Quito.- The presidents of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, and Paraguay, Santiago Peña, asserted this Wednesday in Quito that Latin America is going through a favorable moment to strengthen regional cooperation and coordinate the fight against organized crime, with a “new generation of leaders” who have “the responsibility to work together.”
“Just as in the past some nations joined together to do evil, to dominate in an authoritarian and ideological way, and to affect our peoples, today we have the responsibility to catch up with the world’s development. Today, Latin America has the responsibility to unite,” noted Noboa in reference to left-wing governments leaving power after elections in their respective countries in the region.
Noboa’s words were spoken during a joint statement on the occasion of Peña’s official visit to the country.
The president of Paraguay arrived Tuesday night in the Ecuadorian capital, after attending the inauguration ceremony of the president of Peru, the right-wing Keiko Fujimori, which was also attended by Noboa and other right-wing leaders in the region.
This morning, Peña participated in a floral offering held at the Plaza de la Independencia, in front of the Carondelet Palace, the seat of the Executive branch; subsequently, he met with the Ecuadorian president and several ministers, and later both served as honorary witnesses at the signing of several agreements on issues such as citizen security, defense, technical-military cooperation, cybersecurity, and public order.
The Shield of the Americas
The Paraguayan president explained that the delegations were also able to address an agenda that goes “beyond” their nations and that involved the region, since there is now an “opportunity that for a long time” they had not had, to “work among several countries” on common goals, such as the fight against organized crime.
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“Paraguay and Ecuador are very clear that there will never be development and prosperity in our nations if we are not first capable of offering security: legal security, physical security, and we are both working on it. But we also understand that this must lead us to work in a coordinated manner between several countries,” he stated.
“We are going to fight organized crime with organized institutions, with organized countries,” he added.
Peña and Noboa participated in March, along with other right-wing leaders from the region, in the ‘Shield of the Americas’ summit, convened by U.S. President Donald Trump, in which a “military coalition” in Latin America against drug trafficking cartels was formalized.
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Noboa, for his part, said that the union between the countries must make them “globally competitive.”
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“Other continents are doing the same, they are uniting, they are working, they are creating synergies, and if we do not do it, we will not be able to move forward and, most importantly, we will not be able to give our people the progress, security, peace, justice, and dignity they so desperately need,” he stated.
The Ecuadorian president assured that this was “the beginning of a glorious era for the Latin American peoples,” in which they are going to “work together for a stronger, safer, and more prosperous Latin America.”
