Latin America Today

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

  1. Sep 23

    The Venezuela Oil Deal: Opacity and a Transition in Doubt

    In this episode, WOLA's Adam Isacson speaks with Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Monaldi, a leading scholar of the politics and economics of energy and resource policy in Latin America, returns to the podcast six months after a previous conversation about Venezuela's oil sector. The focus is the oil agreement that the Trump administration and the government of interim president Delcy Rodríguez announced at the end of August. No text of the agreement has been made public, and, as Monaldi explains, the U.S. and Venezuelan descriptions of it do not match. Monaldi walks through the deal's most unusual features. The counterpart is North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a company incorporated only a few years ago and controlled by businessman Alejandro Betancourt, who previously obtained contracts under the Chávez era. The 17 fields covered by the agreement appear chosen to maximize the headline reserve figure (65 billion barrels) rather than for near-term development potential. Monaldi also examines the mechanism by which the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital, statutorily barred from holding equity, would take a "penny warrant" convertible into a 35 percent stake, which raises big questions that Congress has begun to probe. The conversation turns repeatedly to transparency. "Opacity seems to be what is going to rule the way things are done," Mondaldi observes. He contrasts the deal with competitive bidding rounds used in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and by Venezuela itself in the 1990s, and notes that Venezuela's new oil law did not repeal Maduro's Anti-Blockade Law, which makes contracts confidential. Oil companies' executives might use this as an argument to try to avoid oversight. He raises the unresolved question of who absorbs the cost of selling oil to the U.S. government at roughly $40 a barrel when market prices are well above that, and the continuing lack of information about the U.S. Treasury account holding Venezuelan oil revenue. The episode closes with the geopolitics: reports that Exxon may take over Russian-held assets, the status of Chinese and Russian stakes, Venezuela's appearance at G20 energy meetings in Houston, restrained opposition reactions including from María Corina Machado, and strongly negative Venezuelan public opinion. "Why is the Venezuelan government... going to be subsidizing the richest country in the world?" Monaldi asks. He repeats the key point, voiced in our earlier conversation, that only a democratic transition can provide would-be investors with the certainty and confidence that robust participation in Venezuela's energy sector would require.

  2. Sep 18

    Security Reimagined: "Police reform isn't decreed; it's managed"

    This Spanish-language conversation is the first in a series on alternative approaches to security in Latin America, "Security Reimagined." Here, WOLA's Adam Isacson speaks with Ernesto López Portillo, coordinator of the Programa de Seguridad Ciudadana at the Universidad Iberoamericana (Ibero) in Mexico City. Housed within the university's advocacy directorate (Dirección de Incidencia), the program functions, in López Portillo's words, as a "nodo"—a node where academia, civil society, journalism, government, international human rights bodies, and embassies converge around questions many Mexican universities avoid. López Portillo describes a two-track strategy: a "structural" agenda of long-term research, and a "coyuntural" agenda responding to emerging crises. He recounts a recent trip to Sinaloa, the state with the sharpest homicide increase under President Claudia Sheinbaum, and notes that the program has introduced concepts that are still too unfamiliar in Mexico and much of Latin America: police accountability, police certification, and external civilian oversight of police. A central case study is Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, in the Mexico City metropolitan area, where the program has worked for fifteen years. Improvements there, López Portillo argues, came from sustained leadership, continuity across administrations, neighborhood networks, and unusual measures like having officers read literature as a sensitization strategy. He distills the lesson into three requirements: political commitment (not merely "will"), technical commitment, and social commitment in the street. The conversation turns to why reform so rarely takes hold. Citing Argentine scholar Marcelo Saín's concept of the "political mismanagement of security," López Portillo argues that most elected officials delegate security to police and military commanders and face no political cost for failure. Mexico's political culture, he says, prizes loyalty over competence, producing "loyalty pyramids" and officials who neither know what to do nor whom to ask. He also challenges donors and cooperation agencies for steering technical assistance toward easy topics like "capacity-building" and away from internal affairs and accountability. Not all of the picture is bleak. The program's first call for "best practices in citizen security" drew 47 submissions, producing a public interactive map of violence-reduction projects across states from Chiapas to Chihuahua, like prison sports programs, urban design interventions, women-led violence reduction, and indigenous governance. Asked what a newly appointed security official should do, López Portillo emphasizes convening neighborhood leaders, business chambers, unions, cultural figures, and grassroots organizations; publicly accepting the problem; and building permanent consultation and evaluation mechanisms, neighborhood by neighborhood. He closes with a regional warning: the rise of the "mano dura" in Latin America, he predicts, will normalize states of exception and Bukele-style practices adapted to each country, with growing popular acceptance, including among young people. The region, he fears, risks forfeiting the consolidation of constitutional democracy in the name of security.

