By Leticia Martinez Hernandez on October 22, 2023
Cuban President Diaz Canel arrives in Yucatan
The President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, arrived this Sunday morning in Mexico to participate in the “Palenque Meeting: for a fraternal neighborhood with well-being”, a meeting convened by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the aim of addressing the migration issue.
The Head of State of the Island will take part in the plenary session of this meeting -according to the official agenda it should be around noon- attended by presidents and high-level representatives of 11 countries: Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama and Venezuela. Presidents Nicolás Maduro, Xiomara Castro and Gustavo Petro had confirmed their participation.
The Cuban President will be accompanied by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, and other Foreign Ministry officials.
As AMLO explained in recent days, the meeting will be attended by “basically the countries where there is more emigration or where migrants pass through”. In his Mañanera last October 13, López Obrador referred to the concern that “the migratory flow is growing and we have to seek actions, attending to the causes.”
We seek, he said then, to help each other so that people have options, possibilities to stay in their towns. We must address the migration issue, he added, respecting human rights, giving options, protecting migrants.
The Mexican President also spoke of seeking the cooperation of the United States, that they apply themselves more to attend to the causes, not only to be thinking about walls, militarizing the border, but to attend to the needs of the people, he emphasized in his regular program.
According to information from the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, last year 2.58 million people transited through the U.S.-Mexico border; 314,268 through Mexico’s southern border; and 248,284 through the Darien Strait.
From January to September 2023, the figures are 1.75 million people through the border between Mexico and the United States; 1.13 million through Mexico’s southern border; and 428,696 through the Darien Strait.
The Mexican Foreign Ministry also informed that the largest number of emigrants come from Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua, in that order.
President Díaz-Canel will address the meeting with Cuba’s positions on a phenomenon that has historically impacted the island, especially due to the blockade policy maintained by the US government for more than 60 years.
In a recent interview, the Cuban Head of State stated that “at various times, and especially when we have been undergoing an economic crisis, there have been excessive migratory flows”. These are situations, he said, that have occurred cyclically, when the U.S. Government tightens the situation. The worst thing is that they are inducing an illegal, unsafe migration, which costs lives, he said.
In the referred interview, the president explained to journalist Arleen Rodríguez how the measures imposed by Trump against Cuba were aimed at creating an unfavorable situation to seek a social outburst in relation to migration.
“Consular services in Cuba were cancelled, they started to be given in other countries, with limitations; people had to make greater expenses to be able to acquire a visa, with more insecurity. They have even taken other measures to close off our income from tourism, like now recently the automatic visa, the visa for European citizens: if they visit Cuba they take away the visa with which they have facilities to enter the United States. All this has caused an increase in migration.”
Cuba, Díaz-Canel said, advocates legal, safe and orderly migration. “Our Migration Law guarantees that, but the attitude of the U.S. Government does not guarantee that, and what it provokes is hopelessness, insecurity, and people throw themselves into totally dangerous, unsafe experiences,” commented the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba just a few days ago.
It is with this panorama that the delegation from the Greater Antilles arrives at this meeting in Chiapas, from which concrete proposals are expected to emerge to deal with a phenomenon that affects the social and economic stability of nations.
Source: Juventud Rebelde, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English