MEXICO CITY, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel will on Thursday attend Mexico’s 200th anniversary of independence, ahead of a summit of Latin American heads of state that will gather recently elected members of a new “pink wave” of leftist leaders.

The presidents from Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and elsewhere will on Saturday meet at the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a regional body that Venezuela’s late leader Hugo Chavez helped set up in 2011.

Diaz-Canel’s trip to Mexico is the Cuban leader’s first foreign visit since a huge protests swept the island in July, shaking the communist government at a time it was struggling to contain the pandemic and shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

During the anti-government demonstrations, Mexico threw a lifeline to Havana by sending ships loaded with fuel, food and oxygen tanks. Mexico’s leftist president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also sharply criticized the crippling U.S. embargo on the island.

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