Latin America Today

To kick off our series for International Women’s Month, we sat down with WOLA President Carolina Jiménez Sandoval to discuss gender justice in the Americas. In this episode of the WOLA Weekly Podcast, Carolina reflects on her decades of experience as a human rights advocate and the crucial role of feminist movements in defending democracy. As President of WOLA, Carolina has chos

In an expected but still stunning escalation, the Trump administration has imposed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, citing cross-border flows of fentanyl as justification. The move has sent shockwaves through U.S.-Mexico and North American relations, rattling markets and generating a general outcry. In this episode, Stephanie Brewer, WOLA’s director for Mexico,

In the five weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the landscape for migrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border has shifted dramatically. The new administration is pursuing an aggressive crackdown on asylum seekers, closing legal pathways and ramping up deportations. Migrants who had secured appointments through the CBP One app under the Biden administration found th

The director of WOLA’s Venezuela Program, Laura Dib, joins the podcast to discuss the political, human rights, and diplomatic reality following Nicolás Maduro’s January 10 inauguration. Maduro’s new term begins amid severe tensions, as he plainly lost July 28, 2024 presidential elections and has employed waves of repression, including rounding up and in some cases forcibly d

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 episode shortly after his inauguration, Bernardo Arevalo and his Semilla party had a very difficult

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

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 inst

This episode was recorded three days after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. It brings together WOLA’s president, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, Vice President for Programs Maureen Meyer, and Director for Defense Oversight Adam Isacson. Together, they possess a combined seven decades of experience working on human rights, democracy, and U.S. policy toward Latin Americ

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 judi

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. Pin