Wola Podcast

Toby Muse spent almost two decades as a foreign correspondent in Colombia, where he traveled to dozens of places affected by the war on drugs and recorded innumerable conversation with everyday people. His book, Kilo: Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels - From the Jungles to the Streets, comes out on March 24, 2020.

Senior Fellow Coletta Youngers and Senior Program Associate Teresa García Castro talk about their new report, published with three other organizations, on women coca growers in Bolivia and Colombia. That report is at http://bit.ly/2WlA6vq.

Mario Moreno, WOLA's VP for Communications, interviews Director for Defense Oversight Adam Isacson and Director for Mexico and Migrant Rights Maureen Meyer on current challenges the region faces from ineffective migration policies and protection of migrant rights and what might be done to change the situation. 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 most pressing crises in our hemisphere. Sign up for updates here: https://www.wola.org/beyondthewall/signup-beyond-wall/ Music by Blue Dot Sessions and ericb399. Episode Transcript Intro clips (00:01): The countries of the Northern triangle -- Honduras

Adriana Beltran and Austin Robles of WOLA’s Citizen Security Program discuss the beleaguered fight against corruption in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Their Central America Monitor tracks progress on 8 indicators and closely watches over U.S. aid. If you would like to keep up to date on all of the work we are doing in Central America, sign up for our newsletter on wola.org. 

Our team recorded a roundtable discussion at WOLA the morning after this year's State of the Union, particularly focused on what the president's words and actions mean for human rights and U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.  Adam Isacson (Director for Defense Oversight), Maureen Meyer (Director for Mexico and Migrant Rights), Geoff Ramsey (Director for Venezuela) and Marguerite Rose Jiménez (Director for Cuba) discuss the surprising appearance of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, the president's comments on Cuba, and the toxic business as usual attitude towards migrants and immigration policy.  Read our livetweets from last night on our Twitter and sign up for our newsletter on wola.org. 

The U.S. policy of "Remain in Mexico", building the border wall, and the overall criminalization of Central American migrants and asylum seekers has produced a number human rights, economic, security, and administrative consequences on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. During the week of January 20th, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) staff and partners visited El Paso and Ciudad Juarez in order to observe and document the state of migration and migrant rights at the border. This interview was conducted with Adam Isacson, WOLA Director for Defense Oversight, in the early morning hours after a number of visits with U.S. Border Patrol, migrant shelters, and civil society partners who work on behalf of migrant rights. To learn more about the latest developments on the border and migrant rights, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our email newsletter.

For Venezuela, 2020 began with new political turmoil, as the Maduro government maneuvered to take over the presidency of the opposition-majority National Assembly. Will this backfire for Maduro? Can the opposition maintain unity? Are negotiations toward new elections feasible? Is the U.S. government sending a coherent message? What about other international actors, like the EU and Russia? Geoff Ramsey, WOLA's director for Venezuela, explains this moment and potential solutions.

WOLA Director for the Andes Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli explains Colombia's four-week-old wave of social protests, peace accord implementation, and what WOLA staff saw and heard during October field research in the conflictive Arauca and Chocó regions.

Though the Trump administration is purportedly pro-business, its Cuba policy has hit the island's nascent private sector very hard. Oniel Díaz of AUGE, a Cuban business development team, discusses the damage done and how entrepreneurs are adapting.

Tensions are very high in Bolivia in the days since President Evo Morales resigned, following a fraud-marred election. From Cochabamba, Kathryn Ledebur of the Andean Information Network explains the situation and the alarming turn that events are taking.

WOLA's Adam Isacson and Maureen Meyer covered nearly 400 miles of the Mexico-Guatemala border during a mid-August visit. Amid a U.S.-inspired crackdown on irregular migration, they saw National Guardsmen, checkpoints and patrols, a nearly collapsed refugee reception system, and thousands of asylum seekers from Cuba, Haiti, and Africa stranded after crossing half the planet. The crackdown, which began in June, has reduced migration but endangered people fleeing violence, while benefiting smugglers and their corrupt accomplices. By assenting to Trump administration pressure, Meyer and Isacson explain, Mexico has assumed the political costs, but has not yet dealt with the humanitarian and social consequences on vivid display in the southern border zone.

