FM Morales Echoes Position That There is a Need for Guarantees

Carlos Raul Morales

According to Foreign Minister Morales, specific guarantees should first be put in place before allowing the transit of Cuban migrants through Central America, en route to the United States.

Carlos Raul Morales, Foreign Minister, Guatemala

“We request two issues. We request two guarantees. The first one is that Mexico will accept these Cubans because we cannot just receive and leave it at the border creating more problems to my communities in the area. And the second one, Guatemala and Belize…we have a lot of budget problems. In particular Guatemala, we just experienced in the last month of the year 2015 a crisis in our hospitals. We had to close the emergency because we didn’t have medicines to provide to the people that went to the hospital to require assistance. Then we said we need Mexico to receive all the Cubans and the second one; who will pay for the airplanes, who will pay for the buses, who will pay for the food, for all the logical expenses we will incur. Then well…I respect the position of President Solis, but I think his reaction was not the best in the Summit in El Salvador. He accused Guatemala and Belize that we do not want to be part of the solution; that we are part of the problem. That we do not believe in integration and it is not true. Belize and Guatemala believe in integration. What happen is that we have our priorities and the priority of Belize is the population of Belize and the priority of Guatemala is the population of Guatemala.”

On Friday, we will have more from Guatemala with Marleni Cuellar.