EXIMBANK, PEMEX, and extraterritoriality of US blockade against Cuba

The recent sanction by a US financial agency against the state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) for exporting fuel to Cuba shows the extent of the other dimension of Washington's blockade, its extraterritoriality.

This is what activist Carlos Lazo commented to Prensa Latina on a decision by EXIMBANK, an official credit agency promoting exports and investments by the US private sector abroad, to punish PEMEX by canceling an 800-million-dollar for donating oil to Cuba.

The denial of the loan is because Mexico made a sovereign decision to trade and interact with Cuba, an independent country that has been blockaded for more than 60 years, Lazo, coordinator of the Bridges of Love Movement, said.

“Mexico dared to give oil to Cuba, the oil that moves ambulances, the oil that provides electricity to Cuban homes, the oil that serves hospitals,” he stressed.

Lazo warned that this aid to Cuba and Mexico’s position not to join the policy of suffocating the Cuban people led to that measure.

“How many governments, how many institutions around the world will be constantly pressured, punished for trading with Cuba, which once again shows how illegal, how extraterritorial, how inhumane and genocidal the blockade is,” the Seattle-based professor stressed.

The hostility of this policy affects not only the Cuban people but the entire world,” Lazo concluded.

PEMEX has been included in EXIMBANK’s “blacklist,” which applies to nations that belong to the so-called Country Limitation Schedule.

EXIMBANK’s decision is related to the recent donations of more than one million barrels of crude oil from PEMEX to Cuba in June and July.