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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2006 
Hotel's Mexican Stand-Off an Open-and-Shut Case
 Hector Tobar - LATimes
| | People arrive at the Hotel Sheraton Maria Isabel in Mexico City March 1, 2006. Mexico City authorities slapped 'closed' stickers on Tuesday on a Sheraton hotel at the center of a recent U.S.-Cuban dispute, but the hotel stayed open, arguing it could not kick out its guests in one night. (Reuters/Henry Romero) |
Of the many things the swank Maria Isabel Sheraton Hotel aspires to be, an unwitting symbol of US imperialism is not one of them.
But such has been the case since February 3, when staff at the US-owned hotel just across from the American embassy politely suggested that 16 visiting Cuban officials check out.
The problem: US Treasury officials had told the American parent company that taking money from the Cuban officials violated the four-decade-old US embargo against the communist-run island.
Under US law, the sanctions apply to all American companies and their foreign subsidiaries.
Mexicans exploded at the notion of US laws being enforced on Mexican soil, and called for authorities to shut the hotel.
On Tuesday, the leftist-controlled Mexico City government finally succeeded in getting the 755-room hotel shut down.
Or so it seemed. Red stickers announcing "closed" were pasted on the front doors. Various government officials pronounced the hotel closed, effective "immediately." Mexican television said all guests would be evicted "in two hours".
City inspectors posted a series of handwritten notes on a hotel bulletin board in half a dozen languages announcing to the guests that they would have to leave. Then the inspectors went home. Two hours passed. The hotel remained open.
Arriving at the hotel just after sunset on Tuesday, British guest Anthony Thompson set down his bags, frowned at the "closed" signs and uttered an English expletive well understood by the Mexican journalists camped outside the lobby. A concierge in a natty aquamarine uniform told Mr Thompson not to worry, then escorted him into the hotel.
"It's open," the concierge told another guest in Spanish. "If the reporters ask you questions, don't answer."
"The expulsion of the Cubans … is a shameful act," Humberto Musacchio wrote in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. His was one of a flood of columns in the Mexican media denouncing the hotel. The eviction of the Cubans was "practically a declaration of war", he wrote, because Mexico's "national honour has been sullied".
Raymundo Riva Palacio, a columnist for the newspaper El Universal, wrote that it was common knowledge that the fifth floor of the hotel once functioned as "the headquarters of the CIA" in Mexico.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was drawn into the fray. "US law would apply to US corporations or subsidiaries of US corporations no matter where they may be," Mr McCormack explained, "whether it's in Mexico City or in Europe or South America."
Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, a member of the conservative National Action Party, initially said the Mexican Government would not intervene.
Later, in the face of mounting criticism, the minister said the hotel chain had shown a "disregard for Mexican law" that could lead to "appropriate sanctions".
In the meantime, the stand-off continues: the hotel remains officially closed, but is still accepting guests. |
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