Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador asked Joe Biden on Monday January 9 to "
end with oblivion, abandonment, disdain for Latin America and the Caribbean
".
“
President Biden, you have the key to opening and substantially improving relations between all the countries of the American continent
,” he added in front of Joe Biden as a prelude to their bilateral meeting.
“
It is time to put an end to this oblivion, this abandonment, this disdain towards Latin America and the Caribbean, opposed to the policy of good neighborliness of this titan of freedom that was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
”, said Lopez Obrador to the press.
“
Just in the last 15 years, we have spent billions of dollars in the hemisphere, tens of billions of dollars
,” replied the American president, who said that “
the United States provides more foreign aid than any country
”.
“
Unfortunately, our responsibility does not end with the Western Hemisphere,
” Joe Biden continued, citing “
Central Europe, Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia
.”
After nearly two years in office, Joe Biden began his first official visit to Mexico, a major economic and security partner of the United States on issues of migration and the fight against drugs.
The bilateral meeting between the two presidents will extend Tuesday to the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau for a "
10th Summit of North American Leaders
".
The Mexican president had repeated that he would ask Joe Biden to increase United States investments in the countries of origin of migrants who cross Mexico to try to reach the United States (mainly Central America, but also Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti).
