Mexico has issued a complaint against an American-owned hotel that - under pressure from the US government - expelled a group of Cuban businessmen meeting with US energy executives.
The US Treasury Department confirmed that the Hotel Maria Isabel Sheraton in Mexico City was told to expel the Cuban delegation in compliance with the US embargo against business with Cuba or Cubans. The meeting was moved to a Mexican-owned hotel on Saturday.
"The hotel in Mexico City is a US subsidiary, and therefore prohibited from providing a service to Cuba or Cuban nationals," said Brookly McLaughlin, a spokesman for the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. He was referring to the Helms-Burton law, which tightened US trade sanctions first imposed against Cuba in 1961.
"The hotel acted in accordance with US sanctions," he said.
Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said the Mexican government is also considering a diplomatic complaint against the United States in the case.
He said his department had formally started a complaint process against the Sheraton for violating investment and trade protection laws, and that the hotel would have 15 days to respond. The hotel could face fines of nearly $500,000 or could even be shut down, officials said.
"I think that there was evident contempt for Mexican law on the part of the Hotel Maria Isabel Sheraton ... and it is going to be punished for discrimination, consumer fraud and, moreover, for applying laws that do not apply in Mexico," Derbez told reporters in London, where he is on an official visit.
Sheraton officials in Mexico City have declined to comment.
About 30 people protested outside the hotel yesterday, waving Mexican and Cuban flags and yelling "Get out Yankees!" The demonstrators plastered the glass doors with signs reading "Shut down" and "Closed for bowing to US imperialism and harming national sovereignty."
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States had been contacted by Mexico regarding the incident. He declined to give more details.
Kirby Jones, president of the US-Cuba Trade Association, which hosted the event, noted that a Starwood-owned hotel in Cancun, Mexico, had hosted similar conferences between Cuban officials and US business representatives without incident.
The three-day energy meeting, which ended on Saturday, was the first private-sector oil summit between Cuba and the United States.
AP