Leftist former President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador over the weekend launched a fundraising campaign for Cuba’s communist Castro regime, inviting everyone to donate money to a recently established charity that will purchase “humanitarian aid” to allegedly “help the Cuban people.”
López Obrador, often referred to by his initials “AMLO,” served as president of Mexico between 2018 and 2024, succeeded by his political protégé, President Claudia Sheinbaum. Since then, the former president has largely kept himself out of the public eye. In November 2025, he reiterated that he would remain “retired” and would only return to the streets if “democracy were under threat,” a coup, or if it were necessary to “defend Mexico’s sovereignty.”
Despite his assertion that he would remain “retired,” local outlets noted that he has broken his “retirement” vow on several occasions. On Saturday, López Obrador published a social media post stating that he is in retirement but that it “pains me to see that they seek to annihilate the brotherly people of Cuba in the name of their ideals of freedom and the defense of sovereignty.”
“To those who think this is someone else’s struggle, I remind you of what General Cárdenas said during the Bay of Pigs invasion: ‘It is not right to remain indifferent to their heroic struggle, because their fate is our own,’” the post read in part.
The former president called on everyone to deposit donations in an account in Mexico’s Banorte bank managed by “Humanity with Latin America,” an association that, according to López Obrador, was opened by “citizens, writers, and journalists” to purchase food, medicine, oil, and gasoline, and to “help the Cuban people.”
“Let everyone contribute what they can!” He concluded.
The outlet La Silla Rota reported on Sunday that the “Humanity with Latin America” association promoted by López Obrador was established on March 9, six days before the former president’s post, and received authorization from the Mexican Finance Ministry to serve as a charitable recipient “within four business days.”
El Financiero detailed that the organization published a “Call to Action” in a local newspaper on March 10 in which it stated that failing to support the Castro regime would be an outrage “at a time when the U.S. government is attempting to subdue the Cuban people through hunger and deprivation.”
The Cuban regime largely relies on oil donations to keep the nation’s barely functional power grid working after nearly seven decades of communist rule left the grid — and the rest of Cuba’s infrastructure — on the brink of complete collapse.
For more than two decades, Venezuela’s socialist regime had supplied its Cuban ideological mentors with virtually free shipments of oil. Since 2023, and until January 2026, both the López Obrador and Sheinbaum administrations supplied the Castro regime with monthly shipments of “humanitarian aid” oil at a reported rate of about 20,000 barrels per day. The Mexican oil shipments complemented the Venezuelan oil shipments.
El Financiero detailed in January that Mexico overtook Venezuela and became the top supplier of oil to Cuba in 2025 after Sheinbaum had reportedly “tripled” subsidized oil shipments to Cuba during the second quarter of 2025.
The Cuban regime abruptly lost access to Venezuela’s heavily subsidized oil after President Donald Trump authorized a law enforcement operation in Caracas that resulted in the arrest of dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Weeks later, President Sheinbaum confirmed that Mexico had halted its “humanitarian” oil shipments to Cuba amid President Trump’s pressure campaign on the brutally repressive Cuban communist regime.
Miguel Díaz-Canel, the communist figurehead “president” of Cuba, publicly thanked López Obrador for the proposal on social media and claimed, “on behalf of Cuba, I will never tire of expressing my gratitude for Mexico’s generous solidarity and support for the heroic resistance of the Cuban people.”
“And we will never forget your unwavering and decisive support in strengthening that cherished friendship,” Díaz-Canel wrote.
President Sheinbaum publicly expressed her support of López Obrador’s initiative during an official event in Compostela, Nayarit, on Sunday. According to the Mexican president, the United States and other countries allegedly imposed a “blockade” on the Cuban people, which, she claimed, prevents “goods from reaching the country.”
“Recently, they imposed another blockade to prevent oil from reaching the country. Our Cuban brothers and sisters are suffering, and they are a close, brotherly people,” Sheinbaum said per the Cuban-regime outlet Cubadebate.
Asked during a Monday morning press conference if she will be donating to the initiative, Sheinbaum reportedly answered, “I think so, on a personal level.”
“This is a call for solidarity with the people of Cuba, who are suffering—not because of anything they’ve done, but because of decades of isolation caused by a trade embargo and, more recently, a fuel embargo,” she said.
“It was a citizens’ initiative to make this request and send support. He [López Obrador] issued that call, and over the weekend, all his political opponents reacted, asking where that account came from,” she added.
Despite Sheinbaum’s claims of a “blockade,” the Cuban regime confirmed on Facebook that the third shipment of Mexican “humanitarian aid” in a month arrived in Cuba over the weekend, with Cuban officials reportedly praising Mexico as the country that has “provided the most support to Cuba.”
Last week, Cuban lawyer Maylin Fernández Suris denounced to the Madrid-based outlet Diario de Cuba that the humanitarian aid does not operate outside the communist regime’s state apparatus, as the regime’s communist policies centralize all “international cooperation” and, as such, all aid from foreign governments is channeled through official regime channels. Diario de Cuba explained that the situation has led to testimonies from Cuban nationals denouncing that they have not received anything from the Mexico-shipped aid.
In February, the U.S. State Department announced that it would send an additional $6 million worth of direct humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people in a logistical partnership with the Catholic Church and Caritas that allows for the aid to be received directly by its beneficiaries, preventing the Cuban regime from interfering with its delivery.
Several Mexican leftist senators from the ruling Morena party such as Emmanuel Reyes and Carlos Castillo Pérez have reportedly expressed that they will support López Obrador’s initiative by donating the equivalent to one month of their salary to the bank account. According to CiberCuba, Castillo Pérez deposited 61,871 pesos (roughly $3,493.24) at the bank account published by the López Obrador.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
