Mexico will send two navy ships full of food and medical supplies to Cuba after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blamed U.S. sanctions on Cuba for one of the largest anti-government demonstrations in decades, the country’s foreign ministry announced Thursday.
The ships will bring syringes, oxygen tanks and masks, as well as powdered milk, cans of tuna, cooking oil, flour and other food items. The ships are scheduled to leave Sunday from the port of Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico.
The effort demonstrates Mexico’s “international solidarity,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. It added that the country would continue to provide humanitarian efforts to Latin American and Caribbean countries to “combat the toll of the pandemic.”
Mexico’s efforts come the same day that President Biden announced the U.S. would establish sanctions on Álvaro López Miera, minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, as well as the special forces unit the Black Wasps, who the administration deemed responsible for human rights abuses.
Thousands of Cubans showed up to march earlier this month in a massive protest of food shortages and high prices caused by the pandemic.