Anti-US protest blocks Sheraton hotel in Mexico City

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Protesters waving Cuban flags
blocked the entrance to a U.S.-owned Sheraton hotel in Mexico
City on Tuesday, calling for it to be closed because it evicted
Cuban officials on orders from Washington.

About 30 people shouted “Yankees out” as they demonstrated
outside the hotel over its eviction of the 16 Cubans who were
staying there last week for a conference with U.S. energy
companies.

Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Mexico was
looking into the evictions and would apply the full force of
the law against the Sheraton if a crime had been committed.

“It is an unacceptable application of a foreign law in our
country, which goes against all principles of international
law,” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Derbez said in a radio
interview.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc., which owns
Sheraton hotels, said it had been asked by the U.S. Treasury
Department to tell the Cuban officials to leave the hotel
because of the terms of the U.S. embargo on the island.

Mexican newspapers were filled with angry opinion pieces
railing against perceived U.S. meddling in Mexico.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack
said the Sheraton in Mexico City was a subsidiary of an
American-owned hotel group and therefore subject to U.S. laws
and regulations.

“Very basically, U.S. law would apply to U.S. corporations
or subsidiaries of U.S. corporations, no matter where they may
be — whether it’s in Mexico City or in Europe or South
America,” McCormack said.

He said the Mexican government had contacted the State
Department about the matter, adding that it was the Treasury
Department that enforced these laws. “We view this as a matter
of asset control,” McCormack said.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which
enforces the embargo against Cuba, insists it is illegal to
provide services to Cuban nationals and entities in third
countries.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist candidate favored
to win Mexico’s July presidential elections, said the evictions
were “in bad taste.”

“Foreign laws cannot be applied in our country,” he said on
his morning television show.

Mexico’s relations with the United States have suffered a
string of setbacks in recent months. There have been angry
words over drug violence along their shared border, U.S. plans
to build a border fence to stop illegal immigrants and the
killing of an undocumented Mexican by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Mexico’s friendship with Cuba also has suffered in recent
years as President Vicente Fox abandoned Mexico’s traditionally
sympathetic stance toward the Communist-run island.

(Additional reporting by Sue Pleming in Washington)