Remarks by Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray at the Second Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America, Convened by the U.S. and Mexican Governments
Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray: On behalf of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, I first want to say a warm hello to our hosts: Secretary Pompeo, who has welcomed us here to his home, the State Department, and especially to Vice President Mike Pence. I want to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge the continued, clear support that Vice President Pence has given to all aspects of the relationship with Mexico. As one more example of what the relationship between our countries can be, during the recent, successful renegotiation of the new treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada, Vice President Pence's leadership and presence was a factor in achieving real success for our North American region.
I also welcome the presence of my friend Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and I greatly appreciate the effort that went into holding this conference.
I would like to greet, with great respect and appreciation, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales; the President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández; and the Vice President of El Salvador, Oscar Ortiz; and, of course, it is an honor to greet Mexico's Interior Secretary Alfonso Navarrete.
I begin by expressing our sympathy to the people of Honduras and El Salvador after the torrential rains. We mourn those who died. We also express our sympathy to the United States, particularly the states on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.
Over a year ago, in February 2017, at the beginning of President Trump's administration, we had an important conversation in Mexico City. We discovered a very clear area of agreement on, first, addressing the security challenges in our region and in our countries. We have to work together--not only the United States and Mexico, but predominantly with the countries of the Northern Triangle: with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. And, second, we agreed then, as we do now, that we should focus principally on development in order to address the structural causes of migration and illegal drug trafficking.
And that is how the United States and Mexico decided to hold the first conference in Miami last June and why today we have the privilege of being here for the second one. Clearly, there has been progress in the right direction.
Specifically, I would like to say that we have identified priority areas for regional development cooperation and work has been done on various projects throughout the year, [starting] four months after the first conference took place.
The areas that have been identified as priorities are: first, trade and customs facilitation; second, regional integration in energy; and, third, social development, with an emphasis on health, education and culture.
To date, there have been four projects related to prosperity, specifically, two energy and two trade facilitation projects. We continue to work with the Inter-American Development Bank and other regional agencies to carry out specific projects.
For Mexico, cooperation with the Northern Triangle is a priority. In addition to what we have done as a result of this conference, I would like to emphasize that, through our Yucatan Fund, over the last few years of President Peña Nieto's administration we have invested 53 million dollars in projects in Honduras and El Salvador, and projects are being prepared in Guatemala. Mr. Vice President, the main recipient of our cooperation in the Northern Triangle has been El Salvador, until now.
And we are continuing our efforts through the Mesoamerica Project. I would like to point out that 72% of the financing for the Mesoamerican Corridor is being done with Mexico's financial participation, that is, 3,248 kilometers of the Mesoamerican road network. I would like to highlight the impetus that Mexico has given to the interconnection of the Central American electricity market with the Mexican electric system, and I would also like to mention the Mesoamerica Without Hunger Program, where we successfully work together with the FAO on projects for food security in the three countries.
Looking forward, we believe that energy integration, not only in electricity but also in natural gas, presents a great opportunity, and the Mexican government has projects underway in this area. Secondly, we believe it is essential for cooperation to focus on projects that promote resilience to climate change, including storms and hurricanes, and, of course, for communities to be more involved in the project, which should not only be large-scale projects, but also projects that have an impact on the community and have the genuinely democratic participation of communities.
In Mexico, it is well known that we had an election on July 1st of this year and that Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador will be our new president as of December 1st. I want to thank Marcelo Ebrard for sending a colleague to this conference as an observer and, as a citizen of Mexico, I welcome the emphasis that President-elect López Obrador and his transition team have placed on the subject of the shared development of the Northern Triangle as the central strategy for combating organized crime and for making migration orderly.
Mexico has ceased to be the main point of departure for migrants in North America and it has become a country of transit. This has brought new challenges that Mexico has accepted with responsibility. The main challenge is one of human rights, of treating migrants who come from the Northern Triangle and other nations with dignity and full respect for their human rights. We are also working with the countries of the Northern Triangle through the TRICAMEX program to defend the dignity and human rights of the migrants from our countries who are in the United States, and I can only reiterate what President Hernández said about the swift reunification of the children who were separated from their parents at the border.
In addition, as a country that is now a major corridor for migrants, I also join in the region's concern regarding the migration resulting from the deep crisis in Venezuela, and we are also concerned about events in Nicaragua.
In the end, the security challenge is one that we can only overcome if we unite and work together. If we work separately, blaming each other, we give transnational organized crime a strategic advantage. In that context, I commend the United States government for its willingness to cooperate and I commend the great progress made by the Northern Triangle countries, which has been made evident here. Clearly, we must continue to work on safe, orderly and regular migration and on regional security as we have been doing, by working as a team. My thanks to the three countries of the Northern Triangle for taking part in this conference and to the United States government for its leadership and as host.
Washington, D.C., October 11, 2018