The article “Cultures of Denial: Avoiding Knowledge of State Violations of Human Rights in Argentina and the United States” discusses the sociological tendencies that cause citizens to ignore human rights violations in their country. The study conducted in this article analyzes the last military dictatorship in Argentina between 1976-1983 and the United States during its war on terror post-September 11^th attacks. The project analyzed the differences and similarities of citizen roles in a dictatorship and electoral democracy. The author argues that cognitive mechanisms are rarely analyzed when in actuality this unravels more social and political context. Also, the article analyzes cultural and societal norms that may play a role in endorsing human rights violations in the country and possible recommendations to prevent the perpetrators of such violence.

This article provides a unique comparison of the state and civil society relations when regarding human rights violations. Also, the author utilizes a method of comparing Argentina during a military dictatorship and America post-September 11^th to present a difference in public outcry regarding human rights violations. This is successful as a method to analyze how social interactions and ideologies impact the way people make sense of political events and especially human rights violations.

The source’s importance is clear in that there is a difference in the political context of certain social violations depending on the country at the time. Argentina under a military dictatorship marked by public silence and the United States of America a democratically elected state with freedom of media to discuss anything share similarities. The author claims the parallels as a contribution of a culture of denial and the incorporation of discourse that strayed from fact. There are social mechanisms that make human rights violations tolerable due to cultural, social, and political aspects that endorse the turning of a blind eye.

This paper, written by Richard E. Feinberg, explains the current political crisis in Nicaragua as they face civil conflict and political violence through the presidency of Daniel Ortega. It argues how Ortega’s rule, alongside his vice president and wife, Rosario Murillo closely resembles that of the Somoza Dynasty, notorious for their autocratic rule over the country for almost half of the twentieth century. The paper also breaks down how the government’s plan to cut funds from their pension system and the ongoing frustration of university students created an insurrection in 2018, which is also what got Nicaragua international attention around the world after Ortega responded with lethal force. Altogether, the paper does a good job in breaking down the factors leading to the current political crisis in Nicaragua.

Something that helped explain Nicaragua’s political crisis in this paper is the author’s use of historical context. The author talked about how the intervention of the United State’s granted power for the Somoza family in the early 20th century. He broke down how both the Somoza’s and Ortega came to power using historical context. Another thing that stood out to me was the use of the author’s notes in the essay, the notes explained where he got information, so the reader can use them as a reference to his sources. Also, he left small pieces of information in the notes that he felt were necessary for the reader.

This source is critical for my research because my research group project will be focussing on the current political crisis in Nicaragua. I feel that this essay serves as a great overview or breakdown of what is happening in Nicaragua. However, I am not sure yet if that will be our research topic or maybe we might change it to a particular aspect of the situation like the insurgency, or political violence, etc. I do believe this can be used as a general source for doing research on human rights in Latin America because the situation is Nicaragua serves as an example to argue that human rights violations and political violence are real in that part of the world.

This article explores the human rights problems in Honduras, through the lens of Canadian imperialism. It covers the problems being faced in Honduras, from natural resource competition to violation of human rights, leading to the military coup and Canadian intervention, as well as other countries trying to be involved in the overtaking of Honduras.

The article is helpful as it outlines the problems being faced in Honduras, and was published in recent years. The only problem with the article is the parts that steer away from Honduras and focus mainly on the issue of Western imperialism, although this is still an issue that we will be exploring in our topic, as a major problem in Honduras right now are the large caravans moving from Honduras to the United States.

This article will be particularly useful as it explores the many types of imperialism Honduras has faced, and how those external forces affect the state of Honduras, as well as how these events added to the human rights violations in Honduras, from the past up until 2013. It will be missing the last few years of events, but will include the colorful imperialistic past Honduras has gone through.

In the 1990s, the nation took a more accepting approach to handling the health crisis, which has resulted in lowered mortality rates and less intense stigmatization of marginalized groups such as the queer community and drug users. However, recent administrations have reverted back to the viewpoint that stigmatizes the health crisis. In 2012, the Brazilian Ministry of Health began a campaign designed to censor information about AIDS prevention in young men, citing that it provoked homosexual tendencies.

The relationship between the nation’s perspective on the topic of homosexuality and their philosophy in handling the AIDS/HIV crisis are directly link. In times of acceptance of LGBTQ communities, AIDS prevention and education have been productive and successful, whereas periods of low acceptance and high stigmatization have resulted in higher mortality and less access to information on how to lead healthy lifestyles that prevent the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.

The administrations of recent years are responsible for the growth of this health crisis, and new perspectives on AIDS must be adopted in order to keep the crisis in check.

