The eyes of 10 countries will be in San José at the end of March, when the sixteenth edition of the Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Tuxtla Mechanism for Dialogue and Coordination. “Tuxtla Gutiérrez” is the name of a city and a Mexican municipality, which honors General Joaquín Miguel Gutiérrez Canales, since he promoted the annexation of Chiapas to Mexico. This summit, led by the Mexican government, bears the name “Tuxtla” because it was the site where the first of these meetings was held in 1991. However, it wasn’t until 2006, during the Second Summit, that this mechanism of international dialogue and cooperation was formalized. It was born with the representation of six nations: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Then Belize and Panama joined, followed by Colombia and the Dominican Republic in 2009.
At the Tenth Summit in 2007, members agreed to transition from the Puebla Panama Plan (PPP) to the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project, which aims to integrate the 10 member countries for the development of Mesoamérica in areas such as road infrastructure, electrical interconnection and telecommunications. Thanks to this project, 62 operations have been carried out, with an investment of $612 million; and another 45 projects are still in progress. In addition, $ 83.4 million were awarded for highway and border projects in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Some of the achievements of these meetings are the International Network of Mesoamerican Highways, the Central American Telecommunications Network, the pre-feasibility and feasibility studies for the modernization of 11 border crossings and the Mesoamérica without hunger project, among others. This is the third time that Costa Rica hosts the meeting, which will be held under the slogan “Mesoamerica unites us” and will focus on the potential of public-private alliances.