Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Saturday issued a call for Mexicans to make monetary donations to a recently created non-governmental organization in order to purchase food and other essentials for the people of Cuba.
His appeal came in a social media post, marking just the third time the ex-president has posted to Facebook and X since leaving office on Oct. 1, 2024.
Estoy en retiro, pero me hiere que busquen exterminar, por sus ideales de libertad y defensa de la soberanía, al hermano pueblo de Cuba.
A quienes piensan que se trata de un pleito ajeno, les recuerdo lo que dijo el general Cárdenas cuando fue la invasión de playa Girón: «No es…
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) March 15, 2026
“I’m retired but it pains me that they’re seeking to exterminate the brotherly people of Cuba due to their ideals of freedom and defense of sovereignty,” wrote AMLO, as López Obrador is widely known.
He was referring to the situation of extreme hardship the people of Cuba are facing amid a U.S. blockade on oil shipments to the Communist-run Caribbean island nation. The Mexican government last month shipped more than 2,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Cuba to alleviate shortages of food and other essentials.
AMLO’s post continued: “To those who think it’s someone else’s fight, I remind you what General [Lázaro] Cárdenas said when the Bay of Pigs Invasion occurred: ‘It is not right to claim indifference to their heroic struggle, because their fate is ours.’
“Consequently, I invite everyone to make a deposit into Banorte account 1358451779 of the civil association Humanidad con América Latina [Humanity with Latin America], which was opened by citizens, writers and journalists to purchase food, medicine, oil and gasoline … to help the Cuban people. Everyone should contribute what they can!”
As president, López Obrador made repeated calls for the United States to lift its embargo on Cuba. He visited Cuba in 2022 and received the country’s highest state honor from Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
In 2021, AMLO declared that Cuba is an “example of resistance” and asserted that the entire island nation should consequently be declared a World Heritage site.
Claims of corruption follow AMLO’s post
López Obrador’s post came four days after the newspaper La Jornada published an editorial that announced the creation of the Humanidad con América Latina bank account to collect donations to purchase food, medicine and other essentials for the people of Cuba.
The March 10 editorial was endorsed by more than 200 people, including writers Elena Poniatowska and Laura Esquivel, director of La Jornada Carmen Lira Saade, and the illustrator and artist Carlos Pellicer López, nephew of the poet Carlos Pellicer Cámara, a native of the state of Tabasco and a political mentor of AMLO, who was also born in Tabasco.
Esquivel and Pellicer López were identified as those “responsible” for the editorial, which said that not supporting the people of Cuba at a time when the U.S. government is “seeking to vanquish them through hunger and shortages” would be a “crime.”
Pellicer’s personal email address is listed as the official contact for Humanidad con América Latina.
The online reaction to AMLO’s social media post was mixed, with some people praising the ex-president for bringing attention to the plight of the Cuban people and even sharing details of their deposits to the account of the NGO he promoted. Others questioned why he didn’t do more to help the people of Mexico when he was president, or pointed to the rapid creation of Humanidad con América Latina as a sign of corruption.
On X on Sunday, the journalist and lawyer Gildo Garza wrote:
“#Corruption #Mexico In Mexico there is no human power that can create a civil association and in a matter of days turn it into an authorized donee. That process normally takes three to six months … but now Humanidad con América Latina appears with express authorization. … This reeks of simulation and corruption within [tax agency] SAT. … While [AMLO] speaks of sovereignty and Cuba, in Mexico another trail remains: ‘civil’ structures that end up turning into vehicles of power and money.”
In another X post, Garza wrote that Carlos Peciller, “nephew of AMLO’s political father” and a member of the ex-president’s “own circle,” controls the bank account of Humanidad con América Latina.
“That doesn’t seem like help [for Cuba]. It reeks of opacity and simulation. They continue depositing [money to the account] and maintaining corruption,” he wrote.
The news outlet La Silla Rota said that Peciller is the “legal representative” of Humanidad con América Latina, which was created earlier this year and authorized by SAT to receive donations last Monday.
Prominent journalist Azucena Uresti, who interviewed Garza on Monday, wrote on X that “AMLO has used victims for his benefit.”
“Now he makes a call to support Cuba,” she wrote, “but after the 2017 earthquakes he created the ‘For the others’ trust,” which was supposed to collect money for earthquake victims, but which allegedly funded the campaigns of Morena party candidates at the 2018 election. The National Electoral Institute (INE) fined Morena 197 million pesos for the misuse of trust funds, but the Federal Electoral Institute subsequently revoked the punishment.
All bank accounts must follow rules, says Sheinbaum, before pledging to make a personal donation to the Cuban people
At her Monday morning press conference, President Claudia Sheinbaum acknowledged both the La Jornada editorial and AMLO’s social media post.
“I believe the president López Obrador has come out [to make public comments] three times since his political retirement,” said Sheinbaum, who served as a minister in AMLO’s government when he was mayor of Mexico City.
🔴Tras el mensaje de AMLO sobre Cuba, la presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum explicó que la iniciativa fue de ciudadanos y personalidades que firmaron un desplegado público; señaló que la cuenta será fiscalizada como cualquier otra cuenta bancaria.pic.twitter.com/OMGKUYeaXn
— Azucena Uresti (@azucenau) March 16, 2026
She recalled that her ex-boss and political mentor made public remarks on the day of Mexico’s first-ever judicial elections last June, and appeared on social media last December to promote his new book.
“And this is the third time,” she said, although AMLO also commented on what he called the “kidnapping” of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January.
Sheinbaum subsequently sought to respond to the questions that have been asked about the bank account created by Humanidad con América Latina, although she didn’t comment on how it obtained such prompt authorization from SAT to collect donations.
“All bank accounts are subject to regulations, this one too,” she said.
“In other words, it won’t be excluded from the rule for deposits. Everything is always audited,” Sheinbaum said.
What López Obrador and many other prominent people did was to issue a “call for solidarity” with the people of Cuba because they are “suffering,” she said.
“And it is suffering that has nothing to do with them, it is suffering that is related to isolation that has been in place for decades in the form of a [U.S.] trade embargo, and recently a fuel blockade,” Sheinbaum said.
Later in her press conference, the president said that Mexico has “always” supported the Cuban people and reiterated that her government will continue to do so.
Asked whether she would make a personal donation to the bank account set up by Humanidad con América Latina, Sheinbaum responded:
“Yes, I think so. I’m going to do it, on a personal basis.”
Garza — the journalist and lawyer who has emerged as a leading questioner of the circumstances surrounding the authorization by SAT of a bank account of an NGO focused on collecting donations to purchase essentials for the people of Cuba — asserted on X that Sheinbaum “didn’t clarify anything” with her remarks on Monday morning.
“She hid the heart of the matter beneath an administrative phrase. Nobody is asking if a bank account exists. The question is how a hastily put-together association found a way to collect public money in record time,” he wrote.
“She didn’t respond [to the questions about] legality. She managed the evasion,” Garza added.
With reports from Infobae, Político MX and La Silla Rota