In the article, Kay sets out to analyze the questions that have surfaced as agrarian policies have shifted across Latin America.  Latin America has largely experienced an agricultural revolution due to the influx of neoliberal policies throughout the region. The resulting policies have led to changes across every viable section of farming; mainly affecting land, labor, and production. Land ownership has decreased among peasants, also decreasing their likelihood to subsist without working for someone else as a wage-laborer. Additionally, land-grabbing has increased as corporate farming replaces small peasant holdings. Farm workers have been forced to abandon their own practices as corporations thrive under the open markets and trade agreements of the neoliberal governments. As they continue to be displaced, urbanization has seen a steady rise as rural populations have seen a continual decline. Furthermore, the types of crops sought after for cultivation vary from the traditional staple crops and risk changing the soil composition, affecting generations of farmers and consumers alike. Flexible crops that can be used for food, cattle feed, and/or biofuels are surging in popularity, but these cash crops have horrible consequences for the environment. The most notorious of these is soy, which is also the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon. Land ownership decreases as neoliberal policies open up the territory to corporations and their large scale business practices that work together to push out smaller scale operations. This leads to a displacement of people as they are force to migrate to the cities for job opportunities. Furthermore, individuals are forced into wage labor since they can no longer rely on subsistence farming. Additionally, production is affected as the crops harvested change to cash crops to serve the interests of corporations. These business practices are damaging to the environment as they contribute greatly to deforestation.

Kay does a good job of analyzing the effects of neoliberal policy across a few key areas of Latin America, but fails to address the actual policies that are contributing most the displacement and degradation happening across the region. While there could be more political  specificity, Kay ties the effects of neoliberalism directly to the changing landscapes throughout Latin America. Additionally, he provides exceptional detail to the issues of land, labor, and production which he has deemed most affected by policy changes.

Kay’s writing focuses primarily on Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil when providing statistical evidence. My research will center around Venezuela. While I will not be able to use the statistical data provided, I can still it for context of the region as a whole.

The image above is from an Argentine protest against the corporate land concentration taking place. Kay details this issue in great detail, often drawing on Argentina for case specific evidence..

The #NiUnasMenos (Not One Less) movement emerged in Argentina in 2015 in response to recent and numerous acts of murder and violence against young women in Argentina. In this article, the author connects societal polarization, human rights discourse, femicide, and civic society theory, to weave together an account of how the media was able to utilize the movement and the tradition of civil codes to momentarily suspend the polarization within Argentinian society and generate action. The author analyzed news articles, interviews and media coverage to understand and pinpoint the rhetoric employed by the media to overcome this polarization and to motivate social action by all Argentinian peoples. The backdrop of this article is theory on how a civil society operates and the general tradition of human rights in Argentina.

The author begins her article with the discussion of civil society theory and how societies operate in alignment with civil and anti-civil codes in order to promote democracy. This theory is used to explain how the framing of the #NiUnasMenos movement by the media as an issue of civil codes was able to unite Argentinians on this issue, despite the deep ideological rifts between them. This example is predicated on the idea that civil codes appeal to all members of society, despite their social, cultural, or political designations, and that particular framing of the issue is the mechanism behind the solidarity and action that the movement generated.

Thus, human rights are not the central issue of this work but rather making a case for how journalism, through its utilization of civil society theory, can affect political culture and polarization and generate action on human rights issue. 

The author did a thorough and convincing job in articulating the media’s role in the success of the #NiUnasMenos movement and how the underpinning of the success was the unification of society through civil codes. The examples of reframing the issue from an “individual” problem to a “collective” one, and the examples that showed how activists, journalist, and politicians were all appealing to universal rights and bringing together people from all political spectrums really blended the theory and the argument well. I appreciated how the author incorporated previous discourse of human rights in Argentina and how important the military repression of the Peronists was integral in sparking that discourse in Argentina. It illustrated the resounding impact of that past social trauma in modern times and how previous violations inform the discussion on current violations as the author highlighted the Mothers of Plazo de Mayo as leaders of the human rights movement in Argentina.  

It is a fact that children migrate from their countries of origin to the United States unaccompanied—their age, however, places yet another barrier to overcome.

In the United States there is the idea that children may not inherently have agency, which is defined in this article as “an individual’s intrinsic capacity for intentional behavior developed within the individual’s environment(s) and subject to environmental influences” (Thompson). This effectively labels young migrant bodies within a dichotomy of being either a victim or a criminal—if the young body is victim enough, then they are granted aid and allowed to achieve their goal.

However, childhood, agency, and migration have an interrelation much more complicated than the dichotomy can hold. With the assistance of 32 interviews from Mexican and Central American unaccompanied migrant youth, this article argues for children’s agency. It allows for their complex interrelations be and their experiences legitimized rather than suppressed or denied.

The authors of this article use an approach that explores how young unaccompanied migrant bodies express agency through motivation and assert it as so, but also how their agency is suppressed or fostered by state and non-state factors. For example, there is the argument that children act upon plans as given to them by an adult (parroting)—an argument that denies a child’s agency and places it upon the person who made the plan. In this article we see how a child’s agency is present even with a pre-panned route—the plan is followed, but the execution contains the child’s intention, and strategic decision making.

