Lifestyle Migration from the United States and Canada to Ecuador

By Ernesto Castañeda

American University

Matthew Hayes looks in depth at a population that moves from one country to another without asking for permission. They expect to keep their cultures and worldviews intact and to be respected. They live together in the same part of town. They talk to each other in their native language and are slow to learn the local language. Some start new businesses. They increase economic activity and revitalize urban areas, sometimes pushing long-time residents out.

A street in Cuenca, Ecuador

We are talking about the many North Americans that have moved to an area of Cuenca, Ecuador, as described by Hayes in his original book: Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration under Late Capitalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2018). The author interviewed 108 American and Canadian retirees in Cuenca and a rural area also favored by them, along with Ecuadorians, while conducting ethnographic fieldwork during visits across seven years – all before the COVID-19 pandemic and the acceleration of this phenomenon. This book vividly describes an interesting case study and helps improve our overall understanding of human migration and how race affects immigrant reception.

These North American communities are not unique to Ecuador. For example, well over one million Americans live in Mexico today. Some estimate that, currently, more people move from the United States to Mexico than the other way around; this includes white retirees receiving social security benefits to finance their stay and many tourists overstaying their visas. Therefore, the discussions in this book are relevant for other expatriate communities. Many interviewees in Ecuador frame their migration as an adventure, a way to stay active and gain new experiences,  or a bold instance of individual freedom and self-expression.

Many of the participants in Hayes’s study call themselves gringos or expats; others call themselves ‘‘economic refugees’’ because they needed to move abroad to find a place with a lower cost of living. Yet others see themselves as ‘‘medical refugees’’ because they would be unable to afford healthcare in the United States, but can access health services and other subsidies and social programs in Ecuador (p. 109). Therefore, inequality, economic and geopolitical reasons motivate the decision to migrate, justifications that are similar to those offered by many people moving from the global South to the global North.

Nevertheless, these retirees not only benefit from a retirement income that goes further in their new location, but also from their whiteness. This arrangement is what allows them to frame precarity-led displacement as an adventure and a personal decision. Hayes finds that ‘‘North Americans think of their relocations mostly in terms of their own lives, even as they continue to be rooted in unequal global social relations’’ (p. 7). Problems created by neoliberal policies are met with individual neoliberal solutions that transfer the burden of some of those individuals aging into poverty in North America to the global South.

Another big difference between Latin American immigrants in the United States and U.S. emigrants in Ecuador is that the latter group can easily obtain immigration papers. One can get an Ecuadorian residency visa by demonstrating at least 800 dollars of continuous income, which can include Social Security payments. Indeed, most of Hayes’s respondents reported monthly incomes between $800 and $1,500. Foreigners can also get an investor visa if they deposit $25,000 in an Ecuadorian bank. Many others choose to overstay their tourist visa, and they rarely face consequences for this. Local officials are welcoming, offering integration courses and help with relocation.

By receiving income from the global North and moving to a place with a lower cost of living in the global South, these retirees profit from ‘‘geoarbitrage.’’ Migration allows them not only to make ends meet but to be financially better off. Retirees have been doing this within the United States for decades, but as retirement incomes and inequality in the U.S. increase, even retirement communities in Florida or Arizona can be unaffordable to many. Thus, some people move to places in the global South. Colonial cities in Latin America such as San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Cusco, Peru, or Cuenca, Ecuador, offer the appeal of Mediterranean European-like cities but are much more affordable.

The book includes a fascinating discussion about who benefited from UNESCO’s designation of Cuenca as a World Heritage City. Hayes discusses the intermediaries that have popped up to lure North Americans into Cuenca and other areas, as they profit from it. They lure customers with neoliberal phrases such as ‘‘Half the Cost, Double the Freedom’’ or ‘‘Living a Six-Figure Life . . . on Much Less.’’ Interestingly, the relocation of North Americans leads to price increases in Cuenca and helps to propel the gentrification of certain downtown neighborhoods and areas in the idyllic countryside, resulting in the relocation of poorer Ecuadorians, often of indigenous origin. Hayes cites work calling these processes ‘‘transnational gentrification.’’

By moving to South America, working class retirees, burnt out professionals tired of their work schedules, recent widows, and new single mothers a few paychecks away from homelessness in the U.S., are suddenly closer to the top of the social hierarchy in Ecuador and are able to afford many comforts that they could not in the global North. They cannot pass as local white elites, though; they are identified everywhere and mostly benignly as gringos. Hayes shows how self-conscious long-time gringos are about how locals perceive their group, as their numbers increase, and why they themselves openly critique ‘‘obnoxious gringo’’ behavior (p. 93).

North Americans benefit from white privilege in Ecuador, but ‘‘the visibility of their somatic whiteness contrasts with its invisibility in North America’’ (p. 95). Furthermore, some interviewees felt that increased numbers of North Americans might change ‘‘gringoness from something unique and interesting into something humdrum and even somewhat of a hassle’’ (p. 105). One interviewee complained about being increasingly seen as a part of a group. This sense of the loss of individuality racialized their whiteness and deeply bothered those who were used to being in the majority and in the dominant racial group in North America. They became concerned about the behavior of other gringos in Cuenca because they felt it could affect them. Many respondents saw their new home in Cuenca as like America in the 1950s, partly implying nostalgia for a white-dominant America with a stronger social safety net and economic security.

One takeaway is that migration creates change in the short term, but overall and in the middle and long-term, it is good for migrants and locals (See Castañeda 2026); another is that short- and long-distance relocations cannot be understood outside the context of population growth, capitalism, global inequality, and power dynamics. Thus, the book is not only about expats but also about political economy and whiteness. It is a captivating read and a solid contribution to the growing body of academic work on migration, global inequality, and race.

References

Castañeda, Ernesto. 2026. “Immigration and Urban Vitality: How Newcomers Make

Cities Strong.” Washington, DC: Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the

Immigration Lab, American University.

Hayes, Matthew. 2018. Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration under Late Capitalism.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ernesto Castañeda is Professor and Director of the Immigration Lab and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University

Edited by Vincent Iannuzzi-Sucich

*This post continues an ongoing series, as part of CLALS’s Ecuador Initiative, examining the country’s economic, governance, security, and societal challenges, made possible with generous support from Dr. Maria Donoso Clark, CAS/PhD ’91.

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Why El Salvador is Turning to Soft Power

Sonja Wolf, Research Professor at the Panamerican University in Mexico City*

El Salvador’s elected autocrat claims to have ended gang violence. Soft power is central to Bukele’s efforts to legitimize his rule through these results. Yet the tactic invites greater scrutiny, revealing the state’s inability to tackle violence effectively.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, a former advertising executive, first rose to power in 2019 promising to root out corruption and eradicate gang violence. In 2024 he won a second term in office, despite a constitutional ban on immediate presidential re-election. During his time in power, Bukele has systematically dismantled the country’s democratic institutions. The ongoing state of emergency has made headlines around the world for both its spectacle of cruelty and its controversial nature as a security policy. Police have detained over 91,500 citizens, including more than 33,000 people without gang involvement, and prison abuses have led to at least 523 deaths in state custody. Nonetheless, the measure remains widely popular with Salvadorans who, for decades, were terrorized by gangs.

Bukele’s electoral autocracy hides behind a democratic façade to maintain legitimacy. To demonstrate effectiveness and maintain support, both domestically and abroad, the regime is building its soft power. According to the official narrative, the president is leading El Salvador’s transformation from the world’s murder capital into a safe and modern nation that is open to tourists and investors. To lend credence to this rhetoric, and to raise the brand visibility of Bukele and El Salvador, the country has been hosting major sports and cultural events. In recent years, it has held international surfing competitions, a Miss Universe pageant, and a five-show residency by Shakira. At the 2026 Venice Biennale, El Salvador debuts with its first-ever national pavilion. Adding to this soft power projection is the growing number of self-published hagiographies that extol Bukele’s leadership and the performance of his administration.

