President Boric on conclusion of official visit: “I hope to expand and strengthen the ties we have with our sister country of Mexico”

Chile’s President, Gabriel Boric Font, has concluded his official working visit to Mexico. The activities in which he participated took place in Mexico City, where he held meetings with various authorities and businesspersons from the country. 

The tour began on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 22, when the delegation led by the President and the Sociocultural Coordinator of the Presidency, Irina Karamanos, arrived at the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA). Foreign Affairs Minister Antonia Urrejola, Economy Minister Nicolás Grau, a delegation of politicians, and a group of Chilean businesspersons were also part of the tour. 

The following day, the President met with Mexican businesspersons. He stated, “we were able to talk about how to improve our commercial ties and how (…) they can allow us to improve our productive chains, to learn from the experience of Mexico in this area, and how they can allow Mexico to diversify their imports and exports with the global south.” 

He also laid a floral offering at the Altar de la Patria located in the Chapultepec Forest. He later began a series of meetings with Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, at the National Palace, where a welcome ceremony was held and a joint statement was made. 

“We have agreed on different joint actions to promote regional and hemispheric multilateralism, as well as to update our agreement of cooperation and understanding, which has not been met or updated since 2015,” President Boric explained during a statement from both leaders. 

The last day of the tour, Wednesday, November 24, began with a visit to the Maestra Gabriela Mistral Elementary School, located in Coyoacán. 

The establishment is part of the Escuelas Chile (Chile Schools) Program. President Boric thanked the educational community “with whom today we have been sharing dances in honor of Gabriela Mistral, as well as a series of books that our Embassy and the Mexican Economic Culture Fund have provided to the community.”   

After the ceremony, the President traveled to the Senate to participate in a solemn session, before meeting with the president of the Senate Political Coordination Board, Ricardo Monreal. 

During the session, the President made a speech in which he highlighted Gabriela Mistral and the influence that she had on Mexico’s education system 100 years ago. 

“This woman, Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, known around the world as Gabriela Mistral, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, had the privilege of participating in the tremendous national educational effort that was promoted 100 years ago by José Vasconcelos, whose spirit she so wisely synthesized in the Veracruz Conference many years later in 1951, in a place she also considered her homeland, with the phrase ‘bread with peace and peace with culture,’” he said. 

The President added that Mexico is “a country that expresses what we are as Latin Americans, because, and I want to defend this point very strongly, (…) we will be able to speak to the world with much more strength if we are able to work for that dream of our founding mothers and fathers of a united Latin America.” 

During the afternoon, he was also acknowledged by the government of Mexico City as a distinguished guest. The recognition was given by head of the Mexico City government, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. 

At the ceremony, the President highlighted, “what I aspire to is that the words we collectively uphold today also survive the passage of time to the extent that they are capable of changing reality for the better to improve the quality of life of our peoples.” 

The official working visit concluded with a meeting between the President, Chile’s Ambassador to Mexico, Beatriz Sánchez, and the politicians who participated in the Summit of the Pacific Alliance.