Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during his meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. MEXICO'S PRESIDENCY (REUTERS)
Two years ago, Mexico and El Salvador sealed a first agreement, the first stone of the cooperation and development project for Central America focused on intervening on the structural causes of migration, the great bet of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
There were 30 million dollars to replicate in the Central American country two social projects previously implemented in Mexico with the promise of creating 20,000 jobs.
Two years later, the Mexican president took his chest this Friday from the results of his visit to El Salvador, the second stop on his Central American tour, and announced an extension of the agreement to double the investment and continue with both programs.
"It was a very productive meeting," Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said this Friday at the joint press conference from the Presidential House in San Salvador, the country's capital.
The Mexican president began by reviewing the historical connections between the two countries, from the Mayan and Mexica ties of the pre-Columbian past, to the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980s and 1990s, whose peace agreements were signed on Mexican territory.
“Now the challenges are different from war,” he recalled.
“Now they are the fight against poverty, inequality, unemployment and marginalization.
Those are the deep roots of migrations and other misfortunes”.
Mexico's intervention lever has been, while waiting to expand a broader cooperation and development plan with the collaboration of the United States, transferring its own social programs to Central American soil.
In the first stop of the tour, in Guatemala, he already valued the existence of both projects, but today in El Salvador he has also made an evaluation of their results.
The so-called Sembrando Vida, a plan to promote agriculture and reforestation based on subsidies, has brought benefits to more than 10,000 small farmers in addition to creating another 21,000 indirect jobs, according to data presented this Friday by the Mexican president.
Among the conclusions, López Obrador also highlighted the data from a survey with the beneficiaries: 55% acknowledged having thought about migrating before starting the project.
Once inside the program the figure had dropped to 0.6%.
The second of the implemented programs is the so-called Youth Building the Future, based on scholarships for young people to start working in companies in exchange for 180 dollars a month.
More than 10,000 young Salvadorans are already part of the program, according to official figures.
“We are giving young people the opportunity to study and work.
We are removing the seedbed from the gangs”, stressed the Mexican president about the gang phenomenon,
The meeting in El Salvador also served, as happened the day before in Guatemala, to insist on messages to the United States. "It is also the protagonist of the migratory phenomenon and must be jointly responsible for finding a solution," said López Obrador, who came to suggest a "change in their immigration policies to address the causes of the problem."
Mexico and the US have accelerated negotiations in recent weeks with the focus on achieving a common response to migratory challenges in a context of increased arrivals at the border.
Despite the recent harmony shown between the parties, Washington currently maintains a double agenda.
On the one hand, it demands more police control from Mexico on its borders, and on the other, it negotiates the terms and amounts of financing for development and cooperation plans.
“I hope that the US Congress will soon make the decision to accelerate the 4,000 million destined for these programs,” López Obrador insisted in relation to a pending budget item since the time of Donald Trump in the White House.
The commitment to intervene on the ground in the causes of migration has even a more ambitious project sponsored by ECLAC, the economic organization for Latin America of the UN.
Last year, the agency presented a Marshall Plan for Central America.
At the moment, the plan remains stalled while waiting to resolve the differences on the methods and investment amounts.
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