A recent example is The Bukele Method by Andrés Guzmán. Until recently, the Colombian lawyer and cybersecurity consultant served as El Salvador’s Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights and Press Freedom. In this role, Guzmán was tasked with countering external criticism of the country’s backsliding on democracy and the rule of law. His text is a compilation of half-truths that appear designed to whitewash the Bukele regime’s human rights record and bolster its legitimacy by touting its alleged security gains.

To take on the gangs, Guzmán asserts, the administration had to begin by stamping out the corruption that had permitted these groups to build their criminal empires. The author takes particular aim at the pacts that the traditional parties, ARENA and the FMLN, had brokered with the gangs to mobilize electoral support and reduce visible homicides. Rather than driving an institutional clean-up, Bukele’s lawmakers passed, in 2021, reforms that placed the justice system under the president’s control. Appointments of regime loyalists, mass firings of non-aligned state workers, and the dismantling of public sector unions concentrated power in the president’s hands. Investigations into government corruption and Bukele’s own gang pacts folded, while tighter transparency restrictions eroded independent oversight.

Guzmán justifies the state of emergency by pointing to its alleged results. In typical populist rhetoric, he paints the autocrat as a hero who made tough decisions, defied his enemies (the opposition, the gangs, international watchdogs), and attained his goals: the dismantling of the gangs and a historic decline in homicides. Or, as the author puts it, mothers can finally sleep without the fear of a gang member knocking on the door at night. This story hides the fact that the “security miracle” relied on Bukele’s gang deals, whose breakdown triggered the state of emergency, as well as statistical manipulation — the homicide count excludes killings by police, murders in prisons, and bodies found in unmarked graves.

Guzmán claims to have rigorously reviewed all human rights complaints and found them to have been exaggerated. But this contradicts independent reports showing that the state has hidden thousands of allegations and rejected thousands of habeas corpus petitions. A recent report by an international group of experts concluded that the human rights violations may in fact amount to crimes against humanity. Guzmán admits that mistakes were made, referring to arbitrary detentions. However, only some 8,000 citizens have been liberated, under conditions, and it was their testimonies that shed light on the prison abuses. The remains of dead detainees speak for themselves.

In defending the state of emergency, the author poses a false dilemma: the government could pursue this measure, or do nothing in the face of an existential threat. But this either-or fallacy ignores that police intelligence about gang members had long existed. Bukele chose to act on this information only once he had institutional control and no longer needed the gangs.

Following Bukele, who defines democracy as simply the will of the people, Guzmán contends that the president’s resounding re-election victory in 2024 validated his security strategy. In this deceptively simple logic, international watchdogs have no right to interfere in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation. What matters is that Salvadorans endorsed the state of emergency by granting their leader a democratic mandate. But depicting “the people” as a homogenous group, unified in their support for Bukele, erases the voices of those who try to stand up to his abuse of power.

Ultimately, the state of emergency is a simulation of legality that tries to hide the state’s incapacity to deal with violence. Laws passed by Bukele’s Legislative Assembly have reshaped a justice system that lacked the capacity to successfully prosecute offenders. In mass trials involving hundreds of defendants in a single proceeding, citizens with no prior gang involvement sit alongside real gang members. In the absence of any meaningful defense, prosecutors present flimsy evidence and unreliable witnesses to achieve convictions of entire criminal structures. Soft power efforts such as Guzmán’s publication promise the kind of performance-based legitimacy that the Salvadoran regime craves. The “Bukele method” should indeed be examined — not because it constitutes a blueprint for security, but because closer scrutiny reveals it to be, like Bukele himself, a marketing product.

*Sonja Wolf is the author of Mano Dura: The Politics of Gang Control in El Salvador (University of Texas Press, 2017).

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China, Taiwan and Paraguay

By Esteban Caballero

Political Scientist, Independent Investigator for FLACSO-Paraguay, and Columnist for Ultima Hora

Secretary Marco Rubio meets with Paraguayan President Santiago Peña at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., January 21, 2025. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett) Source: Wikimedia Commons

Xi Jinping’s warning that “the Taiwan issue is the most important matter in relations between China and the United States” will go down in history. However, for the government of Paraguay, Donald Trump’s subsequent statements on the subject could prove even more unsettling. Speaking in a measured tone, the U.S. President acknowledged that Xi “holds a very firm opinion and does not want to see an independence movement,” adding that he, too, “does not intend for anyone to declare independence.” Furthermore, he left it unclear whether or not he would authorize a new arms sale to Taiwan.

Even if these amounted to only a few of the many assertions made by the heads of state of China and the United States at their recent summit, Santiago Peña and his Foreign Minister, Rubén Ramírez Lezcano, likely paused for a moment to reconsider Paraguay’s stance regarding Taiwan. Should they, perhaps, review their close relationship with Taipei in light of a potential shift in global geopolitics? Paraguay belongs to the small group of 12 countries that still recognize Taiwan; alongside Guatemala, it is one of only two Spanish-speaking nations to do so.

The doubts to which we allude do not concern the progress of cooperative agreements and trade relations with Taiwan. Both are advancing favorably. These are matters involving technical cooperation, market access, and infrastructure financing. During Santiago Peña’s administration, this kind of cooperation with Taiwan has been significantly bolstered—a progression that culminated during the President’s recent visit to the island in May 2026. Returning from that visit, he announced an agreement for a massive AI data center project, although its feasibility remains to be assessed.

What may well have generated uncertainty within the Paraguayan government is Trump’s apparent complacency in the face of warnings from Xi Jinping. Such an attitude on the part of the U.S. President would signal a departure from the tougher stance of American foreign policy hawks and would compel the Paraguayan Foreign Ministry to rethink its strategy—particularly the approach of presenting ties with Taiwan as proof of its firm rejection of Chinese influence in Latin America in order to ingratiate itself with the Trump administration. Nothing is set in stone, but this possibility is increasingly making its way into their deliberations.

Management of relations with Taiwan forms part of the Santiago Peña administration’s—in our view, excessive—effort to draw closer to the Trump administration and align itself with the State Department, headed by Marco Rubio. In this vein, Paraguay has backed U.S. military intervention in Venezuela and Iran, declared itself an unwavering ally of Israel, and supported the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Furthermore, alongside Argentina, it is the only other Latin American country to serve on Trump’s Board of Peace. Added to this is its enthusiastic participation in the Shield of the Americas summit, held in Miami in March of this year.

Demonstrations of alignment have also been made through measures of cooperation and collaboration regarding migration, security, and the fight against drug trafficking. The Peña administration has cooperated with the United States in the realm of migration, including a willingness to function as a “third country”[1] to process asylum applications for the U.S. It also endorsed a memorandum to facilitate the return of migrants denied admission to U.S. territory back to their countries of origin “with the assistance”[2] of Paraguay.

In the realm of security, Peña announced the designation of the Cartel de los Soles, the Comando Vermelho, and the Primeiro Comando da Capital as terrorist organizations, in line with the U.S. narrative regarding transnational organized crime and its links to state networks in the region. Concurrently, Paraguay signed a Status of Forces Agreement with the U.S.—a legal instrument that governs the status of foreign troops, including their entry, criminal jurisdiction, taxation, immunities, and operational protocols. In practice, such agreements typically facilitate troop deployments, military exercises, and defense cooperation; however, they can also spark domestic debate concerning the scope of immunity of foreign personnel, the extent of the host state’s oversight, and the tensions they may trigger with neighboring nations, such as Brazil.

This alignment has led to Paraguay being regarded as a reliable ally of the United States, and the measures adopted are presented as a reaffirmation of the historic alliance between the two countries. Today, that relationship is expressed within a new framework of cooperation, in which “security” and “counterterrorism” occupy a central place.

