Mexico City/Mexico has invested 133 million dollars to address the causes of emigration in Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said this Tuesday when participating in the Ministerial Meeting of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection , which takes place in Guatemala.
Bárcena boasted of the use of resources to “address structural causes” such as “poverty, inequality, climate change, violence,” in addition to “eliminating unilateral coercive measures that are affecting the livelihoods of our people at the expense, of course, of their development”.
The money that Bárcena spoke about, Mexico has already channeled to Cuba, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras through the social programs Sowing Life and Youth Building the Future.
Bárcena preached the use of resources to “address structural causes” such as “poverty, inequality, climate change, violence.”
The Sembrando Vida program has been questioned for its lack of transparency and the opacity of money management, and is seen by opposition parties as a form of political clientelism. The Connectas information platform revealed that this program, to which 63.5 million dollars were initially allocated, “has received criticism for the expulsion of beneficiaries on a discretionary basis, the opacity in the management of farmers’ savings and the delay in the investigations that denounce its mismanagement”.
The Government of Mexico allocated 6,000,000 dollars to the Sembrando Vida program that started on the Island in July 2023 through which a guataca, a metal file, some pruning shears and a pair of boots were delivered to a group of farmers . The beneficiaries would be 5,000 producers who own 10 arable hectares who are grouped into cooperatives.
The Government of Mexico allocated $6,000,000 to the Sembrando Vida program that started on the Island in July 2023
Last December, the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (Amexcid), in charge of the program, inaugurated two fruit and timber tree nurseries in the municipalities of Artemisa and Mayabeque. In addition to the donation of half a dozen tractors. However, it remains unclear how much of the $150 that Cuba receives for each beneficiary is given to the farmers.
Mexico, Bárcena said, also assumed the commitment to provide employment to asylum seekers in its territory. “We committed to employing 20,000 migrants in three years and, in less than two years, since the signing of the Los Angeles Declaration, we have employed more than 17,000 refugees, just from the local integration program that UNHCR implements in Mexico, together with the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees.”
The official did not detail the nationality of the employees nor the companies with which they are working.
