Fifty years after Costa Rica’s favorite U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, paid an official visit here, current U.S. President Barack Obama will do the same, the White House and the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica announced Wednesday afternoon.
Obama will travel to Mexico and Costa Rica May 2-4, where he will meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla and other Central American leaders.
“In Mexico, the President looks forward to meeting with President Peña Nieto, with whom he spoke by telephone today. The President welcomes the opportunity to discuss ways to deepen our economic and commercial partnership and further our engagement on the broad array of bilateral, regional, and global issues that connect our two countries,” a White House statement said.
In Costa Rica, Obama will meet with leaders of the Central American Integration System, which Costa Rica currently presides, to “discuss our collective efforts to promote economic growth and development in Central America and our ongoing collaboration on citizen security,” the statement added.
Bill Clinton made the last visit by a sitting U.S. president in 1997.
Other details of the trip are pending, an embassy spokeswoman said. For updates, readers can follow the embassy’s Facebook page and Twitter account, hashtag #ObamaEnCostaRica.