Nevertheless, the concrete benefits for Paraguay have not been particularly visible. It appears that Paraguay is conceding far more than the United States is yielding. Consequently, the prevailing opinion in various circles is that this has been too high a price to pay for the lifting of sanctions—imposed by the Treasury Department during the Biden administration—against the companies owned by Horacio Cartes, the former president and current chairman of the ruling party.

This is also the reason why concerns are arising regarding the scope of current foreign policy. If one observes the steps that have been taken, a pattern seems to emerge: a short-term outlook and the absence of a cohesive state policy. Santiago Peña has committed himself to a U.S. administration that may not endure in its current form following the November 2026 midterm elections. President Trump’s popularity is on the decline; the Democrats are gaining ground. The decision to align with the U.S., even in violation of international law, overlooks the fact that small states must uphold the protections afforded by such law regarding the defense of their sovereignty. Forging such a close alliance with Israel, and the most radical elements of the Netanyahu government, has isolated Paraguay from the international community. Finally, coupling all of this with an adoption of far-right rhetoric may yield short-term gains; however, once that political cycle concludes—as was the case in Hungary—the ensuing disappointment could be profound.

[1] See Signing of a Safe Third Country Agreement with Paraguay – United States Department of State

[2] See: https://www.mre.gov.py/paraguay-y-ee-uu-amplian-cooperacion-migratoria/

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Muddling Through: Assessing Prospects for Brazil-U.S. Relations in an Election Year

By Felipe Rezende, Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar in Residence at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (AU-CLALS), from the University of Brasília (UnB), Brazil. 

Meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil’s President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva in Kuala Lumpur October 26, 2025. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Notwithstanding the “excellent chemistry” cited by Donald Trump in reference to a brief September 2025 meeting with Lula da Silva on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly, in recent times the bilateral Brazil–U.S. relationship has yet to produce the quantity and quality of results one might have expected. Whether a result of different national and international commitments, or differing approaches to foreign policy, at least for the short term the interplay of a variety of factors has cooled the potential for advances in the relationship between the two countries. Reviewing recent developments in the bilateral relationship between Brazil and the U.S., here I consider how the current pattern of this relationship, together with upcoming electoral considerations, are likely to determine its limits and possibilities for the near future.

Sources of Direct and Indirect Friction between the White House and the Palácio do Planalto

Trump’s preferred trade policy in his second term, based on the unilateral imposition of tariffs upon numerous countries, with the declared objective of establishing an alleged fair balance (“Leveling the Playing Field”) in U.S. trade relations with the world, has lately been a primary factor of direct friction in the bilateral relationship with Brazil.

The historical U.S. surplus in trade with Brazil did not prevent the application in June 2025 of a 50 percent tariff on imports of Brazilian products. This imposition greatly hindered the flow of Brazilian agricultural production to North America, generating an oversupply in the South American country and inflation in the U.S. for such consumer products as beef, coffee, soybeans, orange juice, and other fruits.

In November 2025, pressured by domestic demand in the U.S., and interested in advancing strategic talks with Brasília, Washington withdrew the tariff weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court declared such practices illegal. At that time, the Palácio do Planalto appeared to have avoided the domestic political consequences of the tariff standoff by successful mobilization a narrative appealing to Brazil’s sovereignty and to the impropriety of such practices.

Since the inauguration of Trump’s second term, the influence campaign by groups linked to former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro – sentenced to 27 years in Brazil for an attempted coup d’état and violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law – has also been decisive in dampening official bilateral activity between Brazil and the U.S.

This included months of lobbying with the MAGA movement and gatekeepers of the Trump administration by his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, who endorsed the decision to impose additional tariffs, and suggested that justices of Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) be sanctioned, which was understood as an attempt to constrain the Court’s role in judging the case concerning the attempted coup d’état on January 8th, 2023.

In response the U.S. revoked valid visas for entry into the U.S. for almost all ministers of the Court, including Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who was rapporteur in the trial of the January 2023 rioters. The U.S. also applied financial sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, effective between July and December 2025, when they were withdrawn.

Under Lula Brazil’s foreign policy, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has continued to follow certain traditional patterns of Brazilian diplomacy, grounded in multilateralism, pacifism, and the reform – rather than rejection – of already existing institutions, organizations, and regimes of global governance, beginning with the United Nations — something that does not necessarily converge with U.S. foreign policy practices under Trump.

This was reflected, for example, in the Lula administration’s reluctance to accept an invitation to join the so-called “Board of Peace” in January 2026, created by Trump as a better alternative – in his view – to managing international conflicts. Lula publicly commented that Trump’s initiative appears to overlap with the competences ascribed to the UN, an important institution for the pursuit of Brazil’s interests as a middle power.

Lula’s skepticism toward Trump’s Board of Peace, with Trump as its self-appointed permanent Chairman and its likely promotion of U.S. foreign-policy interests, was compounded by the White House’s proposed Gaza peace plan even while the U.S. actively initiated global conflicts, especially its most recent incursion into Iran — a fact that delayed the meeting between Lula and Trump.

The May 7th Meeting and What Comes Next: Between Appearances and Substance 

The approximately three hour meeting between Lula and Trump revolved around three principal issues. First was the question of bilateral trade, where disagreement remained as to the use of tariffs and U.S. allegations of unfair trade, refuted by the Brazilian side. Brazil, instead, sought unsuccessfully to convince the Trump administration of a U.S. trade surplus of USD 400 billion over the last 15 years.

With the possibility looming of the reapplication of a 30 percent tariff on Brazilian products, considered within the scope of ongoing investigations undertaken by the U.S. Trade Representative, Brazil achieved at least temporary relief, with the institution of a 30-day delay for the counterparts to reach a common understanding regarding the terms-of-trade scenario.

Second was a potential partnership for the exploitation of critical rare earth minerals in the South American country, which holds the world’s second-largest reserve. The condition set by Brazil is U.S. investment in local processing of the minerals and integration into the production chain. The legal framework to regulate this is on the verge of approval in the Brazilian Congress, thus enabling the U.S. and other countries to invest in this sector in Brazil.

What seems not to have been mentioned at this meeting is Brazil’s government-backed payment method, called PIX, often criticized by U.S. Vice President JD Vance. The White House is bothered that this payment method, in force since 2020, departs from the traditional payment models embraced by U.S. credit-card networks. Above all, the U.S. is concerned about the possibility of extending this model, currently being studied by the New Development Bank, to other BRICS countries.

Third, the meeting addressed questions of public security and cooperation against organized crime. Brasília emphasized that at present there is no significant volume of narcotics produced in the country entering the U.S., while the number of synthetic drugs and American weapons—especially originating from the state of Delaware—entering Brazilian territory is increasing. Brazil’s interest lies in deepening cooperation around preventive measures to stem these illicit flows.

On this topic, the principal unspoken point concerns the U.S. intention of characterizing Brazilian criminal factions, such as the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV), as terrorist cells, which could provide a pretext for U.S. interference in domestic issues related to the repression of crime in Brazilian territory. The view of the Palácio do Planalto is that cooperation in public security and in combating organized crime should involve other approaches than mere classification of these groups as terrorists.

The May 7th meeting between Trump and Lula at the White House highlighted the sensitivity of these and other topics, which have been sources of frictions in the official relationship between the countries. It became clear that during the meeting an effort was made by both parties to minimize potential disagreement or embarrassment.

This does not mean, contrary to what the niceties of diplomacy might suggest, that the meeting was in fact productive. Despite appearances and exchanges of compliments between the two leaders – both of whom are facing declining popularity with decisive elections on the horizon – in objective terms this meeting does not seem to have gone much beyond a meeting to schedule other meetings, marking the triumph of aesthetics over politics.

