Arturo Sanchez Jimenez
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, January 10, 2023, p. 7
Mexico, the United States and Canada yesterday launched the North American Alliance for Racial Equality and Justice.
The Secretary of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard; the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, signed a statement on the subject and affirmed that the three countries have internal policies that seek to build more egalitarian societies.
In a ceremony held at the Club de Industriales in the context of the North American Leaders Summit, Ebrard affirmed that Mexico, the United States and Canada are prioritizing this issue in their domestic policy and therefore agreed to sign a pact in this regard. . Today in North America we share very important values associated with fairer, more egalitarian societies.
he declared.
Racism, said the chancellor, is a culture
in Mexico and the federal government has proposed to eradicate it. He exemplified that, on the instructions of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, justice plans for indigenous peoples are being implemented and, in addition, Mexican consulates have begun to offer telephone services in Mexican languages other than Spanish, such as Nahuatl or Mixtec.
Secretary Blinken said that in the three nations minorities suffer discrimination and assured that with the agreement the three governments recognize the urgency of working on this issue and eradicating discrimination.
He assured that work to prevent discrimination and hate is a priority in all international relations of the United States and explained that the declaration establishes a trinational network of experts and civil organizations to combat discrimination and promote equity, inclusion and racial justice. He added that more egalitarian societies are more stable.
Minister Joly said that in North American societies everyone deserves an equal chance to succeed, regardless of religion, gender, or sexual orientation
and said that with the alliance the three countries we pledge to fight hate in all its forms
.
We know that we cannot change the past, but we can work for a fairer future
he stressed, and recognized that in his country there have been terrible racial attacks in recent years, for which reason he mentioned that his government is committed to building a new world so that people are accepted as they are
.
honor witnesses
Senior officials from the three countries participated as witnesses of honor at the ceremony, among them, the ambassadors of the United States and Canada in Mexico, Ken Salazar and Graeme C. Clark, respectively, as well as the ambassador of Mexico in the United States, Esteban Moctezuma, and the designated ambassador for Canada, Carlos Joaquín González.
In the same role were Brian Nichols, Under Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere; David Morrison, Canadian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Michael Grant, Deputy Minister for the Americas of the Government of Canada.
