Latin America Today

Latin America Today

News and analysis of politics, security, development and U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, from the Washington Office on Latin America.

Episodes

January 24, 2025 51 mins

In this podcast episode WOLA’s Central America Director, Ana María Méndez Dardón, reflects on Bernardo Arevalo’s first year in office, as January 14, 2025 marks one year since the inauguration that followed his unexpected election.

As we discussed with Ana María in a podcast

WOLA’s director for Colombia, Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, is just back from taking a U.S. congressional delegation to Colombia. In addition to Bogotá, the group visited Cali and the Pacific Coast port of Buenaventura.

The latter two cities are in the department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia’s third most populous. Much of the population is Afro-descendant, and Buenaventura, on the coast is majority Black.

Buenaventura has a vibrant and r...

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On November 25, President-Elect Donald Trump announced via social media that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada unless migration and fentanyl trafficking ceased entirely. The announcement caused widespread alarm, spurring a flurry of responses and an unclear conversation between Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

The event was instructive about what we might expect after Trump assu...

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This episode was recorded three days a...

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In September 2024, Mexico’s legislature quickly approved a series of constitutional reforms at the behest of outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The revisions, among other things, fundamentally change the nature of the country’s judiciary and fundamentally and permanently change the role of the armed forces in public security.

Under the overhaul of Mexico’s judiciary, citizens will now directly elect all judges, increas...

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This podcast episode features Kendra McSweeney and Fritz Pinnow, part of a team investigating a new trend: the emergence of coca cultivation in Central America.

McSweeney, a professor of geography at Ohio State University, has research human-environment interactions, cultural and political ecology, conservation and development, resilience, demography, and land use/cover change. Pinnow is a Honduras-based journalist and documentary ...

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WOLA’s President Carolina Jimenez Sandoval is joined by Laura Cristina Dib, WOLA’s director for Venezuela to discuss the state of Venezuela since Nicolás Maduro’s self proclaimed and highly contested July 28 electoral victory. This is a continuation of WOLA’s July 30 podcast, “The Scrutiny Should Be Public to All Citizens:” the aftermath of Venezuela’s July election, with Laura Dib.

Carol...

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On July 28, 2024, Venezuela held a long-awaited presidential election. More than 25 years after Hugo Chávez was first elected, his successor, Nicolas Maduro, ran for a third term. The opposition coalesced around a candidate; despite many obstacles, the opposition had a big enthusiasm advantage, and turnout on July 28th was very high.

In the end, though, Venezuela’s national elections authority declared Maduro the victor, without of...

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On March 14-22, 2024, the UN Commission on Narcotic ...

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El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele just won re-election by a broad margin as a massive security crackdown has reduced gangs’ role in everyday life. But the increasingly authoritarian “Bukele model” has a big long-term downside, Douglas Farah explains.

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It has been almost a month since Nayib Bukele was reelected as President of El Salvador by a very wide margin, despite a constitutional prohibition on re-election. While securit...

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A January outbreak of criminal violence in Ecuador made headlines worldwide. Now, a new government is cracking down in ways that recall other countries' "mano dura" policies, and the U.S. government stands ready to help. Is this the right way forward?

 

While this isn’t the first time Ecuador’s government has declared a state of exception, the prominence of organized crime and the consequential rise in insecurity is a new reality f...

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After relentless attempts to block his inauguration and a nine-hour delay, Bernardo Arévalo, who ran for Guatemala’s presidency on an anti-corruption platform, was sworn into office minutes after midnight on January 14.

In this highly educational episode, WOLA Director for Central America Ana María Méndez Dardón is joined by WOLA Senior Fellow Jo-Marie Burt. Both were in Guatemala witnessing the high-tension event that was Arévalo’...

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As congressional negotiations place asylum and other legal protection pathways at risk, and as we approach a 2024 election year with migration becoming a higher priority for voters in the United States, we found it important to discuss the current moment's complexities.

WOLA’s vice president for Programs, Maureen Meyer, former director for WOLA’s Mexico Program and co-founder of WOLA’s migration and border work, is joined by Mexico...

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A conversation with WOLA's President, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, about the year ahead. She discusses current challenges in the Americas within four areas that are orienting WOLA's current work: democracy, migration, climate, and gender and racial justice.

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Maria Belén Garrido, a research lecturer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, and Jeffrey Pugh, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston, lead the Regional Institute for the Study and Practice of Strategic Nonviolent Action in the Americas.

The institute provides training, capacity building, and networking opportunities for nonviolent social change activists in Latin America. It teaches that th...

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A new report from WOLA dives deeply into the growing power and roles of Mexico’s military, and what that means for human rights, democracy, and U.S.-Mexico relations.

WOLA’s Mexico Program published Militarized Transformation: Human Rights and Democratic Controls in a Context of Increasing Militarization in Mexico on September 6. The report voices alarm about the Mexican armed forces’ growing list of civilian tasks, and civilians’...

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Venezuela is to hold presidential elections sometime in 2024. Whether they will be at least somewhat free and fair, moving the country away from authoritarianism and toward democracy, is unlikely but far from impossible. It is a goal that must guide the international community and Venezuelan civil society.

That is one of the central messages of Laura Cristina Dib, WOLA’s director for Venezuela, who explains the daunting current pol...

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Gretchen Kuhner directs the Mexico City-based Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI). She explains the challenges and complexities—and occasional advocacy successes—of the current moment of record migration and changing policies, viewed from Mexico.

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Joining WOLA with partners in three countries, the Central America Monitor has tracked governance indicators during a very difficult nine years. WOLA's Elizabeth Kennedy and Lisette Vásquez of the Myrna Mack Foundation explain this important work.

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