Final Considerations

Despite a certain optimism generated by the May 7th meeting, the recent past demonstrates that a show of courtesies in the Brazil–U.S. relationship does not necessarily mean an absence of conflicts or, still less, indicate the likelihood of productive results in the short term. It is to be expected that evident foreign policy disagreements between Lula and Trump will not overturn a pattern of high-level pragmatism governing the relationship between the two great American powers, with more than two centuries of strong ties.

However, when each pursues their own objectives, including those conflicting with the specific interests of maintaining the bilateral relationship, these meetings become little more than an empty performance. Meanwhile, international far right networks continue to show that they are capable of interfering in the official relationship between Brazil and the U.S., undermining or complicating opportunities to deepen mutual gains while threatening democratic process in both countries.

The prevalence of ties among far-right movements continues to threaten the productivity of the official Brazil–U.S. relationship. Flávio Bolsonaro, another son of Brazil’s former president and a pre-candidate for the Brazilian presidency in the 2026 elections, visited the White House in late May to restore his reputation among voters, with his candidacy facing a setback after his name surfaced in the Banco Master scandal, the worst bank fraud in Brazil’s history. The next day, Marco Rubio declared both the PCC and CV terrorist groups.

Amid distinct tones of populism, it is regrettable that the Brazil–U.S. relationship remains hostage to personalistic interests that often end in transactional bargaining without producing durable results. Overall, it seems unlikely that the Lula-Trump relationship will deliver anything substantive beyond cordial meetings used primarily to restore the domestic reputations of each, particularly given a polarized electoral landscape in Brazil that continues to treat the Bolsonaro-Trump relationship as a relevant factor.

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Historic Land Titling Victory in Bolivia, Tacana II Indigenous People Secure Title to Protect Their Land

By Carolina Juaneda, Environment Director & LAC Coordinator at Bank Information Center

After decades of struggle, the Tacana II Madre de Dios Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia have won a landmark victory: securing legal recognition of their ancestral lands. Through sustained organizing, advocacy, and engagement with the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) independent accountability mechanism, the Tacana II Indigenous Peoples are achieving long-overdue justice.

Celebration on the Tacana territory

From Struggle to Stewardship: Tacana II Secure Historic Title

In August 2025, the Tacana II Madre de Dios Indigenous community received a Tierra Comunitaria de Origen (TCO) title covering 272,379 hectares of near-pristine Amazonian forest (the size of Luxembourg and Andorra combined). This milestone marks the culmination of a land claim first submitted in 2001, one that Indigenous leaders have pursued tirelessly for over two decades.

The title is indivisible, inalienable, non-transferable, and imprescriptible (meaning they cannot be lost or taken away through the passage of time or lack of use), granting permanent recognition and protection for current and future generations. Situated near Madidi National Park, the territory remains highly contested due to its rich biodiversity, gold reserves, and other natural resources that have long drawn interest from extractive industries. Now, this land will be conserved and protected by the Tacana II Madre de Dios Indigenous People for many future generations to come.

This achievement honors the work of community elders who began this fight but did not live to see its resolution, while securing the homeland for younger generations who will inherit the responsibility of its protection and defense.

This outcome was made possible not only through sustained advocacy and the independent consultation and investigation mechanism (MICI) of the IDB, but also through Bolivia’s legal framework recognizing Indigenous territorial rights. The INRA Law (Law 1715) established the legal procedures for agrarian reform and Indigenous land titling, while the 2009 Constitution strengthened the recognition of Indigenous territories and autonomy, building on earlier recognition of Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs). These national frameworks are rooted in the principles of the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169, ratified by Bolivia in 1991, which has been central in shaping the country’s legal recognition of Indigenous land rights. Together, these legal instruments created the conditions that ultimately made it possible for the Tacana II claim to be formalized once the necessary institutional and political alignment was achieved.

About the achievement, Roland Mejia, Indigenous leader of the Tacana II Madre de Dios community, stated: “This is more than a legal title — it is a restoration of dignity, rights, and hope. For the Tacana II and all Indigenous Peoples involved, this agreement affirms that perseverance, land-rights advocacy, and institutional accountability can together secure justice for past and future generations.”

Agreement signing day

More Than One Victory: Protecting both Tacanas and Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples

Protecting Indigenous land rights is a vital component of cultural preservation and human rights promotion; it is also a proven climate solution. Recognized Indigenous lands have higher forest integrity, support a greater amount of biodiversity, demonstrate more sustainable patterns of land use, and are managed according to knowledge systems and practices honed over generations.

This offers yet another reason for Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), including the IDB, to recognize that properly investing in the recognition and protection of Indigenous lands has significant benefits for both people and the planet.

The Tacana II case stands out not only for its scale and ecological importance, but also because the titled area includes land inhabited by an uncontacted Indigenous group. Evidence suggests this group has remained in voluntary isolation largely thanks to the Tacana’s protection of the forest. The new title safeguards not one, but two Indigenous Peoples — the Tacana II and the uncontacted group — along with the ecosystems they depend on. This represents a new and unique form of co-ownership in Bolivia that strengthens Indigenous stewardship and demonstrates how territorial rights can protect both cultural survival and biodiversity.

Importance of the Independent Accountability Mechanisms of MDBs to Secure Remedy and Systemic Change

This case illustrates that the accountability mechanisms of multilateral development banks (MDBs) can not only deliver remedy but also enhance development outcomes. In December 2023, the Tacana II Indigenous Peoples, supported by the Bank Information Center (BIC) and Fundación Tierra (a Bolivian NGO), filed a complaint through the IDB’s MICI process. The complaint provided evidence regarding how the Tacana were harmed because of the IDB’s failures and omissions during the project’s design and implementation, and requested that the MICI initiate a dispute resolution process to seek redress for those harms.

The resulting Tacana II MICI case represents a broader achievement made possible through the collaboration of different actors across multiple levels, including the MICI. Following a series of intense negotiation roundtables in 2024 between the MICI, the Bolivian government, the IDB, and the Tacana II (with the support of Fundación Tierra and BIC), a historic agreement was reached that secured the long-awaited land title. Months later, Bolivia’s land titling agency, INRA, honored the agreement and officially granted the title.

Gastón Ain and Martín Packmann, MICI mediators, described the process as follows: “Several powerful forces contributed to a successful resolution and rapid implementation of the commitments made during these negotiations. Representatives of the Tacana Indigenous peoples, INRA, the IDB, Fundacion Tierra, and BIC all joined the dialogue in good faith, quickly recognized their interdependence in solving the problem, and worked to build rapport that allowed for a shared understanding of upcoming challenges. The process was marked by mutual respect and strong commitment to the proposed methodology and format, which proved vital in addressing this complex and historic issue impacting indigenous lands.”

This achievement is significant not only because it vindicates the rights of Indigenous Peoples, but also because it demonstrates how MDB accountability mechanisms can serve as powerful tools for communities to hold international financial institutions accountable, rebalance power relations, and obtain tangible remedies and reparations for harm caused by development projects. More broadly, it highlights the value of working with independent accountability mechanisms as part of a broader advocacy strategy, showing that these mechanisms can help translate long-standing demands into concrete outcomes while contributing to improvements in how development projects are designed and implemented.

For many communities, these accountability mechanisms are often the only channels available to make their voices heard and demand respect for their rights. This case is a powerful reminder of the role that accountability mechanisms play — and that community engagement is not an obstacle to development but its very foundation.

As Mario Paniagua, a member of the Fundación Tierra team, notes:  “This ability to bring their grievances before an independent accountability mechanism was critical to shining a spotlight on the Tacana’s demands, which had gone unanswered for more than 20 years. Through the collective efforts of all parties involved in the MICI process, the Tacana ultimately secured their land title. Today, the community enjoys the legal certainty over its ancestral territory, allowing them to pursue their aspirations and offering future generations a safer and more secure future.”

