Latin America Today

Top Biden administration officials, including Vice-President Kamala Harris, are developing a new approach to Central America. The theme is familiar: addressing migration's "root causes." WOLA President Geoff Thale and Citizen Security Director Adriana Beltrán discuss.

The Biden administration is asking Mexico to do more to limit or stop arrivals of asylum-seeking migrants from Central America and elsewhere. Several WOLA experts discuss Mexico's military deployments, expulsions of families, and the view from El Paso.

Yael Shacher, senior U.S. advocate at Refugees International, is a historian of U.S. asylum policy. She offers an invaluable perspective on the current increase in asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, and how the system should work.

This series from the Washington Office on Latin America will share the stories of social leaders in Colombia who, every day, under threat to their lives, search for truth and work toward reconciliation, fight for justice for victims of the Colombian conflict, and ensure the government lives up to the guarantees it made to ethnic and rural communities in the historic 2016 peace accord. Social leaders often face off with a Colombian government that refuses to admit its failures, and they stand up to armed groups terrorizing their communities. Hundreds of them have been killed, yet they persist. In this series you will hear why, directly from them. Rebuilding Peace was created by the Washington Office on Latin America for the Con Líderes Hay Paz Campaign. If you would like to learn more about the campaign and this podcast, please head over to conlidereshaypaz.org. You can subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your favorite podcasts. 

El Salvador's popular but authoritarian-leaning president, Nayib Bukele, may enjoy a congressional supermajority after February 28 elections. Mauricio Silva and José Luis Sanz discuss the many implications for Salvadoran democracy and U.S. policy.

WOLA's Director for Mexico and Migrant Rights, Stephanie Brewer, walks us through the late 2020 arrest and release of Mexico's last defense secretary, and what Mexico's handling of the case tells us about the military's power and U.S.-Mexican relations.

Populist and authoritarian leaders have made important gains in Latin America, and the U.S. government has been inconsistent in its dealings with them, and in its support for civil society. WOLA's Geoff Thale and Geoff Ramsey outline a better way forward.

The New York Times recently ran a short film by Sean Mattison about how victims of Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship creatively called out the ex-military killers and torturers who, benefiting from an amnesty, were living in their midst.

Corruption is "endemic: a system, a network, a web of relations" that underlies many other problems in Latin America. Adriana Beltrán and Moses Ngong discuss how the US and other international actors can support the region's anti-corruption reformers.

The U.S. government is transitioning between two different visions of migration, while human mobility increases throughout Latin America. Adam Isacson and Maureen Meyer discuss what a humane and effective policy would entail, at home and region-wide.