  3. Aug 31

    "It's a Policy That Seeks to Wear People Out": U.S. "mass deportation" brings misery to Mexico's far south

    This episode accompanies the August 2026 release of Desterrados al Sur: el costo humano de la deportación ("Banished to the South: The Human Cost of Mass Deportation"), a report WOLA published jointly with the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) in Nogales, Sonora, and the Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova in Tapachula, Chiapas. WOLA's Adam Isacson speaks with his co-authors, Juan Cuéllar Torres of the Kino Border Initiative and Josué Hildegardo Gómez Guzmán of Fray Matías, about what they are witnessing at Mexico's northern and southern borders. The conversation is in Spanish; an English-subtitled video version is available on WOLA's YouTube channel and embedded on the episode landing page. Deportation to Mexico has undergone a dramatic reshaping as a result of the second Trump administration's "mass deportation" policy. With access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border effectively closed, the population both organizations serve has shifted from people heading north to people expelled from the United States—many after decades of life, family, and work there. In mid-April, the U.S. government largely stopped returning Mexican nationals across the land border and began flying them instead to cities in Mexico's interior and south. Cuéllar explains that Nogales, once a hub of deportation infrastructure, now receives only a trickle: roughly 150 Mexicans and 120 non-Mexicans per month, with as few as ten people a week reaching KBI's shelter. Meanwhile, more than 1,100 third-country nationals per month are deported across the land border and then placed on buses by Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) and sent south to Villahermosa and Tapachula. Gómez describes what happens on arrival in Tapachula: Mexican deportees are received in improvised tent facilities on concrete slabs in extreme heat, allowed to stay no more than two days, given roughly US$100, and directed to bus terminals—often for journeys of days across territory controlled by organized crime, with no follow-up to confirm they reach home.  Third-country nationals, many of whom were told they would be released in Mexico, are instead taken to the Siglo XXI detention facility, without information about how long they will be held or whether they will be deported onward. Once released, they face a near-total barrier to rights because ICE routinely fails to return passports, birth certificates, phones, and other belongings. Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Central Americans who want to go home cannot document themselves; consulates are far off, and people without papers cannot legally leave Chiapas. Nicaraguans stripped of nationality are left stateless. Elderly deportees—some removed after decades in the United States—end up homeless and unable even to recall relatives' phone numbers. The episode also details family separation as generalized practice, including mothers whose children were taken at the moment of arrest and who cannot travel north to recover custody, and parents forced to leave U.S.-citizen children with neighbors. Both guests describe searing psychological harm, labor exploitation, rising costs in Tapachula, and an asylum system in which COMAR interviews take a year to eighteen months, humanitarian visas require amparo litigation, and a missed check-in signature can void a case entirely. "There is a deliberate intent, both from the U.S. government and the Mexican government, to wear people out and encourage them to return to their countries," Gómez contends. It is difficult to draw any other conclusion. Recommendations are directed largely at the Mexican government: negotiate and publish any agreement governing third-country deportations, press Washington to return Mexicans to their regions of origin and to return confiscated documents and belongings, expand regularization pathways, stop detaining arriving deportees, improve reception facilities, open México Te Abraza centers to civil society, and coordinate across federal, state, and municipal authorities. The conversation closes with reflections on staff care and the emotional toll of this work.   Update: Just a quick note—the processing times mentioned in this episode are based on operations prior to the last week of August 2026. The Mexican Agency for Refugee Support (COMAR) has begun to issue same-day refugee application certificates. This keeps asylum seekers out of legal limbo by giving them immediate access to temporary IDs and lawful status. On top of that, it speeds up their access to key rights like formal work, healthcare, and schooling.

