In 50 years of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions, Mex­i­co and T&T have built a strong re­la­tion­ship based on co-op­er­a­tion and friend­ship, span­ning a wide va­ri­ety of ar­eas at the bi­lat­er­al, re­gion­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al lev­els.

Mex­i­co shares with T&T its com­mit­ment to the preser­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the Caribbean Sea, recog­nis­ing it as the means that binds us as neigh­bours.

We al­so share the un­der­stand­ing that many of the chal­lenges we face in the re­gion re­quire team work, per­ma­nent co-or­di­na­tion and a vi­sion of shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty if we as­pire to ad­dress them in a co­her­ent and ef­fec­tive way.

Bear­ing this in mind, our coun­tries are work­ing close­ly in re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, with very pos­i­tive re­sults. A good ex­am­ple of our syn­er­gy in re­gion­al af­fairs is the col­le­giate work we have achieved in the last four years to re­vi­talise the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States (ACS), head­quar­tered here in your city.

To­day the ACS is a more per­ti­nent and ef­fi­cient or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cused in the pro­mo­tion of projects with re­gion­al im­pact on en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion; tourism de­vel­op­ment; trans­port fa­cil­i­ta­tion and con­nec­tiv­i­ty; as well as risk man­age­ment and pre­ven­tion of dis­as­ters that ad­verse­ly af­fect the lives and liveli­hood of mil­lions of our peo­ples every year.

An­oth­er ex­am­ple worth men­tion­ing of our co-op­er­a­tive work is the suc­cess­ful and vi­brant en­gage­ment among our min­is­ters at­tend­ing the XII Con­fer­ence of De­fence Min­is­ters of the Amer­i­c­as (CD­MA) two weeks ago here in Port-of-Spain. The great ef­fort dis­played by T&T in its or­gan­i­sa­tion and the high qual­i­ty of the dis­cus­sions, speak of the com­mit­ment and po­lit­i­cal will of our gov­ern­ments to ad­dress the enor­mous se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges we face to­day.

As the Pro Tem­pore Pres­i­den­cy of the next CD­MA Con­fer­ence, Mex­i­co is com­mit­ted to con­tin­ue the work start­ed in Port-of-Spain for deal­ing with an ever more com­plex world from a mul­ti­di­men­sion­al per­spec­tive.

On the bi­lat­er­al realm, T&T is Mex­i­co's main Cari­com trad­ing part­ner with near­ly 400 mil­lion US dol­lars in goods and ser­vices trad­ed every year. This ex­change cre­ates hun­dreds of jobs in both coun­tries and has opened new av­enues for in­ter­ac­tion in ar­eas of com­mon in­ter­est such as in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment and the oil and gas in­dus­try.

We al­so have a dy­nam­ic re­la­tion­ship in the field of ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man cap­i­tal, where lead­ing Mex­i­can uni­ver­si­ties in part­ner­ship with the Mex­i­can Gov­ern­ment have opened their doors to grad­u­ate stu­dents of T&T, of­fer­ing them post-grad­u­ate schol­ar­ships in a wide range of fields, from sci­ence and en­gi­neer­ing, to hu­man­i­ties and the arts.

Fur­ther­more, to­day we will sign a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween Mex­i­co and T&T's Diplo­mat­ic Acad­e­mies to widen the hori­zons of our young diplo­mats through the mu­tu­al ex­change of ideas, ex­pe­ri­ences and open dis­cus­sions of the glob­al chal­lenges we both face to­day.

In light of the di­verse in­ter­ests that con­nect us, Mex­i­co has every rea­son to look to the fu­ture with op­ti­mism be­tween our na­tions. The strength, depth and com­mon un­der­stand­ing of the op­por­tu­ni­ties in front of us, are good in­di­ca­tors that we are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion.

So­cor­ro Flo­res Liera,

Mex­i­co's Un­der­sec­re­tary of For­eign Af­fairs for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean