In a tweet issued Nov. 16, Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard reported that, together with Mexico and Argentina, which had issued a joint declaration on October 9 announcing the creation of a Latin American and Caribbean space agency (ALCE), Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Paraguay would be officially joining the new agency, while Colombia and Peru would join as observers. Now, he enthusiastically tweeted, “we are eight countries, together with Mexico and Argentina, building the ALCE for 2021! We’ve quadrupled our size in just a month!”
A Nov. 16 communique issued simultaneously by Mexico’s Foreign Ministry reported on a virtual meeting held one day earlier, in which foreign ministers, heads of space agencies and other government officials from the above-mentioned countries wholeheartedly endorsed the October 9 declaration. In emphasizing the importance of creating the new agency, Ebrard underscored in his remarks to that meeting that “if Latin America and the Caribbean don’t participate in the space race, we will likely increasingly be at a disadvantage in terms of science and technology which will translate into weakness and an inability to resolve problems we have in the area of social welfare.”