As MDBs continue to finance large-scale infrastructure projects in sensitive regions such as the Amazon, integrating these lessons is essential. Encouragingly, the lessons from this case have already informed the design of a new IDB land titling project in Bolivia currently under preparation — offering hope that this experience will contribute to broader systemic change in how projects are implemented in the sector.

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by clalsstaff on May 13, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on May 13, 2026

https://aulablog.net/2026/05/13/historic-land-titling-victory-in-bolivia-tacana-ii-indigenous-people-secure-title-to-protect-their-land/

Morena and Its “Fourth Transformation”: Reducing Inequality in Mexico

Image of Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

By Gerardo Otero

Professor Emeritus of International Studies

Simon Fraser University

Since its electoral victory in 2018, MORENA (Movement for National Regeneration) has reduced poverty and inequality in Mexico despite considerable international and domestic constraints (World Bank 2024). This triumph, after its presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took power, fulfilled at least in part the huge expectations created by his promised Fourth Transformation (4T) of Mexico’s public life. AMLO compares such a transformation with the three prior great historical transformations in Mexico, each of which necessitated violent means for power ascension: the 1821 revolution of independence from Spain, the liberal reform codified in the 1857 Constitution, which separated Church and state, and, finally, the Mexican Revolution that yielded the 1917 Constitution. The latter contained Article 123, the most comprehensive labor reforms in the world to that date, and Article 27, the basis for the agrarian reform. Unlike all previous transformations in Mexico, the 4T was achieved through democratic elections. This is a considerable achievement.

The most important driver in reducing poverty and inequality has been MORENA’s labor policy. Specifically, it has sustained increases in the minimum wage, complemented by expanded social programs such as universal pensions for adults over 65 (and, as of 2024, for women over 60), youth training fellowships, and disability grants. Together, these policies reflect Morena’s guiding principle and main campaign slogan: por el bien de todos, primero los pobres (“for everyone’s good, the poor come first”).

MORENA’s redistributive efforts took place in a difficult structural context. Rather than converging upward toward U.S. income levels after NAFTA, Mexico’s per capita income stagnated and, by 2014, fell below the world average, as shown in Figure 1. By contrast, China’s per capita income and labor share of GDP have moved closer to North American levels than Mexico’s. Mexico’s workers thus remain structurally disadvantaged within the global economy.

Source: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/MK (28 January 2026).

Figure 2 summarizes Mexico’s constraints by comparing labor’s share of GDP across countries. Between 1994 and 2023, labor captured roughly 65-72 percent of GDP in Canada and 56-63 percent in the United States. China followed closely with 55-60 percent. Mexico’s labor share, in contrast, remained dramatically lower at about 35-40 percent, underscoring the limited structural leverage available to its working classes.

Source: Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED): https://fred.stlouisfed.org, LABSHPCAA156NRUG (Canada), LABSHPUSA156NRUG (USA), LABSHPMXA156NRUG (China), LABSHPCNA156NRUG (Mexico).

Given these constraints, the key question is whether MORENA’s domestic policies have nevertheless reduced inequality within Mexico. Evidence from household income surveys suggests that they have.

One widely used measure of inequality is the Gini coefficient. Using Mexico’s national household survey (ENIGH), adjusted for household size and economies of scale, Figure 3 shows that the Gini coefficient declined steadily after 2018, falling from approximately 0.42 to 0.38 by 2024. This represents one of the most sustained reductions in inequality observed in recent decades.

Source: Constructed with data from INEGI. Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares 2024. SNIEG. Información de Interés Nacional.

While useful, the Gini coefficient does not directly capture the distance between economic elites and the broader population. A widely used alternative to the Gini coefficient is the Palma Index, which measures inequality as the ratio between the income share of the richest 10 percent and that of the poorest 40 percent. Its premise is that the middle sectors (roughly deciles V to IX) tend to capture about half of national income and therefore remain relatively stable across countries (Palma 2013).

In Mexico, however, households in the first seven deciles do not even reach the national average income. This suggests that the country’s middle sector is considerably smaller than the Palma Index assumes and that inequality is better understood as a widening gap between economic elites and the social majority. To address this limitation, I propose the Otero Index, which measures inequality as the ratio between the income of the richest 10 percent and that of the bottom 70 percent of households. This approach reflects the empirical reality that households in the first seven deciles do not reach the national average income and therefore cannot reasonably be described as part of a broad middle class.

Figure 4 presents the evolution of the Otero Index since 1984. Inequality increased sharply during the early decades of neoliberal restructuring, peaked in the 1990s, and remained persistently high afterward. Only after 2018 did the gap between the top decile and the bottom 70 percent begin to decline substantially. By 2024, the index had fallen below its level in 1984, at the dawn of Mexico’s neoliberal turn. In historical terms, this marks the first sustained reversal of the elite-mass income gap since the onset of Mexico’s neoliberal restructuring.

Source: Constructed with data from INEGI. Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares 1984-2024. SNIEG. Información de Interés Nacional.

This improvement is not limited to national averages. Between 2018 and 2024, elite-mass income gaps narrowed in nearly every Mexican state. The largest reductions occurred in Mexico City, Tamaulipas, Campeche, Oaxaca, and Sinaloa, suggesting that gains among lower-income households outpaced those at the top. Only Nuevo León stands out as an exception: there, inequality increased slightly, likely reflecting export-oriented industrial growth and nearshoring dynamics that disproportionately benefited high-income groups.

Overall, the decline in the Otero Index across most states points to a broad compression of income gaps. Importantly, this compression reflects improvements among the bottom 70 percent rather than temporary declines at the top. In other words, recent changes represent genuine redistribution rather than cyclical volatility.

Mexico’s recent experience, therefore, challenges the assumption that inequality is structurally irreversible. Even as the country’s position in the global income hierarchy deteriorated after 2014, domestic redistribution policies narrowed the distance between economic elites and the social majority.

The decline in inequality since 2018 does not amount to a full reversal of Mexico’s long-term trajectory. Income gaps remain large, and the legacy of four decades of neoliberal restructuring persists, yet the evidence shows that inequality can be reduced through sustained policy intervention. For the first time since the early 1980s, the distance between elites and the majority has begun to narrow in measurable and territorially widespread ways. Mexico’s inequality story is no longer one of uninterrupted divergence, but of gradual – and increasingly visible – convergence.

References:

Otero, Gerardo. 2024a. “After Thirty Years of NAFTA, the Working Classes are Still Losing.” The Nation. February 29.

Otero, Gerardo. 2024b. “Blaming the Victim or Structural Conditioning? COVID-19, Obesity and the Neoliberal Diet.” Journal of Agrarian Change. e12564. DOI: 10.1111/joac.12564: 1-19.

Palma, José Gabriel. 2011. Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘Inverted-U’: the share of the rich is what it’s all about. Cambridge Working Papers in Economics, 1111, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

World Bank. 2024. Mexico: Poverty and Equity Assessment. World Bank Group. Washington, DC.

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by clalsstaff on April 21, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 21, 2026

https://aulablog.net/2026/04/21/morena-and-its-fourth-transformation-reducing-inequality-in-mexico/

Kast’s First Month: Right Policy, Wrong Politics

By Robert Funk

Associate Professor of Political Science

Universidad de Chile

Image of José Antonio Kast. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

José Antonio Kast always knew that his honeymoon would be short. He did not expect it to last less than a month. As a result, President Kast’s first few weeks in office have turned out to be something of an experiment. Straight out of the starting gate, Chile’s new president has chosen to confront some of the country’s structural problems, even at the expense of burning through some serious political capital.

