leaders will discuss the health issue, the supply of ballast for the Mayan train, and the US blockade of the island, insistently condemned by the Mexican government, which demands its immediate lifting without preconditions (Source: Prensa Latina).