A contingent of 30 Haitian soldiers recently left the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) county to undergo a training program in Ecuador and Mexico.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the soldiers of all rants in the Engineering Corps of the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAd’H) left the country on Friday on board a Mexican Air Force plane for Temamatla, one of the 125 municipalities in Mexico.
The Ministry of Defense said the soldiers would follow an intensive course allowing them to become instructors and monitors in order to actively participate in the training of the next class of FAd’H soldiers.
The training confirms the relaunch of the Haitian-Mexican Military Cooperation, reactivated following the bilateral meeting between Enold Joseph, the Minister of Defense of Haiti, and his Mexican counterpart, on the sidelines of the XVth Conference of Ministers of Defense of the Americas that was held in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia earlier this year.
Haiti was the first Latin-American nation to gain independence from France in 1804. This result inspired several nations in the region in their struggle for independence. In 1816, Mexican General Martín Javier Mina y Larrea traveled to Haiti to gain support for Mexico’s independence from Spain. Consular relations between Haiti and Mexico were established in 1882, with formal diplomatic relations being established in 1929
As part of an effort to increase humanitarian assistance and help with the recuperation of Haiti, Mexico provides government scholarships to 300 Haitian students to study at Mexican universities per year. These students also receive a US$625 monthly stipend while their studies continue. The first 103 students arrived in 2013, followed by 93 in 2014 and the rest arriving in 2015.
In November 2021, Haiti opened a consulate in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, Chiapas, to best attend to the surge of Haitian migrants entering Mexico.
and then 