'Dear friend' welcomes Higgins as they
honour our fallen heroes
Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade, left, and President Michael D Higgins at the wreath-laying
ceremony
Joyce Fegan in Mexico City – 21 October 2013
THEY may live thousands of miles apart, but the distance between Ireland and Mexico was erased as
President Michael D Higgins was welcomed to the Central American country as a "dear friend" by a man with
his own family connections with Ireland.
The family of Jose Antonio Meade, Mexico's Foreign Minister, left Ireland for Mexico in the 1880s and
yesterday the politician spoke of the friendship between the two countries as he greeted Mr Higgins.
The two men took part in a wreath-laying ceremony in Mexico City honouring Irish soldiers – the Battalon de
San Patricio – who fought for Mexico against America between 1846 and 1848.
Mr Higgins spoke of the "unbreakable link" between the two countries as he began his 12-day official visit to
Central America that takes in Mexico, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
Speaking to the Irish Independent, Mr Higgins told of the growth of international students coming to Ireland
from the region with over 20,000 young people expected to study at Irish institutions over the next four
years.
Nine trade agreements will be signed during the course of his visit and Mr Higgins said the Irish people are
"going to see Irish job creation in Mexico (and) Mexican investment in Ireland of a very significant kind" as a
result of the tour.
However, aside from the economic aspect of his trip, Mr Higgins said Ireland enjoyed a "very warm
relationship" on the international stage with the Central American countries he is visiting.
Mr Higgins, who was accompanied by his wife Sabina and junior minister Joe Costello, then had a private
breakfast with Mr Meade before paying a visit to the Museum of Anthropology.
Today he will attend another wreath-laying ceremony.
Irish Independent
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Nicar agua dr opped fr om list as Pr esident Higgins visits Centr al
Amer ican countr ies
Simon Carswell
Last Updated: Sunday, October 20, 2013, 22:12
President Michael D Higgins has not ruled out a separate future visit to Nicaragua after a planned stop in the country on his 12day tour of Central America was dropped because of scheduling issues.
Speaking in Mexico City on the first day of his three-country tour to Mexico, El Salvador and Costa Rica, Mr Higgins said that
originally he had also planned to stop in Nicaragua, whose leader Daniel Ortega he has hosted in Ireland.
“Unfortunately the host side ran into some diary difficulties which included, for example, the fact of whether the president is in
the country during the period when the visit is taking place,” he said. “In the case of Nicaragua, that is for the future,” Mr Higgins
added.
A long-time champion of victims of conflict and human rights abuses in Central America, Mr Higgins said his memories of
visiting El Salvador during the country’s war in 1982 to report on atrocities were “very harrowing” but he was pleased to be
returning this week “in conditions of peace”.
Apology
He was “very moved” by the apology by El Salvador’s president Mauricio Funes in 2010 for the human rights abuses committed
by the state during the country’s 12-year civil war.
During his visit to the country, Mr Higgins said he would deliver a paper on “the importance of never forgetting and the ethics of
memory if we are to have a fruitful present and go on to a future”.
Travelling with his wife, Sabina Higgins, and the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Joe Costello,
Mr Higgins will meet Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto today.
Mr Higgins said he hoped to promote trade ties between Ireland and Mexico at a business summit in Guadalajara, adding that
there were nine Irish companies signing agreements with Mexican businesses.
He noted the importance of developing goals with Latin America, saying some of the most original thinking in sciences and
economics was coming from South American thinkers where economic growth, sustainability and poverty reduction were being
combined in the same model, he said.
Cultural links
He will also promote connections between Irish and Mexican universities and speak on the subjects of culture, the arts and
development.
“It is very good to see something that we underestimate in Ireland and that is the immense positive feeling that exists in Latin
America generally,” he said.
“That is why I think more and more you are going to see Ireland being used as a place where many of the people in South
America will encounter Europe. ”
Speaking after commemorating Irish emigrants who fought for Mexico in the 19th century, Mr Higgins said it was a very
important aim of his foreign trips that Ireland not lose connection to the people it had lost through emigration.
© 2013 irishtimes.com
Pr esident Michael D Higgins lays wr eath in Mexico City
Simon Carswell
Last Updated: Sunday, October 20, 2013, 22:19
President Michael D Higgins paid tribute at a ceremony in Mexico City to Irish soldiers who fought for Mexico with the famous
St Patrick’s Battalion in the Mexican-American war of 1846-48.
Laying a wreath at a plaque commemorating the men at the Plaza San Angel, Mr Higgins noted the Irish names of Hanly, Delaney,
Kelly, Murphy and Dalton listed on the inscription who were overrun by the US army in August 1847 as they tried to protect the
convent of Churubusco. “It is very poignant to be gathered here this morning to pay our respects to this gallant group,
themselves in many ways the descendants of an earlier scattering of Irish men across the armies of Europe and its empires,” Mr
Higgins told several hundred people at a ceremony.
