On September 12 , Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would meet Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei in the Mexican city of Mérida on September 20.
Giammattei, a conservative who was elected Guatemalan president in a second-round run-off in August , is due to take office in January .
López Obrador said that he would discuss how Mexico and Guatemala could work together to address the challenge posed by migration.
“Obviously the most important thing just now is to agree to work together to tackle the migration phenomenon,” López Obrador told a news conference in the city of Merida.
On Monday, Giammattei informed that during his visit to Mexico he achieved for Mexico to donat e USD $30 million for the preservation of forests in their shared border to attack migration , as part of the Comprehensive Development Plan: Planting Life and Youths Building the Future.
He explained that during his six-days visit he met López Obrador twice.
“I think that in the history of Guatemala , there will not be a better relationship than the one to be had between the new government headed by myself and president López Obrador,” he said.
The future Guatemalan president explained that with the Mexican government’s donation in 2020 , thousands of jobs will be created and over 1,200 km of the common border would be developed.
According to Giammattei, the idea is to turn the border area into the first binational economic region in the world that generates investment in education, health, and infrastructure , and for international industries to move there to be able to produce in the tax-free territory .
The region goes from Chiapas, Mexico to the bordering departments of Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Quiché in the center and north of Guatemala, known as the main origins of migrants.
From the beginning of his administration, López Obrador has defended the cooperation between Central American countries to generate development in order for fewer people to need to migrate and has already made similar commitments for donations to the governments of El Salvador and Honduras .
Likewise, the Mexican president has supported the creation of a customs-free zone in the southern border , similar to the one created in the North, that would lead to the increase of minimum wages and the reduction of certain taxes, a proposal that aligns with Giammattei.
The Guatemalan president said López Obrador confirmed his attendance at his inauguration next January 14. If so, this would be the first visit of the Mexican president abroad.
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