Honduras is collapsing. The thousands of migrants who flee every day are direct testimony to a political, economic and social crisis that the world ignores and the U. S. government seems bent on perpetuating.
The execution of three women and six of their children in the state of Sonora shocked the public in Mexico and the United States, where the family held dual citizenship, and once again put President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the defensive.
For the past year, Ciudad Juarez has been a flashpoint of the migrant and refugee humanitarian crisis gripping the U.S.-Mexico border. Now hundreds of other people-mainly women and children-are camped out at the international bridge, but this latest group of refugees is Mexican.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador delivered his first state of the union address on September 1 from a position of strength, in spite of the fact that the first nine months in office have failed to produce results in several key areas.
If these hate crimes end up reducing Trump’s ability to use racism and attacks against Mexico in campaigns; if the people and congress are mobilized to demand gun control, if the deaths lead to a greater repudiation of Donald Trump, Steven Miller and his agenda, and if the López Obrador government finally becomes convinced that Mexico does not have to be a friend to a government that foments attacks on its interests and its people, the victims will not have died in vain.
Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently made two announcements that could finally close the bloodiest chapter in the history of the United States’ global war on drugs. He called for ending the Merida Initiative—the 3 billion-dollar US counternarcotics aid package that has fueled Mexico’s drug war—and announced a pivot from prohibition.
There’s nothing “uncontrollable” about people applying for asylum. All the U.S. has to do is meet its obligations under international law.
Trump’s tariffs-for-crackdown tradeoff punishes Americans and Mexicans and doesn’t fix the border. It’s hard to imagine a more misdirected plan.
In this Special Report, the Americas Program analyzed existing Safe Third Country Agreements to determine what such an agreement would mean for Mexico, for the United States and for the migrants from Central America who pass through Mexico to seek safety in the United States.
Brazil has been a democratic society for a mere 34 years. Bolsonaro’s efforts to keep alive the memory of the dictatorship, while he governs with the support of those who preach the return of an anti-democratic period is (or should be) more than a cause for concern.
