AMLO agrees with Honduras and El Salvador to double support

From the Editorial Office

Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday May 7, 2022, p. 3

Honduras and El Salvador support the initiative of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for the United States to invest in social programs aimed at Central America and thereby address the root of migration.

The Mexican president visited both Central American nations yesterday, where he was received by his counterparts, the Honduran Xiomara Castro and the Salvadoran Nayib Bukele, with whom he spoke and reached various bilateral agreements to promote the development of the region, expand investments and economic relations , among other.

In Honduras, López Obrador emphasized that it is intolerable that thousands of people in the region are forced to leave their place of origin due to hunger, insecurity or total lack of prospects for life. Although, he stressed, it is up to the countries of origin to find solutions to avoid forced migration, the United States must get involved in carrying out social programs that address the causes of the phenomenon.

Before his host, President Castro, the Mexican stressed that the only way to solve it is through understanding and multilateral cooperation. And, out of protocol, he supported the Honduran electricity reform initiative which, if approved, will guarantee that the people have the possibility of having cheap electricity and fair prices.

To bring opportunities to less favored regions, he said, his government has made a commitment to bring two of its social programs (Sowing Life and Young People Building the Future) in order to generate development and with it root to the earth those who today have no choice but to abandon it. In addition, we (Mexico) are a territory of transit and we are aware of the suffering and the risk that this transit represents for many Honduran, Guatemalan, Salvadoran and other brothers and sisters..

But it is not enough, he added, with the will of the Latin American nations. We need the United States to become clearly involved in solving a problem that affects it and help finance these programs.”

At the Presidential House in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran president asserted that migration is the result of the difficult conditions in our countries from the Rio Grande (Bravo) to the south. Along these lines, he highlighted the impulse of the administration of his Mexican counterpart to bring social programs to Central America. Mexico offers its support and a master class of solidarity.

López Obrador did not miss the opportunity to highlight the progressive position of his Honduran counterpart and the social policies that he has undertaken for the benefit of his people.

Meanwhile, Castro considered the Mexican president’s visit as a historic opportunity that opens the opportunity to reactivate the dialogue between us and our two progressive governments for the good of their peoples and of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Summit of the Americas for all

In the context of the visit, the president of Honduras emphasized that her government shares López Obrador’s conviction of that in any summit that talks about the Americas, all the countries that make up the American community must participate. This in the face of the United States’ refusal to convene Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela at the next Summit of the Americas – to be held in Los Angeles in June.

Hours earlier, in San Salvador, López Obrador and Bukele signed the expansion in Salvadoran territory of Youth Building the Future and Sowing Life to double the number of beneficiaries: 20,000 more. Currently, Mexico has invested 31 million dollars in this country, with which 20,000 people are supported with these programs, as in Honduras.

In his message in this country, the Mexican stated that in view of the favorable results that these programs have had in El Salvador, the Congress and the government of the United States must soon release the 4 billion dollars committed to support Central America.

In a message to the media offered by the two presidents, Bukele asserted for his part that the region must jointly resolve the migratory phenomenon so that productive and hard-working people stay in their countries of origin, for which his government accompanies the proposal that López Obrador has made to US President Joe Biden to carry out a joint plan in which each of the nations impacted by the situation contributes, based on their possibilities, resources to resolve it.

He asserted that El Salvador received with very happy to the Mexican president. It is a person that we greatly admire, he is a much-loved president, of course, and he is a benchmark in the world and in Latin America.