Tijuana plans sister-city pact with Havana
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20061112-9...
Officials heading to Cuba this week
By Anna Cearley
November 12, 2006
TIJUANA – A group of Tijuana officials and city council members is expected to travel to Havana, Cuba, this week to sign a declaration formalizing a
sister-city relationship with the communist nation's capital.
Miguel Angel Badiola, director of public relations for the city of Tijuana, said the exact dates for the trip haven't been determined. He said Mayor
Jorge Hank Rhon is expected to spend a day meeting with Havana city officials, and he did not know if the Tijuanans would be able to visit ailing
Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
The sister-city agreement is intended to promote cultural, educational, social and economic ties. A group of 20 city representatives, including
members of the business community, will be traveling for the event, Badiola said.
The Friends of Cuba has been trying for more than four years to get Tijuana to formalize a relationship with Havana, said Javier Heredia Talavera,
general coordinator of the club. The idea faced political resistance, he said, from previous city administrations under the conservative National
Action Party.
Cuba and Mexico share a common history of U.S. intervention, and some Mexicans admire Cuba for defending its sovereignty against the U.S. government's
prolonged embargo. At the same time, Mexico, and the city of Tijuana in particular, share a border and strong ties with the United States.
Mexico sometimes finds itself in the middle of its two neighbors' differences.
Tijuana has a long-standing sister-city relationship with San Diego. The relationship with Havana was approved last month by the city council, which
is now dominated by members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The PRI governed Mexico for more than seven decades until the election
of President Vicente Fox in 2000.
Fox has been criticized by some Mexicans for appearing to align more closely with the United States than with Cuba.
The six Tijuana council members aligned with Fox's party, the National Action Party, or PAN, abstained from the vote while the other 11 council
members voted in favor of the action, PAN councilman Raúl Soria said. Most of the 11 are with the PRI party.
“We live in a country where democracy rules, and unfortunately, our brothers in Cuba don't have this,” Soria said. “Despite the fact that we like the
Cubans a lot, I personally am not in agreement with the politics of the Cuban government.”
He pointed out a line in the sister-city agreement that says it's intended to “promote the respect of human rights” and noted that Cuba has been
criticized for mistreating dissidents.
Soria said Cuba and Tijuana already have cultural and educational exchanges that don't require the formality of a sister-city agreement.
Soria said he wouldn't be going on the trip.
Councilman Rafael Garcia Vazquez, a PRI member who is also president of the city's Commission of Tourism, Commerce and Sister Cities, wouldn't explain
why he voted for the measure, or if he would be going on the trip.
“We have a lot of sister-city relationships, and one more or one less . . . it's nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “It's a relation of friendship
between pueblos, no more than that.”
He said the request was passed to his commission from the city's public relations office. Agencia Fronteriza de Noticias, a Tijuana news agency, has
reported that the initiative was backed by the mayor, Hank.
Badiola said Mexico has diplomatic ties with Cuba, and other cities in Mexico have also formed sister-city ties with Cuba.
Heredia, who calls himself a communist sympathizer, said the Tijuana visitors are invited to spend a week in Cuba, but Badiola said he didn't know if
the trip would be that long.
Tijuana has sister-city ties with cities in the United States, Asia and Europe, as well as other cities in Mexico. During Hank's administration,
sister-city ties have also been established with the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and the mayor's hometown of Santiago Tianguistenco in the
interior state of Mexico, among others.
Heredia, who is not Cuban, estimates that about 400 Cubans may be living in Tijuana, while a recent study by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a
Tijuana-area think tank, determined there were 156.
Cubans who try to enter the United States illegally often attempt it in Florida, but others are smuggled through Mexico and cross into California
through Tijuana.
Some people who slip out of Cuba end up staying in Mexico.
For example, the owner of a small Cuban restaurant that opened in Tijuana last year, Sabor y Son, was living in the United States after fleeing Cuba,
but he ended up in Tijuana when he married a Mexican woman. The owner, Pedro Valdes, was out of town and unavailable for comment.
Heredia said upcoming plans include naming a neighborhood in Tijuana after José Martí, the leader of the Cuban independence movement in the 1800s, and
a Cuban artist will design a statue. Heredia also said that under the sister-city agreement, Cuban doctors will be volunteering their services to help
Tijuana residents with eye problems.
He said the relationship signifies “a peaceful co-existence of the nations in respect to the sovereignty of each one.”
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