The most visible example is the sharp rise in fuel prices. Triggered by the conflict in the Middle East, global crude prices have surged, with Chile feeling the impact almost instantly. As a country that imports nearly all of its energy, Chile is highly exposed to such shocks (although fortunately, its liquid natural gas is sourced regionally). Faced with this situation, Kast’s government made a tough choice: it limited the use of the fuel price stabilization mechanism (MEPCO) and allowed prices to adjust more rapidly. Maintaining the full subsidy would have implied costs to the government of up to USD 40 million per week, with projections of up to USD 3 billion if oil prices remain high. The result has been a dramatic increase in domestic fuel prices, with gasoline rising by around 370 pesos (USD 0.40) per liter and diesel by as much as 580 pesos (USD 0.60).

Why Kast and his Finance Minister, Jorge Quiroz, would choose to implement such a politically costly and potentially explosive policy must be understood in the context of Chile’s fiscal reality. The administration inherited a weak fiscal position from its predecessor. The Boric government left Chile with a structural deficit of around 3.6 percent of GDP – not large in global terms, but unusually high for Chile. In addition, spending commitments expanded significantly under Boric. Pensions, social transfers, and permanent expenditures rose while revenues were consistently overestimated. The result was a narrowing fiscal margin that makes large-scale subsidies increasingly difficult to sustain.

From this perspective, Kast’s emphasis on spending restraint is not ideological stubbornness, but fiscal necessity. The government’s decision to implement a 3 percent across-the-board spending cut was designed to restore credibility and avoid a deterioration in sovereign risk. Returning to fiscal discipline is a way of signalling that Chile has not entirely abandoned some of the principles it held when it became one of the most solid economies in Latin America.

The fuel price issue is particularly sensitive because of its universal and immediate effects. Unlike tax reforms or regulatory changes, fuel prices are felt instantly and widely. In Chile’s economy, where close to 90 percent of goods are moved by road, increases in fuel costs will translate quickly into higher prices across the economy. This multiplier effect is likely to affect inflation relatively soon.

Moreover, this is most likely not a temporary shock that can easily be smoothed over. Finance Minister Quiroz has been explicit in admitting that he expects that energy prices will remain elevated for an extended period. The conflict involving Iran could well turn out to be part of a broader geopolitical realignment rather than a short-lived disruption in energy costs. Betting on a rapid normalization of oil prices would have been fiscally reckless.

Quiroz’s insistence on spending cuts follows the same logic. Reducing public spending in the midst of an external shock may seem politically tone-deaf. But a Keynesian approach – maintaining or increasing spending to help smooth over the external shock – makes little sense if the current crisis is not really a shock but a long-term trend. Doing nothing might have required increased borrowing at higher interest rates.

Still, the political cost is undeniable. Cuts to areas such as transport and security are not just budgetary decisions; they are political signals of where priorities lie. Recall that the widespread social unrest of 2019 in Chile began with a far more modest rise in Metro fares.

Security presents a different but equally important challenge. Kast was elected largely on a promise of restoring order and public safety. Any perception that resources are being constrained in this area risks undermining the government’s main source of political legitimacy. Unlike fiscal policy, where trade-offs are less visible, security can be felt in real time by citizens’ lived experience.

What makes these three issues so politically damaging is their combination of scope, immediacy, and symbolic weight. They affect everyone, they are felt instantly, and they resonate with recent historical grievances. Managing any one of them is difficult; confronting all three simultaneously is a high-risk strategy.

And yet, there is a logic behind the government’s choices. Kast is attempting to reset expectations. Rather than cushioning shocks through fiscal expansion, he is signaling that Chile must adapt to a more constrained and uncertain global environment. This is a sharp departure from the policy framework of the previous decade. And if energy prices remain high, as current geopolitical trends suggest, and if fiscal discipline helps to avoid a deeper macroeconomic crisis, the government may ultimately be vindicated.

The risk is that it may not survive politically long enough to claim that vindication. Approval ratings have already declined, protests have emerged, and the government appears on the defensive. Politically painful policies are possible, but only when undertaken with broad support and legitimacy. Kast hasn’t had the time to build his case, and many of his ministers appear to go out of their way to alienate voters. While front-loading the shock might seem wise – Kast must be thinking he will have time to recuperate in the polls later – he runs the risk of losing so much legitimacy that recovery becomes impossible.  

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by clalsstaff on April 15, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 15, 2026

https://aulablog.net/2026/04/15/kasts-first-month-right-policy-wrong-politics/

Seeking Stability in Post-Maduro Venezuela: The US, Governance, and the Economy

By Michael M. McCarthy

Founder and Executive Director, Caracas Wire

Adjunct Professor, George Washington University

Image of Caracas, Venezuela. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Roughly three months since US special forces forcibly extracted Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, Venezuela seems to have settled into a tense calm. Though the path to stability is not assured, and the critical issue of new Presidential elections is far from view. With Maduro on trial for narco-terrorism charges in New York, President Trump has publicly backed Delcy Rodríguez’s interim Presidency on multiple occasions, including taking the pivotal step of removing personal sanctions he previously placed on the then-Vice President in 2018. The political support for Rodríguez has gone hand in hand with the issuing of licenses for restored commercial relations and the reestablishment of normal diplomatic relations between the US and Venezuela. 

Crucially, though, diplomatic normalization has thus far not provided Rodríguez’s government the economic stabilization promised in the first stage of Trump’s three-point plan – stabilization, recovery, and transition – for externally rebuilding Venezuela. 

With inflation running at an average of 24 percent a month in January and February of 2026 (compared with a monthly average of 16 percent in 2025), and the comprehensive minimum wage of $160 covering roughly 25 percent of the cost of a basic basket of goods for a family of five, social tensions on the streets remain unalleviated. Moreover, amid headlines about new oil and gas deals signed with Rodríguez’s government and the Iran war oil price shock that has sent prices over $100 a barrel, economic expectations are sky high. Unsurprisingly, average Venezuelans are in instant gratification mode. With May Day approaching, the traditional date for governments to make salary increase announcements, household heads expect Delcy Rodriguez’s government to deliver results via a hike to the core minimum wage, anchored at $0.33 since 2022, not just offers of new one-off bonuses that provide transitory support. 

The problem is that Delcy Rodríguez does not exercise international economic sovereignty over the proceeds from Venezuela’s oil sales, the source of around 90 percent of the economy’s foreign exchange. While President Trump’s January 9, 2026, Executive Order recognized oil sold to the US as Venezuelan, therefore, declaring the proceeds of sales as Venezuelan, too – an important definition at the time because Trump had made false claims that Venezuela “stole oil from US companies” – the US Treasury Department controls the flow of oil export proceeds. This raises questions about whether the US is treating Venezuela as a financial protectorate. 

Consequently, Rodríguez currently has no new policy levers to pull, leaving her government in the awkward position of theoretically having the financial means to authorize spending increases but lacking the operational ability to execute them. It is an open question whether Washington and Caracas will be able to find a fix – perhaps via an agreed-upon external auditor mechanism – to speed up the transfer of funds to the Central Bank of Venezuela in time for Rodríguez to authorize spending before social tensions boil over. Reportedly, several billion dollars have already accrued in the first quarter of 2025. Either way, the transfer of full economic sovereignty back to Caracas seems unlikely to happen this year.

While there is more evidence of tangible political changes, the political environment is also tense, especially the fragile equilibrium within Chavismo. A significant portion of political prisoners have been released (around 40 percent of the recent Maduro-era political prisoner population). Meanwhile, a controversial Amnesty Bill passed by the ruling party-controlled Congress – a body that was not born in full democratic legitimacy but has passed important laws both supported by a small opposition congressional faction and recognized by the Trump administration – has opened the door to pardons for politicians and public figures previously jailed on highly politicized grounds. Some harder line elements of the opposition, which have key parts of their political leadership in exile, have expressed openness to working within the framework of the Amnesty Law. 

