Wola Podcast

Since "Remain in Mexico" began, Taylor Levy, an El Paso-based immigration attorney, has done much of her work across the border in Ciudad Juárez. Her account of the obstacles asylum-seekers face—both before and during the COVID-19 crisis—is maddening.

A conversation about Colombia, U.S. policy, human rights advocacy, and social struggle with anthropologist Winifred Tate of Colby College, whose more than 30 years of work as both a scholar and an advocate give her a very unique perspective.

Five WOLA program directors talk about how COVID-19—and governments' response—are hitting Latin America. We discuss dangers to democracy, rights, economics, and marginalized people, focusing especially on Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia, and Brazil.

Abbey Steele of the University of Amsterdam is an expert on the dynamics of conflict and violence. She has worked extensively in Colombia, and in 2017 published a book about displacement and "political cleansing" based on fieldwork in the Urabá region.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, walks us through how the asylum system is meant to work. He then explains how the Trump administration has steadily decimated the right to seek protection at the US-Mexico border.

The Center for Civilians in Conflict works to minimize harm done to civilians in armed conflicts. What should this work look like in Latin America, where traditionally defined armed conflicts are rare? Annie Shiel and Mike Lettieri of CIVIC explain.

WOLA's director for the Andes, Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, explains what Colombia·s response to the coronavirus means for communities affected by its conflict. As a new WOLA urgent action documents, the situation for social leaders remains very serious.

Three experts with long experience in defense and security collaborated on a new paper for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation that takes stock of geopolitics, the crisis of democracy, and emerging threats and trends across the hemisphere.

In his latest book, "In Their Own Best Interest," Lars Schoultz of UNC Chapel Hill takes to task U.S. policymakers and advocates who seek to "uplift" Latin American nations, finding them to be part of a very long tradition. This makes for a lively discussion.

This month, Mario Moreno, WOLA's VP for Communications. interviewed Joanna Williams, the Director of Education and Advocacy at the Kino Border Initiative. The Kino Border Initiative (KBI) is a binational organization in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. KBI works in the area of migration, providing direct humanitarian assistance and accompaniment with migrants. They discuss what is happening at the border, how shelters and service providers are adapting, and the repercussions of the virus and government actions on migrants and asylum seekers. Beyond the Wall is a bilingual segment of the Latin America Today podcast, and a part of the Washington Office on Latin America's Beyond the Wall advocacy campaign. In the series, we will follow the thread of migration in the Americas beyond traditional barriers like language and borders. We will explore root causes of migration, the state of migrant rights in multiple countries and multiple borders and what we can do to protect human rights in one of the mos

When you think about environmental threats to the Amazon, you may envision illegal logging, cattle ranchers, and fires. But the western Amazon has oil, too, and companies are moving in. We talk about this with Andrew Miller and Moira Birss from Amazon Watch, which published a report in March.

Since 1997 John Otis has been reporting from Colombia, covering the Andes, currently for NPR and the Wall Street Journal. He talks here about what has changed during his tenure, the peace process, and some places and people who've left strong impressions.

After 20-plus years of movement away from military rule and toward civilian democracy, Latin America's militaries are again playing larger, more political roles—a trend that COVID-19 is exacerbating. Here to talk about this is Greg Weeks of UNC-Charlotte.

Audio of a March 27 WOLA web discussion of events in Bolivia since the October 2019 general elections and the onset of COVID-19, with analyst Linda Farthing, Robert Albro of American University, and John Walsh, WOLA's director for drug policy and the Andes.

Daniella Burgi-Palomino, co-director of the Latin America Working Group, explains the devastating blows that the Trump administration has dealt to the right to seek asylum at the US-Mexico border—and how COVID-19 response has taken it to further extremes.

More than 60,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since 2006. The current government is taking some initial steps to address the crisis. Mariano Machain of SERAPAZ Mexico and Lucy Díaz of the Colectivo Solecito in Veracruz talk with WOLA's Mexico staff.

Savitri Arvey of the University of California at San Diego's U.S.-Mexico Center has co-written a series of reports documenting U.S. authorities' practice of "metering" asylum seekers along the Mexico border, keeping them in Mexican border towns for weeks or months at a time. With the current COVID-19 border closure, she says, U.S. authorities aren't letting anybody cross to ask for asylum.

Audio from a March 20, 2020 webinar about criminality and corruption in Venezuela, and the viability of a political exit to the crisis. With WOLA·s Geoff Ramsey and David Smilde, Jeremy McDermott of InsightCrime, and investigative journalist Bram Ebus.

Cynthia McClintock of George Washington University gives an overview of the current political moment in Peru, where an ongoing anti-corruption drive, spurred by the good work of investigative reporters and prosecutors, has been a relative good news story.

A conversation with Alex Fattal, whose 2018 book "Guerrilla Marketing," about the Colombian military's employment of ad campaigns to convince guerrillas to demobilize, explores the overlap between national security, capitalism, and "branding."