Honduran Foreign Minister, Alden Rivera, met with Mexican Deputy Foreign Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean, Ruben Beltran, in Mexico City to bolster security cooperation in light of the situation in the region, the Mexican Foreign Relations Secretariat said.

The two countries agreed to move forward with implementation of the 21 initiatives crafted in October at a meeting on transnational organized crime and migrants’ security.

Mexico and Honduras, among other matters, want to coordinate communications on security matters, bolster intelligence on the payment of ransom, improve bi-national extradition procedures and inform migrants of their rights, as well as about the dangers they face on the journey north.

The goal is to eventually invite other Central American nations to join the dialogue, Rivera said.

About 18,000 migrants were kidnapped while traveling through Mexico in 2009, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said.

In August, 72 Latin American migrants were massacred at a ranch in Tamaulipas, a state in northeastern Mexico. The bodies of the 58 men and 14 women were discovered by marines on Aug. 24th after a shootout with gunmen at a ranch near San Fernando, that left a marine and three criminals dead. The massacre victims came from Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Brazil, but the majority were Hondurans. Two migrants – one from Ecuador and another from Honduras – survived the massacre.

Los Zetas, considered Mexico’s most violent drug cartel, is suspected of murdering the migrants.