New ‘Trialogue’ with Mexico and the US

The meeting is taking place as the United States government declares that it will not grant any benefits to unaccompanied migrant children. At the same time, the international press has announced President Barack Obama’s intention to allocate $4 billion to humanitarian assistance and facilitate the repatriation of these children.

At first glance, both acts can be seen as a contradiction between the expectations of the countries of the “Northern Triangle” of Central America and the disposition of the U.S. government. However, in order to appreciate what is happening fairly, you have to understand the complexity of the situation.

It’s obvious that the decision of the three nations to openly discuss their domestic security systems is in order to respond to the current situation, which is affected by transnational crime, which has been coordinated to cross borders without major complications for many years. A core idea of regional security defines a new scenario that decreases the current border permeability and impacts criminals. The oversight will no longer be up to the individual effort of each country, but rather, it will become a sum of supports for improving the security of the nations affected by the violence of organized crime.

The actions that seek to propel this political and diplomatic effort are not isolated. The participation of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Mexican Secretary of the Interior Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, and the Guatemalan Minister of Interior Mauricio López will allow these joint tasks to go from diplomatic statements to immediate actions. The idea of a trilateral dialogue is the product of conversations between the foreign ministers of Guatemala and Mexico and their ambassadors in Washington.

What happened yesterday in the country can be synthesized by what Osorio Chong said, who classified it as a historic day for the bilateral relations between the United States and Guatemala. Accepted with enthusiasm, the Guatemalan proposal should transcend the historic moment and become an area of enduring and beneficial trilateral dialogue. A second meeting was set to take place in Mexico in 60 days.

If you put together Mexico’s decision to grant two-year, renewable, temporary work visas to Guatemalans in Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche with its biometrical registration of travelers, it becomes clear that a valid concern exists not only to limit the traffic of undocumented children and adults, but also to guarantee a humanitarian response to a migratory crisis. It is an important advance and a product of diplomacy and the governments of the countries involved.