The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, stated this Saturday during the Shield of the Americas summit that "this is a critical moment for our hemisphere."
His statements came while warning about a series of challenges that, he said, require regional cooperation, including organized crime, drug trafficking, migration pressures, and the influence of hostile regimes.
Rubio made those statements during a brief intervention in which he thanked President Donald Trump for, in his opinion, making the Western Hemisphere a real priority of his administration.
"We have had several U.S. presidents who claimed that the Western Hemisphere would be a priority, but they never followed through. However, the president has made it a personal priority," he noted.
In his message, Rubio also stated that Trump is “a president of action” and assured that, based on what he has done and what he is currently doing regarding the Western Hemisphere, “he will go down in history as one of the most important figures in the history of the United States and, certainly, of the last hundred years.”
The head of U.S. diplomacy also thanked the leaders participating in the meeting and acknowledged "the work they do in their countries" and their "partnership with the United States."
A critical moment
In the center of his speech, he placed the regional situation. "This is a critical moment for our hemisphere", Rubio said before listing the challenges that, in his opinion, the region faces.
He specifically mentioned "organized crime, drug trafficking, migratory pressures, and the influence of hostile regimes."
He stated that the magnitude of these problems necessitates a coordinated response. "The challenges we face (...) require cooperation among all of us," he affirmed.
Rubio linked that need for coordination with the purpose of the meeting in which he made his remarks. "And that's exactly what this summit is about," he concluded.
The statements reveal a discourse centered on two main axes: on one hand, the affirmation of Trump's policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean; on the other, the depiction of a hemispheric landscape marked by transnational threats and the need for alliances between regional governments and Washington.
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