Veracruz Summit Will Seek to Combine Efforts of Ibero-American Organizations

MEXICO CITY – The Ibero-American summit to be held in December this year in the Mexican city of Veracruz will seek to combine efforts of different regional organizations to achieve better results, said Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) chief, Rebeca Grynspan.

“One of the challenges is to make an Ibero-American system, not only in SEGIB,” Grynspan said in Mexico City during a forum organized by the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (Comexi) on the perspectives of the Veracruz meeting.

Currently, the Ibero-American states have organizations for Education, Science and Culture, Social Security, Youth, and the Conference of Ministers of Justice, among others.

According to Grynspan, these organizations, which have worked separately until now, “could offer a much more articulated and strategic proposal” if they coordinate their efforts.

“If we could bet all together for the construction of an Ibero-American space, we could get better results than separately,” she said.

In this regard, she said that the summit is “an essential forum giving political visibility and relevance to many initiatives taken by these organizations in their sectoral fields.”

She added that the secretary generals of the different organizations signed an agreement to work in coordination and expressed her confidence that the summit will approve the initiative.

Another topic to be discussed in Veracruz will be the improvement of academic mobility, workers, talents and cultural goods.

“I think that this could give a dynamism and deepness to the Ibero-American space,” Grynspan added.

During the Comexi forum, the ex-vice president of Costa Rica also warned against betting exclusively on the Asian market and on exporting raw materials and food items to satisfy the demands of the Ibero-American population.

Although she acknowledged that “the Chinese phenomenon without doubt has been very important in the growth of Latin America in the last few years,” she warned that a country alone cannot provide all the necessary growth opportunities.

According to Grynspan, “to generate quality employment and incomes required by the new middle class, the Latin American region will have to maintain a privileged relationship with the European continent and the Iberian Peninsula.”

Grynspan is in Mexico for a series of meetings prior to the Ibero-American Summit in December.

In the XII Ordinary Assembly of the organization, held on Wednesday in Mexico City, the appointment of Brazilian Paulo Speller as secretary-general for 2015-2018, substituting Alvaro Marchesi of Spain, was unanimously approved.

The XXIV Conference of Ibero-American Ministers of Education, with the participation of Grynspan, will be held on Thursday.

In this meeting, several long-term projects will be presented by participating ministers, which will then be submitted to leaders’ approval in the summit, Mexican secretary of education Emilio Chuayffet said.

In a press conference, the minister highlighted the Paulo Freire program for university teaching students, which provides academic flexibility thanks to study periods in Ibero-American institutions.

On Friday, Mexico will also embrace the XXIV Ibero-American Conference of Culture.

The XXIV Ibero-American summit will be held in the port city of Veracruz, in eastern Mexico, on Dec. 8-9 this year under the slogan “Ibero-America XXI Century: Education, Innovation and Culture.”

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