  4. Jul 16

    Colombia's and Peru's Election Outcomes: Razor-Thin Margins and Populist Tensions

    This episode brings together two experts to discuss recent second-round presidential elections in Peru and Colombia: Jo-Marie Burt, a senior fellow at WOLA and professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government, and a leading expert on Peru; and Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, WOLA's Director for the Andes, who maintains close contact with Colombian civil society. Both elections produced razor-thin margins, and both delivered victories to right-wing, populist candidates promising crackdowns on crime and a hard line against their political adversaries. In Peru, Keiko Fujimori won the presidency on her fourth attempt, while in Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella narrowly defeated left-leaning Iván Cepeda. Burt describes Fujimori's ascent as the culmination of years spent consolidating control over Peru's key institutions, like Congress, the constitutional tribunal, and the attorney general's office. She characterizes Fujimori as "singularly motivated, singularly ambitious, and singularly ruthless," shaped by her upbringing under her father Alberto Fujimori's authoritarian government. Burt warns that Fujimori is driven by a desire for revenge against those who helped prosecute and imprison her father, including journalists like Gustavo Gorriti, human rights lawyers, prosecutors, and judges. She details a legislative landscape already tilted toward impunity—amnesty laws shielding police and military, and restrictions crippling NGOs' ability to represent victims. Burt argues Peru has drifted toward a hybrid or even authoritarian regime. Sánchez-Garzoli paints a tense picture in Colombia, where outgoing President Gustavo Petro has refused to recognize the election results, alleging fraud and foreign interference despite institutional findings to the contrary. She notes intervention by the Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers. With the transition suspended and Petro calling supporters into the streets, while armed groups reposition, Sánchez-Garzoli warns of a real risk of political violence. She outlines de la Espriella's "iron fist" agenda: mega-prisons modeled on El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, reviving the controversial ESMAD riot police, and a "special urban defense bloc" that she fears could blur the line between state security and paramilitary activity, echoing Colombia's dark history. "Colombia can't return to the belief that problems can be solved through bullets," she says, paraphrasing Colombian human rights defender Leyner Palacios. The conversation explores the deeper social fractures driving these results: in Peru, divisions of race, class, and region between Lima and the neglected Andean provinces, alongside a "frozen" collective memory of the 1980s-90s internal armed conflict manipulated to smear the left as communist. In Colombia, urban-rural divides also shape perceptions of security and the peace process. Both guests anticipate closer alignment with Washington, though they distinguish ideological affinity from generous funding. Sánchez-Garzoli expects a "total reset" in U.S.-Colombia relations, possible joint operations, and migration cooperation including reports of a plan to facilitate deportations of Colombian asylum seekers. Burt notes U.S. concern over China's growing influence in Peru. Despite the grim outlook, both find grains of hope: in Peru, a tentative opposition alliance and a still-vibrant regional civil society; in Colombia, strong institutions, a diverse Congress, and a resilient press and civil society. The episode closes with a reflection that both presidents-elect, lacking strong bases, face the "Milei challenge" of governing without a coalition.

  5. Jul 8

    "We saw the Venezuelan state in its bare bones": the June 24 earthquake's aftermath