Beyond prisoner releases and legislative reforms, the more charged political change has been the shuffling of the cabinet, an overhaul that seems to have the intention of achieving De-Madurification without dismantling Chavismo’s influence over the state. Rodríguez has fired Maduro family members and loyalists, replaced the Defense Minister who had an 11-year tenure and faces an indictment in the US, and orchestrated a slew of cabinet changes that promote economic reformists, a group led by Vice-President for the Economy Calixto Ortega. Delcy’s brother, Jorge Rodríguez, is the President of the National Assembly, where he controls the legislative agenda and operates as a bridge between the economic reformists and old guard elements. Diosdado Cabello, an original Chavista who participated in then-Colonel Hugo Chavez’s failed coup on February 4, 1992, has retained his Interior Minister post and overall influence despite facing an indictment, a decision that probably reflects a cold calculation by Rodríguez and the US that having him on the inside favors governability. The appointment of the new Defense Minister, the architect of repression for six years, as the head of the feared SEBIN intelligence force, is a further illustration of that cold calculation. 

Operating in an atmosphere of fear from the possibility of a new US military attack, and aware that, economically, the country’s future could soon be brighter, the members of the new ruling coalition seem to be superficially getting along in this highly surreal post-Maduro moment for Chavismo. Indeed, with Trump declaring Venezuela is open for business, the pragmatism of ignoring Chavismo’s socialist roots finally holds real economic potential. Overall, then, the sources of regime cohesion have expanded from purely negative reasons – survival and fear of forcible removal by the US military – to include the positive agenda of rebuilding parts of the economy. 

Above and beyond the national scene, the underlying question is what President Trump ultimately wants his Venezuela policy to be about. So far, it is all about securing oil supplies and working with the people who “have the guns today to ultimately move the country to a representative government and a better station,” as Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in January, just days after the commando raid against Maduro. That posture leaves opposition standard-bearer Maria Corina Machado, now in exile but still by far the most popular politician in the country, on the outside. Even if Delcy Rodriguez’s ruling coalition crumbles, one gets the sense that Trump would prefer a more cautious political alternative, such as a national unity government, over convening snap elections. 

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by clalsstaff on April 9, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 9, 2026

https://aulablog.net/2026/04/09/seeking-stability-in-post-maduro-venezuela-the-us-governance-and-the-economy/

Forced Back to Danger: Why Ending TPS for Honduras Is a Humanitarian Failure

By Josse Martinez and Danjha León Martinez

Image Source: https://www.thecaravelgu.com/blog/2021/3/3/central-american-countries-prepare-for-an-increase-in-migrants

When the United States ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 57,000 Hondurans in July 2025 (effective September 8), the U.S. government framed it as a routine administrative update. But in humanitarian terms, it was something else entirely: the deliberate withdrawal of a critical protection mechanism in the middle of an ongoing emergency. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants warned that the decision “withdraws stability, security, and dignity” from families who have depended on TPS for over two decades. 

TPS is often discussed as an immigration category, but it functions more accurately as an emergency humanitarian protection tool deployed when a state cannot safeguard the lives of its own citizens. The TPS termination for Honduras nationals therefore does not simply change legal status; it actively produces a new humanitarian crisis. The move comes as Honduras faces extreme violence, institutional fragility, climate-driven displacement, and femicides. Sending tens of thousands back now is dangerous and morally indefensible. 

A protection mechanism withdrawn at the worst possible moment 

TPS provides temporary legal status and work authorization to people whose home countries face extraordinary and unsafe conditions. The humanitarian purpose is straightforward: people cannot be returned to danger. Yet the United States now argues that “conditions have improved.” Evidence shows the opposite. Honduras continues to be one of the most violent countries in the hemisphere, combining: 

  • widespread gang control and territorial governance 
  • an overburdened and under-resourced justice system 
  • climate-driven food insecurity 
  • and staggering levels of violence against women and girls 

According to the UN Sustainable Development Group, Honduras has long faced another “pandemic” of gender-based violence, registering femicide rates of 6.2 per 100,000 women. Terminating TPS while these conditions persist is a humanitarian miscalculation that potentially places civilians directly in harm’s way. 

A humanitarian crisis manufactured by policy 

Humanitarian frameworks define crisis as a situation in which civilians cannot survive without external protection. Honduras clearly meets this definition: 1.6 million people require humanitarian aid, the state cannot guarantee basic safety, and threats such as gang violence and femicide operate with near-total impunity. Under international norms, especially the principle of non-refoulement, governments must not return people to countries where their lives or freedom are threatened. 

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants warns that ending TPS will “force people deeper into uncertainty and fear,” including individuals who originally fled death threats, extortion, or gender-based violence. In response to the decision, Honduran TPS holders and national advocacy groups have pushed back. The National TPS Alliance, along with the ACLU and other immigrant-rights organizations, filed a federal complaint challenging the termination of TPS for Honduras. The lawsuit argues that the decision was “arbitrary and capricious,” ignored unmistakable evidence of ongoing danger, and violated the government’s humanitarian obligations. This legal action shows that the crisis caused by ending TPS is so severe that civil society had to mobilize in court simply to protect Hondurans from being returned to life-threatening conditions. 

Femicide: The central context of forced return 

Femicide is not peripheral to TPS; it is one of the main reasons Hondurans fled. In 2023, Honduras reached a femicide rate of 7.2 per 100,000 women, one of the highest in Latin America. Organizations like Cattrachas document how gender-based killings intersect with policing failures, institutional corruption, and gang control. 

Many Honduran women losing TPS originally fled because they were being hunted by abusive partners, traffickers, or armed criminal groups. Ending TPS is therefore not simply deportation. It will force women to return to an environment where they are deliberately targeted and where the state fails to protect them. As the Women’s Refugee Commission notes, gender-based violence is a leading driver of forced migration. Repatriation under these conditions directly increases the risk of femicide. 

Community resilience: Art as resistance 

Even as institutions fail, communities in Honduras have built their own forms of protection. One of the most powerful is art-activism (“artivism”). Public art challenges the normalization of violence and preserves memory in ways formal systems often fail to do. The UN Spotlight Initiative has supported art-based gender-violence prevention in 17 Honduran municipalities, using murals, sculptures, and theater to create community dialogue and challenge harmful norms. 

The feminist graffiti duo Dolls Clan (Mayki Graff Ortega and Suam Fonseca) creates public murals honoring victims of femicide and amplifying feminist resistance. Their work turns public walls into spaces of collective mourning and political demand. Public art is a form of humanitarian response: it educates, resists, and keeps victims’ stories alive when formal justice systems fail. But art cannot replace systemic protection. 

The immediate human cost of ending TPS 

Ending TPS triggers four immediate humanitarian harms: 

  1. Family separation: Thousands of U.S.-born children have Honduran parents with TPS. Families now face the devastating choice between separation or relocating to a country many children have never known. 
  2. Economic instability and re-poverty: TPS holders have spent decades building careers, homes, and businesses in the U.S. Forced return pushes them into an already unstable Honduran economy. 
  3. A rise in irregular migration: History shows that ending legal pathways does not reduce migration; it increases undocumented migration as people seek safety through more dangerous routes. 
  4. Exposure to direct violence: Returnees become immediate targets of gangs, extortion networks, police corruption, and gender-based violence. TPS termination does not fix migration. It makes it deadlier. 

A crisis created by political choice 

Ending TPS for Honduras is not a neutral administrative action, it is a political decision with profound humanitarian consequences. It forces thousands back into a country facing intersecting emergencies: femicide, gang rule, climate disaster, and institutional collapse. While communities fight to maintain dignity and memory, the U.S. is withdrawing one of the only forms of international protection Hondurans have left. It abandons a protection promise the United States upheld for more than two decades. If the United States seeks to honor its humanitarian commitments, it must extend TPS or redesign it as a pathway to long-term stability, not dismantle it. Protection should never depend on political cycles. Lives depend on it. 

