Nearly a half-century ago, Mexico opened its arms to a young Cuban lawyer, a political exile who came here and began making big plans. And for decades, this nation always maintained a warm relationship with that lawyer - Fidel Castro.

But Mexico brought all that to a sudden close Sunday, cutting off relations with the bearded revolutionary's government and removing Mexico's ambassador to Havana.

The diplomatic equivalent of a knockout punch, thrown a day after Mr. Castro publicly questioned Mexico's sovereignty, was justified as a reaction to alleged Cuban meddling in Mexican political affairs in the wake of a bribery scandal here. But the move is only the latest in a string of events that have caused increasing tension and have, in just three years, laid waste to one of the world's strongest and oldest friendships.

That deterioration signals a significant change in the makeup of the alliances that define the hemisphere's political hegemony, paralleling the tenure of Vicente Fox as president of Mexico. Mr. Fox, who took power just a month before President Bush - and after 71 years of one-party rule - has traded in the contrarian's role Mexico held for most of the 20th century for a political agenda aligned with the United States and as a champion of democracy. And the closer Mexico gets to the US, the more it isolates Latin America's left-leaning states, like Brazil, Argentina, and Cuba, creating a bipolarity in the region, analysts say.

"The breakdown of relations [with Cuba] is simply a confirmation of the newfound influence that the US government has on Mexico," said Renato Davalos, a political columnist for the Mexico City newspaper, La Jornada.

Mexico yanked its ambassador, Roberta Lajous, a day after Mr. Castro suggested that Mexico's politics were being determined in Washington, not Mexico City. This came two weeks after Mexico, for the third straight year - and the third time ever - voted for a resolution condemning Cuba before the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The vote allowed the measure to pass, 22-21. Peru, which has also pulled its ambassador, voted for the resolution, while Argentina and Brazil abstained.

And last week, Cuba deported a Mexican businessman at the center of a bribery scandal who had fled to the island nation to escape prosecution. Havana announced that the businessman had confessed to participating in an international conspiracy to undermine the left-leaning political party whose leader is heading polls for the Mexican presidency in 2006.

Two years ago, Mexico cast its first-ever human rights vote against Cuba, prompting Castro to release an embarrassing tape recording of a conversation between he and Fox. The tape proved, despite Fox's previous denials, that the Mexican president had been asked by Mr. Bush to keep Castro out of a conference in Monterrey, Mexico, that they'd both be attending.

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