    On June 24, 2026, two consecutive earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude—the strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a century—devastated the country's northern coast, including the city of La Guaira and parts of Caracas. This episode features Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, WOLA's president, who was visiting Venezuela when the earthquakes hit and subsequently traveled to the hardest-hit zone, and Laura Dib, director of WOLA's Venezuela program, who has closely tracked the humanitarian response and U.S. policy dimensions. Carolina offers a firsthand account of the disaster and its aftermath. She describes the profound isolation caused by the Venezuelan government's pre-existing censorship regime—with platforms like X, CNN, and independent media blocked—which left citizens unable to access life-saving information during the critical first hours. Traveling to La Guaira, she found scenes closer to "a war zone" than a natural disaster, with collapsed buildings, others on the brink of collapse, precarious improvised shelters, and families living in the open air without adequate water, food, or assistance. Above all, she encountered a pervasive sense of abandonment. A central theme of the conversation is the "hollowness" of the Venezuelan state, laid bare by years of corruption, authoritarian misrule, and the emigration of some eight million people—including doctors, nurses, and engineers. Carolina notes that the armed forces, which acted as first responders during earlier tragedies, now function largely as a repressive and surveilling force, controlling access to disaster sites rather than aiding survivors. Laura provides data and policy analysis. The government, through National Assembly head Jorge Rodríguez—brother of de facto ruler Delcy Rodríguez—reports roughly 3,500 deaths and 16,000 injured, though the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the toll could range between 10,000 and 100,000. The UN estimates direct infrastructure damage at $37 billion. Laura situates the disaster within a longstanding humanitarian emergency and explains how the 2025 dismantling of USAID reduced disaster-response capacity, even as the U.S. pledged $300 million, a figure dwarfed by the $1.15 billion pledged after Haiti's 2010 earthquake. Laura and Carolina discuss the uncomfortable U.S. alignment with the unelected Delcy Rodríguez government, whose constitutional legitimacy has expired without new elections. They argue the disaster has badly set back the Trump administration's three-stage transition plan and revealed the state's incapacity to protect its citizens. Notably, Venezuelan social movements are now directing their demands at the U.S. government rather than their own institutions. Venezuela's beleagured civil society is a bright spot. Despite an anti-NGO law criminalizing foreign funding, organizations like Caritas and Fe y Alegría, alongside diaspora networks and ordinary citizens, have organized shelters, distributed supplies, and built databases to track the missing and separated children. A reputable site for donations to disaster relief is Donar Seguro. WOLA recommends that aid flow through transparent, accountable channels; that the anti-NGO law be repealed; that social media and VPN blockades be lifted; that the U.S.-run oil-revenue fund be used transparently for Venezuelans' benefit; and that the Trump administration reinstate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and halt deportations of Venezuelans in the United States. A deportation flight of 146 people arrived on the day of the earthquake, most of whom died in a hotel—a site the political police blocked Carolina from visiting. Venezuela's reconstruction will require a long-term commitment and, crucially, the rebuilding of public trust. This can only happen in the context of a genuine democratic transition.

  6. Jun 30

    Saving asylum and retaking the narrative: defending LGBTQ+ migrants in Tijuana

    In this episode of the WOLA Podcast, recorded on June 25, 2026, host Adam Isacson speaks with Elijah Maurus, an attorney based in Tijuana who has worked principally with LGBTQ+ asylum seekers since 2018. Maurus relocated to Tijuana during the major migrant caravan that arrived in late 2018, initially working with Al Otro Lado before launching a pilot legal project dedicated to LGBT asylum seekers in October 2019. The conversation moves roughly south to north, tracing the dangers LGBTQ+ migrants face crossing Mexico to reach safety in the United States. Maurus describes how Tijuana—which requires a difficult "left turn" across territory controlled by multiple cartels—nonetheless became one of the few border cities with dedicated LGBT shelters, though these remain scarce and small. He explains how vulnerabilities multiply "exponentially" for transgender and gender-nonconforming migrants at every checkpoint, river crossing, and cartel-controlled bus stop. He recounts witnessing the human toll of policies like "metering," the Migrant Protection Protocols (Remain in Mexico), Title 42, and the cancellation of CBP One appointments. The second half of the discussion turns to the rapid deterioration of asylum protections in the United States since President Trump's return to office in January 2025. Maurus details both the headline-grabbing measures—the suspension of asylum at the border, Supreme Court decisions issued that very morning upholding metering and allowing the removal of Temporary Protected Status from roughly 350,000 Haitians—and the quieter "death by a thousand cuts." These include courthouse arrests after government attorneys move to dismiss cases, the use of "pretermission" to reject incomplete asylum applications, Asylum Cooperative Agreements that ship asylum seekers to third countries like Guatemala or Ecuador, and the gutting of the immigration court system through mass firings of judges and their replacement with "deportation judges." Maurus devotes significant attention to immigration detention, which he calls a political and financial choice rather than a punishment. With $45 billion newly allocated and a goal of detaining 100,000 people per day in largely private facilities, he describes the elimination of the limited protections for transgender detainees that had existed under prior administrations—including the end of gender-affirming care, the housing of trans women among men, prolonged solitary confinement for trans men, and the disappearance of oversight mechanisms. He also raises the alarming practice of sending people with withholding-of-removal protections to dangerous third countries such as Eswatini or Uganda, where LGBTQ+ people face legal persecution. Despite the bleak picture, Maurus closes on a note of resolve. He argues that asylum remains salvageable but that advocates must stop ceding the narrative and avoid treating individual horror stories as isolated anecdotes rather than the products of deliberate policy. He emphasizes the importance of local-level storytelling, documentation for future accountability, and the simple insistence that turning people away violates the lessons learned after refugees were turned back to die during World War II.

