– The Caribbean is our third border. This assertion is not a simple narrative, but a reality, since Mexico belongs to multiple regions.
By Maximiliano Reyes Zúñiga
“The Caribbean is our third border”. This assertion is not a simple narrative, but a reality, since Mexico belongs to multiple regions. So an important part of “Looking to the South” is recognizing that Mexico is the Caribbean and that Mexicans are also Caribbean people.
It is true that we both have idyllic beaches and a cultural similitude through our Afro-descendant vein, but we share much more. We face common challenges such as climate change, natural disasters or problems such as sargassum that affect our tourism, an important engine of development. Hence, there is a lot of material for international cooperation and for the coincidence of positions in multilateral forums where topics of the global agenda are discussed.
In this virtue, we have received clear and precise instructions to renew and strengthen our relations with that sub-region.
During 2022 we want to deepen our ties through the scheduling of visits, the incorporation of common topics of interest in the platforms of the Mexican candidacies for international positions, maintaining cooperation as a core part of bilateral relations and strengthening our network of eight embassies -distributed between the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Caribbean through sending new ambassadors and the renewal of cadres of the Mexican Foreign Service assigned to the sub-region.
It is equally important to place the Caribbean in the Mexican collective imagination beyond its quality as a tourist destination. Therefore, between May and July of last year, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized the virtual seminar “Relations between Mexico and the Caribbean”, in which 40 speakers from universities, international organizations, businessmen, public officials, diplomats and legislators participated, in ten weekly sessions. The seminar exposed to the public the multiple aspects of the relationship, while serving as an approach to the sub-region itself.
The Caribbean is also one of the main recipients of Mexican cooperation. There are high visibility cases such as the 2.4 thousand tons of humanitarian aid after the earthquake last August in Haiti. Likewise, the Mexican solidarity was expressed through the donation of 142,000 vaccines against COVID-19 to Jamaica, Dominica, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; the delivery of 28 mechanical respirators to Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Suriname, Guyana, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The foregoing without prejudice to a diverse portfolio of 22 bilateral and regional technical-scientific and educational-cultural cooperation projects in the sectors of agriculture, livestock, fisheries, aquaculture, water resources, heritage, adaptation to climate change, disaster prevention, marine resources, among others. Likewise, the “Sembrando Vida” (planting life) program is about to be implemented in Haiti, the first Caribbean country to benefit from this initiative. Cuba and the Dominican Republic will be the next countries to welcome this program.
Also, it is expected that this year the V Mexico-Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Summit will take place and it is also the second year of Mexico as president of the Council of Ministers of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). This political dialogue has been recently benefited from numerous visits by Caribbean dignitaries and senior officials to Mexico, within the framework of our 2020-2021 CELAC presidency.
Mexico looks to the South, Mexico looks to the Caribbean. With concrete actions, we are getting closer to the region and we are giving it the space it deserves on our international agenda.
