The Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard would travel to the U.S. on behalf of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to attend the IX Summit of the Americas, taking place this week in Los Angeles.
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At a press conference before traveling to the U.S., the minister said, "the principle we defend here is that all countries should be invited, and no country has the right to impose on another how to govern itself: it is called non-intervention and self-determination of peoples and respect for the other."
The U.S. decided not to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the summit, accusing their governments of not respecting the Democratic Charter of the Americas. In this respect, Ebrard said that "all the countries invited voted against the blockade of Cuba except the U.S. That is to say, [it is] 60 years of suffering and stubbornness."
The minister said that the U.S. intends to change the political regime with its embargo on Cuba. "The final calculation is to blockade Cuba so that the people rise up and change the government. Mexico has simply never agreed with that; all countries are against [the economic embargo] except the U.S.," he said.
In addition, the minister said that Mexico's proposal to address the causes of migration: poverty and organized crime violence will be a key topic in Los Angeles.
According to Ebrard, Mexico allocates a budget of some US$100 million annually intended to subsidize 20 000 jobs in El Salvador; 40 000 in Honduras; another 20 000 in Guatemala; 2 000 in Belize; and 5 000 in Cuba.
Regarding the message to be taken to the summit, Ebrard said that "we are going to insist that the U.S. decides to invest in the scale of its economy" to contain migratory flows. "The U.S. economy is 21 times bigger than Mexico's. We are investing more or less 100 million dollars; we are talking about an [U.S.] investment that could be between 2 and 3 billion dollars," the minister said.