Mexico City.- Academics, politicians and activists who consider themselves to be from the democratic left reproached President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for handing over the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle to his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Díaz-Canel, considering him a dictator.
Last Saturday, President López Obrador presented in Campeche the decoration, in the Collar degree, the highest distinction that Mexico grants to foreign heads of state, to Cuban President Díaz-Canel.
This Sunday, at least 65 signatories argued that the Díaz-Canel government is a dictatorship because it has thousands of political prisoners and there are testimonies of torture against those who call for political openness in Cuba.
“Those of us who sympathize with the democratic, liberal, and institutional left feel as baffled as they are saddened by the decision of the head of the Mexican State, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to award the dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel with the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle,” the statement said. in writing.
“There are no ‘acceptable dictatorships of the left’ and ‘abhorrent dictatorships of the right’: a dictatorship is just that, a regime where people do not have elementary civil and political liberties to be able to decide the course of their lives.”
They cited that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) documented at least 1,034 people imprisoned for political reasons until November of last year, and that the organization “Prisoners Defenders” testified that 100 political prisoners were victims of torture, incommunicado detention, and psychological intimidation.
“We condemn the fact that the President of Mexico turns a deaf ear to the repression that Cuban citizens endure on a daily basis and even hangs on the chest of the Cuban dictator the highest distinction that a foreigner can receive from our country,” it added.
Among some of the signatories are the former president of the IFE José Woldenberg, the former Rector Raúl Arias Lovillo, the academic Roger Bartra, as well as Fernando Bazúa, Alma Maldonado, Raúl Bejarano Romero, Fernando Belaunzarán Méndez, Bernardo Bolaños Guerra, Rubén Chababo and Mony by Swaan Addati.
Other signatories are Rubén Chababo, Armando Chaguaceda, Carmen Cordera Campos, Adriana Muro Polo, Juan Zavala Gutiérrez, Laura Woldenberg Carabias, as well as Martha Tagle Martínez.
The participants are citizens of Mexico, Argentina and Cuba, and some are part of the UNAM, UAM, CIDE, UV, Anahuac, ITESO, Colegio de México, Flacso and the Universidad Iberoamericana.
What award was given?
The award ceremony, provided for in the Law of Prizes, Incentives and Rewards, was held in the Great Plaza of the archaeological zone of Edzná, in the capital of Campeche.
Like Díaz-Canel, other heads of state who received this Collar degree recognition in past six-year terms were Fidel Castro, former President of Cuba; José Mujica Cordano, former President of Uruguay, as well as the former President of Chile, Michele Bachelet.
