Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador visited El Salvador this Friday as part of his Central American tour. There he met with his counterpart, Nayib Bukele, with whom he discussed migration and other “great challenges” facing the region, such as “the fight against poverty, inequality, unemployment and marginalization.” In the afternoon, the Mexican president traveled to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, to also meet with President Xiomara Castro.
The regional tour of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) continues. On the morning of this Friday, the Mexican president arrived in San Salvador, the Salvadoran capital, to meet with the president of that country, Nayib Bukele.
Along the same lines as during his meeting on Thursday with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, the meeting between the leaders had the migratory phenomenon facing the region at the center of the conversation.
AMLO pointed out that the United States is “the protagonist of the migratory phenomenon” and “should, consequently, be co-responsible for giving it a solution, modifying its migratory policies.”
According to the head of the Mexican Executive, its American neighbors have to “help combat the conditions that force millions of people to abandon their places of residence.”
“We postulate that every person has the right to remain in the country of birth, that no one should be forced to emigrate due to hunger or violence, and that no one be shot to death when crossing the border,” AMLO said in the appearance after the meeting with the Salvadoran president.
For his part, Bukele, who described the meeting with his Mexican counterpart as “excellent and very productive,” mentioned that “migration is an issue that we have to resolve” and that “the best thing is for people to stay in our countries.” .
“We do not want our productive and hard-working people to leave our countries looking for prosperity abroad. We want them to stay here and for that each country is doing its job, but we are aware that we must do much more,” the president remarked.
AMLO traveled to Tegucigalpa in the afternoon to meet with Xiomara Castro
After his meeting with Bukele, AMLO traveled to Honduras on Friday afternoon to meet with his counterpart Xiomara Castro.
With the aim of expressing “solidarity with sister nations,” the Mexican president was received in Tegucigalpa, the capital, by the country’s foreign minister, Enrique Reina, and high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces.
Later, AMLO met with Castro at the headquarters of the Honduran Executive. There they held a private meeting and a meeting between the delegations.
Among the leaders’ agenda is also irregular migration and its causes. During the morning, AMLO said after the conversation with Bukele that Central America faces “great challenges”, such as “the fight against poverty, inequality, unemployment and marginalization”, and that these are the “deep roots of insecurity, of migration and other misfortunes”.
Worrying migration data for Central America
The United States has reinforced in the last two years, through Title 42, its border security, facilitating under this extraordinary mechanism, which legalizes hot deportations, the unwanted return of hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants who dream of reaching American soil.
Deportations from that country of Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadoran citizens rose 583.8% during the first quarter of 2022 according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The organization’s report highlights that between January and March 2022 the number of deportees to the Northern Triangle of Central America from the US was 24,157 people, compared to 3,533 registered in the same period in 2021.
Of this total returnees, 12,041 were men and 6,652 women, while there were 2,808 boys and 2,656 girls deported.
In recent decades, the countries of Central America, with their particular socioeconomic and political contexts, have become major sources of migration to the United States.
The social programs that AMLO defends in the region
During his meeting with Nayib Bukele, López Obrador defended two of the social programs promoted by Mexico. Sowing Lives, according to the president’s data, would have benefited 10,000 small farmers from different departments of El Salvador.
In addition, he added, “the possibility of improving their quality of life by promoting production on their plots,” through subsidies of 250 dollars per month and technical assistance for planting corn, fruit trees and other vegetables.
“Since its first phase, this project has produced very encouraging results,” he said.
However, according to a study carried out in 2021 by the non-governmental organization Social Management and Cooperation (GESOC), the program has a low quality of design and poor compliance with objectives according to the levels of coverage it intends to offer.
To prepare the report, the agency was based on the Performance Index of Federal Public Programs (INDEP) 2021. The Sembrando Vidas program would have obtained an average score of 35.1 points out of 100.
On the other hand, AMLO defended his Youth Building the Future project, through which 10,000 young Salvadorans would have benefited from a $180 monthly subsidy in order to boost their careers.
AMLO wanted to mention that given the “good” results of the programs, “it is to be hoped that the Congress and the Government of the United States end up delivering the 4,000 million dollars that President Biden offered to invest in these programs”, so that they can be expanded to the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America.
AMLO continues his tour
With his official tour of Central America and Cuba, López Obrador also seeks to strengthen “integration” and find a joint regional response to the migratory phenomenon ahead of the Summit of the Americas, a meeting that will take place from June 6 to 10 in Los Angeles ( USA).
The tour of the Mexican president will continue in Belize on Saturday and will end on Sunday in Cuba. The Mexican authorities confirmed this Friday that, despite the commotion caused in Havana after the explosion at the Saratoga hotel, which left at least 22 dead and more than 70 injured, AMLO’s visit continues.
Until this Thursday, when he arrived in Guatemala, AMLO had only traveled abroad three times since he was inaugurated president in 2018. On previous occasions, the president had traveled to the United States: first in July 2020 and at the beginning and end of 2021.
With information from EFE and local media
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