Only Modernizing Integration Will Assure Us a Full Future

Integration, security, opportunity and prosperity were the most important topics discussed during President Barack Obama’s busy visit to Costa Rica where he met with other Central American presidents and participated in a business forum. Given the nature and importance of the links between our countries and the U.S., this past presidential meeting represents a special opportunity to revitalize reflections and intentions on the road to development, which is difficult to come by given the prevailing traditional conditions in our subregion.

Obama’s urging Central American business leaders to strengthen their integration touched on a very sensitive point in the pending agendas among our nations. Honestly, Central America is suffering, as always, from a lack in real integration, which would allow for the usage of all the energy in the area toward common progress. Until today, what we have been living with is low-intensity integration that does not put in the past the reticence and suspicions marking our shared history. The time is now to make a substantial leap in our integration capabilities in order to be able to embark on the process of globalization.

President Obama also spoke about security, a subject that is as pressing throughout the world as in our region. This topic reveals specific implications; it is without a doubt found in the first line of the shared agenda between the U.S. and its neighbors to the south. Organized crime today acts with notorious aggressiveness along the so-called drug trafficking route that takes drugs from their protected areas to their final main distribution points. As a result, cooperation between everyone is essential and must be monitored throughout the whole process — from the moment the drug is produced to the moment it arrives in the hands of the consumer.

We also have a human link of extraordinary significance with the U.S.: An enormous amount of immigrants who are currently in the north come from our countries. This is an irreversible fact that has major importance for both the U.S. and us. For a country like El Salvador, an enormous number of its compatriots live and work in the U.S. and not only conserve a good part of their country’s identity — intensified by the power of nostalgia — but also their economic contribution offers basic support to our national economic stability. And as for the U.S., our community there, united with the others that make up the “Hispanic world,” comprises an important economic and political factor, as was evident in the recent U.S. presidential elections, whose results have pushed the immigration reform now in motion.

But returning to our surroundings and to President Obama’s message while on Central American soil, the call for integration must be heard as one voice, since the integration imperative tends to set up the platform for progress and prosperity that can convert Central America to the modern and competitive entity that it can and must be. Each country on its own is able to achieve something along these lines, but only integrated teamwork will be able to achieve it all. The conditions are given: What is missing is the projected vision that will push it to the max.