Josse Martinez is a Global Governance, Politics, and Security (GGPS) graduate student at American University. He is of Honduran and Guatemalan descent.

Danjha Leon Martinez is a Research Assistant for the Immigration Lab at the Center for Latin American & Latino Studies. She is a Development Management graduate student at American University with a focus on humanitarian aid and global migration

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by clalsstaff on March 29, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 29, 2026

https://aulablog.net/2026/03/29/forced-back-to-danger-why-ending-tps-for-honduras-is-a-humanitarian-failure/

Testimonies of Sexual Violence while Migrating from Latin America

Image Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rentman1225/26864902068/

By Maggie McMahon   

Sexual violence during migration journeys is rarely addressed in the current political climate. Yet this issue is rampant for many migrants, especially those making the journey from Latin America to the United States. The personal experiences and testimonies from those who completed this journey provide valuable insight into the dangers that migrants face in this region. This problem demands more attention, as it is one of the many dangers that migrants face while attempting to reach the U.S. 

In her late 20’s and from Ecuador, Verónica details her lengthy and dangerous journey to the United States, where she walked many miles to the US-Mexico border and experienced rough traveling conditions, including falling off a train.

Ay me están esperando llorar. Bueno, sufrí mucho, pasé mucha hambre, dormí en parque—muchas cosas feas…Bueno, después de eso, yo cambié de tren y me subí a otro tren que ese sí era el que me traía, pero ese tren se quedó 3 días en el desierto. Ahí entonces yo como que le daba gracias a Dios de no haberme subido a ese tren porque yo me pude subir, pero me dio miedo y no me subí, pero mucha gente se subió y algunos se cayeron, incluidos niños. Bueno, ese tren me avanzó hasta la frontera, de ahí yo me bajé y camine bastante. Yo llegué a este país con los pies podridos ensangrentados porque yo caminé artístico.[1]

Oh, this is making me want to cry. Well, I suffered a lot. I went very hungry, slept in a park—many ugly things… Well, after that, I changed trains and got on another one, the one that was supposed to bring me here. But that train stayed stranded in the desert for three days. At that point, I felt like thanking God for not getting on the earlier train. I could have boarded it, but I was scared and didn’t. Many people did get on, and some fell off, including children. Well, that train took me to the border, from there I got off and walked a lot. I arrived in this country with rotten feet, bloodied because I walked a tremendous amount. 

When asked if she felt in danger during her trip, Verónica shared her experience in Guatemala:

Uh no yo siempre diré que Guatemala es el peor país que yo pude conocer ahí, así que no te digo. A mi en bus me tocaron los senos, las partes íntimas. Me sacaron todo el dinero.

Oh no, I will always say that Guatemala is the worst country I could have known there, so I tell you. They touched my breasts and private parts on the bus. They took all my money.

After arriving in the United States, Verónica’s friend provided her a place to stay and food for a few weeks. She now works as a delivery driver.

Another woman, Mariana, also shared her experience with sexual violence during her journey. In her fifties and from El Salvador, she has been in the US for over two decades. During her journey from El Salvador, she recalls that:

Fíjese que yo fui víctima de eso. No llegar al acto sexual porque gracias a Dios no me llegaron a violar, pero en el camino para acá si fui tocada por los hombres. Puedo recordar de que no sé si todas percibirán eso, pero yo sí lo viví. Sí. Sería porque yo cuando venía ya venía …, pero yo parecía… yo era bien delgadita, parecía una niña de 14 años. No sé si por eso es que abusaron de mí de esa manera. Pero sí pudeir tocada por más de 2 hombres en el camino. 

I remember that I was a victim of that. Not in a sexual act, thanks to God, they did not rape me, but on the way here I was touched by men. I can remember that I didn’t know if anyone else sees that, but I did experience that…it must have been because when I came…I seemed to be very thin, I looked like a 14-year-old girl. I don’t know if that’s why they abused me in that way. But I was touched by more than 2 men on the way.

Mariana’s story demonstrates how persistent the dangers of migration have been for women over the years. 

These instances of sexual assault are not isolated. Samuel, born in Colombia in the late 1990s, migrated to Venezuela as a child due to political violence and the unfavorable economic situation. He moved to Brazil as a young teen to work in the mines after his parents separated and migrated to the US in 2024. 

While traversing the Darién Gap, a remote thick jungle crossing between Colombia and Panama, David witnessed many violent situations. The Darien Gap is known for its dangerous and difficult conditions, with many people experiencing gang violence, crime, sexual violence, disease, and death. 

David reported that while on the Panamanian side of the Darien Gap, he witnessed a group of Indigenous men rape a woman traversing the crossing. He also saw this group of men shoot the woman’s husband. 

Hay indios que agarraron a una mujer y se la violaron. Y al esposo… viendo que están pasando eso, el esposo se le baten o se levanta, le pegan un tiro. El indio agarró con una escopeta y le pegó el tiro. Puso, se lo pegó aquí… Así, puff, le pegó el tiro aquí …. Ahí quedaron los dos y salieron los indios. Antes habían robado y todo, pero después estaban violando a la mujer ahí ante el grupo. 

There are Indians who grabbed a woman and they raped her. And the husband … seeing that they are going through that, the husband fights him or gets up, they shoot him. The Indian grabbed a shotgun and shot him. He put it, he stuck it here… So, poof, he shot him here…. The two of them laid there and the Indians left…Before, they had robbed and everything, but after they were raping the woman there in front of the group.

Sexual violence is unfortunately a common experience in the Darién Gap. Other migrants we interviewed also reported witnessing instances of it, as with the case of Mauricio. Born in Venezuela, Mauricio migrated to the US four years ago to find better opportunities for his three young children. He traveled to Caracas, Venezuela and then on to Colombia and Peru. During his migration, Mauricio faced many dangerous situations, such as sleeping on the streets and crossing the jungle. As he recounts: 

En Panama fui testigo una violencia que pasó pero eso fue ya entrando en la selva. Violaron una niña y alguna mujer. Entonces yo estuve ahí, o sea, fui vi todo con mis ojos y fui testigo de eso.

In Panama I witnessed violence that happened, but that was already deep in the jungle. They raped a girl and a woman. So, I was there, that is, I saw everything with my eyes and witnessed that. 

Instances of sexual violence were then increasing in the Darién Gap since Panamanian authorities were not monitoring the crossing. Additionally, many instances of sexual violence go unreported due to stigma and shame. With the absence of policing in these remote largely uninhabited areas, armed criminal groups are able to take advantage of vulnerable people traversing the crossing.  Though lately, the Panamanian government has mobilized the army to patrol those areas, as movement north has decreased and now many people are heading south.

Sexual violence have long-term psychological and physical impacts for those who experience and witness it. Victims of rape can suffer sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies, and physical trauma. Sexual violence can also cause feelings of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and social isolation, as well as heighten an individual’s risk of substance abuse.

Given the ongoing instability faced by many Latin American countries, migration through the Darién Gap is likely to increase. Panamanian authorities must take further action to closely monitor the dangerous conditions in the crossing and provide support for the vulnerable populations crossing it. Greater support for the physical, psychological, and financial needs of migrants should also be implemented in the United States. 

Maggie McMahon is a research intern at the Immigration Lab. She is a senior majoring in international studies. 

Edited by Elizabeth Angione and Vincent Iannuzzi-Sucich

[1] This and the following accounts have been taken from interviews conducted with recent arrivals to the Washington DC-metro region and New York City as part of an ongoing research project of the Immigration Lab in American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. This project received IRB approval. Given the vulnerability of this population, we have taken steps to ensure the human subjects involved are protected, including eliciting the consent of all research subjects, the use of pseudonyms, and elimination of any individually identifying information.

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by clalsstaff on March 17, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 17, 2026

https://aulablog.net/2026/03/17/testimonies-of-sexual-violence-while-migrating-from-latin-america/

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