  7. Jun 22

    Derechos LGBTIQ+ en el exilio: una conversación con Braulio Abarca

    En este episodio de la serie del mes del Orgullo de Latin America Today, Maureen Meyer, vicepresidenta de Programas de WOLA, conversa con Braulio Abarca, activista LGBTIQ+ nicaragüense exiliado, defensor de derechos humanos, y cofundador del Colectivo Nicaragua Nunca Más, sobre lo que significa defender los derechos de las comunidades LGBTIQ+ desde el exilio. Desde 2018, más de 900 mil nicaragüenses se han visto forzados al exilio. Esa cifra incluye a defensores de derechos humanos como Braulio, quien tuvo que salir del país tras la crisis sociopolítica desatada bajo la dictadura de Daniel Ortega y Rosario Murillo — y que, años después, tuvo que exiliarse por segunda vez, esta vez de Costa Rica a España, perseguido por la represión transnacional del régimen. Braulio ofrece un relato franco de la precariedad legal, las redes de apoyo limitadas, y la tensión constante entre sobrevivir y seguir militando en un país que no es el propio. También habla de lo que persiste dentro de Nicaragua: una "triple discriminación" que enfrentan las personas LGBTIQ+ por su identidad, por oponerse a la dictadura, y por otras identidades que se entrecruzan, incluyendo casos documentados de transfeminicidio y crímenes de odio que con frecuencia quedan impunes. La conversación cierra con una reflexión sobre lo que lo mantiene en la lucha —la verdad, la justicia y la esperanza del retorno— y con un llamado claro a la comunidad internacional: protección temporal para las personas desplazadas, presión sostenida sobre la dictadura, y acompañamiento a largo plazo para la futura reconstrucción democrática de Nicaragua. Este episodio es parte de la serie del mes del Orgullo de WOLA, que destaca los derechos LGBTQ+, la democracia y el espacio cívico en las Américas.

  8. Jun 10

    Estructuras antiderechos: la lucha trans en Colombia y el mundo — con Renata Jank Vivas Antonelli

    En este episodio especial del mes del Orgullo de Latin America Today, la presidenta de WOLA, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, conversa con Renata Jank Vivas Antonelli, activista y defensora de derechos humanos de la Fundación Santamaría, una organización con sede en Cali, Colombia, que lleva dos décadas documentando la violencia, defendiendo derechos y construyendo poder para las comunidades trans. En Colombia, ser una mujer trans todavía significa enfrentarse a una esperanza de vida de entre 27 y 33 años. Esa cifra sola — décadas por debajo del promedio nacional — habla de la brecha entre los derechos que existen en papel y la realidad que viven las comunidades trans cada día. Renata ofrece una evaluación franca de las condiciones que enfrentan las mujeres trans en Colombia, un país que a menudo se presenta como modelo regional de gobernanza progresista, pero donde persiste la violencia estructural e institucional contra las personas trans. Habla del concepto de estructuras antiderechos: redes coordinadas de poder económico, político y religioso que no solo están frenando los avances recientes, sino que se organizan activamente a nivel transnacional para revertir décadas de conquistas logradas con mucho esfuerzo. La conversación también explora cómo se ve la resistencia en el terreno — desde la casa trans de Santamaría en el suroccidente colombiano, hasta las mesas de coordinación a nivel nacional, pasando por el impulso a una ley integral de derechos trans que lleva el nombre de Sara Millerey, una mujer trans cuyo transfemicidio conmocionó a Colombia y al mundo. Y cierra con una visión: un futuro en el que ser quienes son no les cueste la vida a las personas trans. Este episodio es parte de la serie del mes del Orgullo de WOLA, que destaca los derechos LGBTQ+, la democracia y el espacio cívico en las Américas.

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

Information

  • Creator
    Washington Office on Latin America
  • Years Active
    2011 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Creative Commons license -- reproduction allowed without permission, as long as full credit given to Washington Office on Latin America
  • Show Website
    Latin America Today

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