WOLA·s president, Matt Clausen, shares what he saw and heard during a recent delegation to the U.S.-Mexico border at El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Family migration increased 1,500% there this year, and the "Remain in Mexico" program has been implemented mercilessly amid sharply rising violent crime rates in Juárez. Matt found a strong community, including many tireless volunteers, advocates, journalists, and shelter personnel, dealing with a dire situation. He shares his impressions and analysis.

Guatemala has seen a historic democratic opening get abruptly shut down, amid official U.S. silence. Martín Rodríguez Pellecer, director of the Guatemalan online news outlet Nómada, talks about how corrupt elites stifled a "justice revolution," and the consequences of the August presidential election runoff.

Julio Martínez of Nicaragua's Articulación de Movimientos Sociales talks about the effort to stop human rights abuses and restore democracy in Nicaragua, the importance of international pressure, and the spread of authoritarianism in Central America.

Facing arrest in a corruption scandal, Peru's two-time president Alan García shot himself to death on April 17. WOLA Senior Fellows Jo-Marie Burt and Coletta Youngers discuss the personal journey of a politician who loomed over Peruvian political life for the past 35 years Garcia started out as a leftist, ruled amid some serious human rights crimes and economic crises, and later became a seemingly untouchable power broker—until the Odebrecht corruption investigation. Burt and Youngers explain Peru's current judicial drive against corruption, reasons for hope, and the difficulty of predicting anything in Peruvian politics.

The Trump administration has gone full hard-line against Cuba, announcing severe new measures—including a once-unthinkable authority to allow owners of seized Cuban property to sue in U.S. courts.   WOLA's vice president for programs, Geoff Thale, explains why these new punishments and restrictions won't bring "regime change" to the island, and instead how they will hurt its struggling private sector. He and host Adam Isacson look at the politics underlying these steps, and whether they're likely to be long-lasting.

Ana Arjona of Colombia·s Universidad de Los Andes and Northwestern University presents an intricate theory of how armed conflicts work at the local level, as presented in her 2016 book Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War. Arjona finds that much of the time, it’s not all anarchy and chaos: there can be some sort of order in the midst of civil war. And that order usually takes one of two forms, and the civilian population has a lot to do with what form it takes.

Only a few years ago, Guatemala was making historic gains in its fight against corruption and human rights abuse. Since then, the country has suffered a severe backlash. A “pact of the corrupt” in Guatemala’s ruling elite keeps pushing legislation that would terminate trials and investigations for war crimes and corruption. A U.S.-backed UN prosecutorial body, the CICIG, has been weakened. High-court rulings are being ignored. Things have gotten so bad that the U.S. government has suspended military aid. And today, Guatemala has incredibly surpassed Mexico as the number-one nationality of undocumented migrants being apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. As a new presidential election looms, Adam talks about the situation with WOLA Senior Fellow Jo-Marie Burt, just returned from one of her frequent visits to the country. See more of Jo-Marie’s recent analysis at: The Open Society Justice Initiative’s International Justice Monitor. “Why War Criminals Could Walk Free in Guatemala,” at Americas Quarterly on Ma

El Salvador is inaugurating a new president amid a severe security crisis. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans are abandoning their homes each year—most displacing internally and many moving to other countries—due to gang violence. Despite incipient recent reform efforts, government institutions have been either too absent or too corrupt to protect people. This podcast features Cristian Schlick, a lawyer with the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University ([[IDHUCA]]) in El Salvador. He will be speaking at [[an event on “Violence and Hardline Citizen Security in El Salvador,”]] hosted by WOLA and the Due Process of Law Foundation, this Thursday March 14 at 4:30PM.

U.S. and Mexican border communities are contending with a surge of asylum-seeking children and parents, arriving by the thousands each day. The Trump administration portrays it as a “national emergency” and is sending troops, turning asylum-seekers away, and circumventing Congress to build walls. Adam Isacson (WOLA’s Director for Defense Oversight) and Maureen Meyer (WOLA’s Director for Mexico and Migration) discuss why the crisis is happening, and the Trump administration’s cruel efforts to “deter” migrants. Adam talks about what he’s seen over two weeks in San Diego and Tijuana so far this year. Then both outline a vision of what the process for asylum-seekers would look like if the U.S. and Mexican governments adjusted from a “security emergency” to a “humanitarian crisis” response. Resources cited in the podcast include: WOLA’s graphical overview of the February migrant data, which U.S. Customs and Border Protection released on March 5. A December 2018 “snapshot” report, and February 2019 update, deta