The award — the nation’s highest honor for foreigners and determined primarily by the president — has beforehand been given to leaders starting from Fidel Castro to the Shah of Iran.

The award notification mentioned the Cuban chief “has promoted cooperation between the 2 nations on well being points.”

López Obrador praised Cuba on Friday for sending medical doctors to Mexico, a few of whom serve in harmful or distant areas. However these medical doctors, and the salaries they’re paid, have raised controversy in Mexico. Some mentioned the roles ought to go to Mexican medical doctors, whereas different suspected that a lot of their salaries would go to the Cuban authorities.

As president, López Obrador has gone out of his approach to purchase as a lot as he can from Cuba. However his buy of the whole lot from Cuban crushed stone ballast to the Abdala coronavirus vaccine have raised eyebrows.

Mexico purchased 9 million doses of the Cuban-made Abdala vaccine in September 2022, with the doses arriving at yr’s finish, when Mexico’s vaccination efforts had already tailed off.

López Obrador’s administration is utilizing the Cuban vaccine as a booster, despite the fact that it was designed for coronavirus variants circulating in 2020 or 2021, not present variants. Few Mexicans have proven as much as get the Cuban booster photographs.

Within the rush to construct his pet challenge, a vacationer practice that can run in a tough loop across the Yucatan peninsula, López Obrador has mentioned he’ll import boatloads of crushed stone ballast from Cuba at nice price.

The ballast is required to stabilize the ties of the practice tracks. Native stone within the Yucatan will not be the correct, and far has been shipped to Yucatan ports from Mexico’s personal Gulf coast.

López Obrador has lengthy been a fan of Cuba, and often performs Cuban “nueva trova” music at his day by day information briefings.

The president additionally been criticized for his hyperlinks to different leftist regimes. His administration drew complaints for appointing a former Venezuelan official to a key place within the Public Training Division at a time when Mexico is revamping instructing strategies and textbooks.

Regardless of his infatuation with leftist regimes overseas, the Mexican president has largely been conservative on social and monetary points at dwelling.

He brushes off critics who cite human rights abuses by the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes.

“It’s conservative political posturing,” López Obrador mentioned earlier this month. “It’s like, ‘We’re going to flip into Venezuela, we’re going to flip into Cuba.’”