The Mexican Policy of International Cooperation

According to the author, the current, globalized world presents advantages such as the spreading of knowledge and commercial liberalization, but also disadvantages, such as the polarizing of disparities in the distribution of wealth, both among countries and within each nation. For the author, in this complex scenario it is obvious that well-being and stability are indivisible, common international goods: in order to attain greater equilibrium, both the developed and the developing countries have to cooperate with each other. The 21st century requires intense international cooperation if we want to preserve peace, stability and integral, sustained development. As a country with intermediate development, Mexico is both a receiver and a donor of international development cooperation; this is the origin of its intense exchange with Central America and the Caribbean, as well as with Japan, Canada, the United States, and the European Union. The bases were laid during the 1994-2000 administration for the development of a real system of international cooperation. Consequently, the Mexican Institute of International Cooperation was created in 1998 (as a deconcentrated body of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs); it is in charge of Mexico’s international development cooperation policy. The author proposes working on international cooperation from different stances to achieve a development that harmoniously brings together the components that are necessary in order to achieve it. Mexico has positive, dynamic political, economic and cultural relations with most of the international community; therefore, its diplomatic work in the field of international cooperation still has a lot of facets to be explored and studied more deeply.