Catholic Mexico
Escaping religious discrimination in the US and siding with Catholic Mexico in the war, the Irish soldiers fled south to fight in the
Batallón de San Patricio under Capt John Riley from Clifden in Co Galway, who is remembered with a bust erected in his honour
in the plaza.
The Americans hanged and shot about 50 soldiers from the battalion as traitors in September 1847, while Riley was flogged and
had the letter ‘D’ for deserter scored into his cheeks. “The San Patricios were reviled and cruelly punished by one side in the
conflict, but cherished and remembered by the other,” said Mr Higgins.
The identification of the Irish soldiers with the Mexican cause has created “an unbreakable link between our two countries”, he
said.
Mexico’s foreign minister José Antonio Meade referred to “los San Patricios” as “these Irish heroes that Ireland has given to
Mexico”.
© 2013 irishtimes.com
Pr esident Higgins champions new economic models dur ing Mexico
visit
Simon Carswell
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 23, 2013, 11:04
President Michael D Higgins used a historic appearance at Mexico’s biggest business summit to call for new economic models
that balance sustainable growth with social inclusion and ending poverty.
The first European head of state to speak at the influential Cumbre de Negocios conference in Guadalajara, Mr Higgins told
hundreds of Mexican businesspeople that Ireland was resolved “not to waste the chastening experience of recession and to learn
the positive lessons for the future.”
The future lies “not in returning to the failed economic path of reckless speculation and bubble economics, but to a sustainable
model of nurturing talented people, creating valuable goods and services, innovating and connecting to global partners,
customers, and investors in enduring ways,” he said.
In a sharp critique of the policies that led to the global financial crisis, Mr Higgins said the difference between the two models
was between “pursuing opportunism and embracing opportunity, between the illusion of a virtual economy and the sustainability
of a real economy.”
Davos of Latin America
Mr Higgins spoke at the summit, known as the Davos of Latin America, where Mexico’s president Enrique Peña Nieto was
among the audience. He also met the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé.
Economic rebalancing and a new ethical approach to business has been a common theme during the President’s speeches on his
tour of Latin America.
Ireland and the European Union could learn from countries such as Mexico which record positive economic growth while trying
to end “the misery of extreme poverty” through job creation.
Ireland was determined to build on the Irish people’s “creativity, innovation, high level of education and openness to new
models,” he said in the keynote address of his visit to Mexico.
“We will not waste our energies on seeking to relive that which has failed. Invention rather than imitation has been our strength,
be it in James Joyce’s Ulysses or in the new microchip from Intel, in Co Kildare,” he said in a speech delivered in English, Irish
and Spanish.
Ireland experienced “the consequences of economic reversal painfully and directly – flowing simultaneously from the global
financial and economic crisis, over which we had little control, and from the destructive fallout from the collapse of a domestic
construction and banking bubble,” he said.
‘Gateway to Europe’
He also encouraged Mexican companies to invest in Ireland, which offered “enormous potential” to companies as “a gateway to
the European market,” he said.
Dublin will host a conference next year for Mexican companies willing to invest in Ireland, while Mr Higgins has invited President
Peña Nieto on a state visit in 2015. Mr Higgins said new policy choices must be taught to protect people from “consequences of
reckless speculative movements in economies that have rightly been labelled ‘fictive’ versions of the economy”.
On a flight from Mexico City to Guadalajara on a Mexican government jet, Mr Higgins said it was clear that the economic model
that will guide this century “will not be one that is made out of the broken bits and pieces of that which has failed” but in a real
balance between economy and society.
© 2013 irishtimes.com
We're back on top of our game, President
tells Mexico summit
Joyce Fegan – 23 October 2013
PRESIDENT Michael D Higgins has told business leaders in Mexico that we have returned to "economic
stability and to modest growth".
Mr Higgins yesterday became the first European head of state or government to speak at the Mexican
Business Summit, where he said Ireland's future lay in turning our backs on "the failed economic path of
reckless speculation and bubble economics".
The summit, now in its 11th year, was held in Guadalajara. At the event, Pele presented a soccer jersey to
the Mexican President.
The influential summit is the biggest of its kind in the country of 112 million people, and the president
presented Ireland as an attractive place in which to invest.
He told delegates that our small country needed a sustainable model of economics where talented people
are nurtured and valuable goods are created.
Ireland, which had a 24pc growth in exports to Mexico last year, was described by Mr Higgins as having
"enormous potential to Mexican companies as a gateway to the European market".
This year, he said, marked Ireland's sixth year of a "painful rebalancing" where we were "burdened with
unemployment and debt levels".
OPPORTUNITY
Mr Higgins wished not to dwell on the mistakes of the past, reliving "that which has failed", but emphasised
the importance of "embracing opportunity" versus "pursuing opportunism".
Ireland was presented as being an innovative, creative place with multinational companies such as Twitter,
Yahoo and eBay setting up here.
He also announced a business seminar that will take place in Dublin next May "specifically targeted at
increasing Mexican investment in Dublin and Ireland".
Mr Higgins, who delivered his keynote speech in Spanish and English, focused heavily on the digital age.
Irish Independent
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