Raul Castro, Mexico FM Meet in Havana

HAVANA TIMES — Mexico’s Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade is making a visit to Cuba as of Thursday. He met during yesterday with Cuban President Raul Castro and his counterpart, Cuban FM Bruno Rodríguez.

This is the first official visit to the island of a high-ranking representative of the government of Enrique Peña Nieto.

Meade said he seeks “new vitality” to Cuba-Mexico relations, friendly during the decades when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was in power, but soured briefly during the term of Vicente Fox (2000-2006).

The Peña Nieto presidency represents the return of the PRI to Mexico’s highest office.

Mexico was the only country that didn’t break off relations with Cuba in the 1960s as the rest of Latin America buckled under US pressure to isolate the Castro government.

After the cooling under Fox, his successor Felipe Calderon tried to improve ties but that effort suffered a setback during the outbreak of Swine Flu in 2009.  Calderon finally visited Cuba in April of 2012.