 I'm Ricardo Zuniga. I'm the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Department of State, and I'm here at USIP today to talk about Guatemala and with the help of USIP and experts discuss the complex challenges, both for Guatemala and for US policy in Guatemala, and how that impacts US interests. First of all, the United States is very deeply connected to Central America. There's almost three million Guatemalans in the United States, and the United States is the largest trading partner of Guatemala, which is not a small country. We were talking about populations near 20 million, and you've got massive movement between the United States and Guatemala, massive economic relationships between the two of us. What happens in Guatemala and Guatemala's success has a huge bearing on the United States, not only in terms of irregular migration and massive migration between Guatemala and the United States and Guatemala and Mexico, but also because Guatemala has the largest economy in Central America, and in Central America as a whole, these are very close economic partners of the United States. If you take a CAFTA countries, of which Central American countries are a large part, that's the third largest trading partner that we have in the Americas after North America and Brazil. So these create American jobs in addition to being an important source of social connection to the Americas and an area where the citizen security has been very important for us historically as well. I would say what's very important to understand about the Americas is that it's not a region where you have a lot of interstate conflict, so there aren't conflicts between states. In fact, there are no ongoing conflicts in the Americas between states, but within regions we have unfortunately high rates of violence. For example, in Central America we see some of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world. Unfortunately, very, very many citizens are victims of gangs, not just because of violence, but because they're subject to extortion in Honduras and in Guatemala and El Salvador. And so the sense of instability is part of what makes it hard for societies to thrive. And so a lot of our work on the security front is not focused so much in what we think of as traditional security realms, police and judicial assistance, although that's crucial and very, very important. In fact, it's in helping reinforce society as a whole. Economic assistance, USAID has very significant programs as part of President Biden's $4 billion investment over four years in Central America. A lot of that is for social development because we understand that you have to encompass the entire population and the entire society and also on inclusion because some of the most unequal parts of the world, that is a major driver for the kind of social violence that we see in Central America that's affecting not just the movement of people, but dislocation within Central America, which is very significant. Well, there's no question that conditions, seeing conditions improve in Guatemala is a priority for the United States. What's good for Guatemala is good for the United States. And we also know that Guatemala citizens are going to be the ones who make that happen. It's not going to be the United States. We're very happy to help. And in fact, what we try to do is see where we can help people reinforce democratic institutions such as the judiciary. It's been a major focus because unfortunately what we've seen is an erosion of the independence of the judiciary. And we've seen, unfortunately, people who have been fighting against corruption removed from positions in favor of people who have been lax regarding anti-corruption efforts. And if you can't have rule of law, then it's very difficult to have substantial investment. And we need to see jobs created for as many Guatemalans as possible so they can have hope in the future that can only come, and we hear this from the private sector, but also from Guatemalans themselves, that can only come if you have a judiciary that is seen as where people have confidence that there is going to be a system of justice and they have access to justice, and it's going to be rule of law and influence, rather than influence that determines outcomes. So that is an area that is particularly important to us. We also, as I said, focus quite a bit on social development through community level programs through organizations such as the Inter-American Foundation, as well as our more traditional, our other traditional development programs, and by working to promote investment such as through the vice president's call to action, which is a really crucial part of what, of the administration's efforts to generate opportunities in Central America.