Padilla, et al. in the article Gender, Sexuality, Health and Human Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean, as the title suggests, discusses various problems concerning these contemporary public issues and their connections to potential human rights violations. They analyze various papers as well as observe socio political conditions of the specific countries they study to better understand the various ways folks think and make claims about what is considered a violation of human rights and what is not.

Padilla, Pingel, Renda, Reyes, and Fiereck are professionals in the fields of education and health whose intersecting research interests and expertise lie in the studies concerning gender and sexuality, public and global health, and sociology in the regions of Latin America and the Caribbean as reflected in the content of the aforementioned article. This article also cited the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a primary document utilized by scholars and scholar-activists to defend their arguments and positions on issues such as abortion, HIV, gender bias, and abortion.

This article, as it relates to the study of human rights and within the scope of this class, showcases the ways through which we see how human rights continue to be a topic that is longly-disputed and debated especially in societies where there are varying cultures, traditions, and technologies; however, it is also important to note the contributions of this research article in progressively moving towards creating a “sustainable” human rights approach in gender, sexuality, public and global health.

ABOUT THE PHOTO: The image of an intersection symbolizes the ways through which we see themes and issues in human rights as either complementing or contradicting. It is an image that is simple to understand when explaining further what human rights are.

The research study, A Foot in Both Worlds: Transnationalism and Media Use Among Venezuelan Immigrants in South Florida, by Moses Shumow addresses issues concerning the Venezuelan immigrant community in the United States and mass media content which allows Venezuelan immigrants to live transnational lives. The research article is focused on Miami Florida and states that Venezuelan population “in the United States has grown over 90% in the past decade” (377) which makes them the fastest latinx growing population in the United States. Media is aimed for communication and in the article it states that it is through media that Venezuelan immigrants are able to stay in touch with the roots they left behind. The research studies the “role of the media in the formation of  21st century immigrant community and… how these factors are related to the multiple theoretical facets of research on transnationalism” (377). The research is based on interviews conducted to Venezuelans, four of them were womxn and six were men. Through the interviews, the researchers found that media indeed allows folks who have migrated to the United States to live transnational lives, however, Venezuelan press outlets chose what they wish to report out of fear of being discontinued by others like their former president Hugo Chavez. This exclusion of information reduces the information available for those who were forced to leave their country and creates a feeling of division among the community.

The goals of the study were to understand how the role of media and information are related to their ability to adapt and assimilate to a new country and how a new identity is developed. The study does a great how at incorporating the immigrant experience and how important it is for undocumented folks to stay in touch with their roots. It also incorporates how the media can manipulate the things they report thereby causing sense of division among members of the community and dismantling community unity. The research describes a clear understanding on how the media influences the type of information people consume about their country while integrating themselves in their new home (390). All findings were acquired through qualitative data based on a sampling method of ten interviews which I find to be one of the weaknesses of the study especially since it was conducted in Miami which was reputedly said to be the “Hollywood of Latin America” (379) by the author. The people interviewed for the study were higher status folks who had well paying jobs and careers. To make the study more relatable towards the general community, there should have been a variety of community members included such as members of lower class, LGBTQIA+ folks, and more womxn.

Overall, the study does a good job at incorporating political issues that have affected Venezuela and its people. It demonstrates how Hugo Chavez’s political agenda has forced Venezuelans to leave their country and has also limited the connections they have once they leave. It engages conflicts Venezuelan immigrants face once they leave their country which is what my group will be focusing on.

“Human Rights in Latin America: A Politics of Terror and Hope” by Sonia Cardenas, provides a look into the evolution of human rights in Latin America. She illustrates the initiatives that took place throughout Latin America’s counterculture movement which proceeded to draw global attention. The rise of socialism due to an influx of radical ideals and social strife, drew young Chileans, Argentinians, and Brazilians to congregate in the masses to dismantle staunch conservative ideologies. Cardenas dissects groups and governments that constructed a pathway to violence, secrecy, and overall chaos. In seven chapters, the author divides the topics into “terror” and “hope” which conceptualizes the heinous acts of violence committed in Latin American regions and the optimistic approach human rights activists provided.

This book critically emphasizes the violence and heartbreak associated with Latin America during military intervention. Cardenas gathers stories from individuals who either had something happen to them or to a loved one. This not only provides a strong narrative that advocates for the reader to empathize for the victims but enables the topic of human rights to prosper. Narratives of victims enables readers to comprehend the chaos; Cardenas inputs these narratives along with questions at the end of the chapter to generate thought provoking answers that critically assess Cardenas’s statements throughout the novel. The questions at a the end are interesting in regards to the format of the book, which are meant to engage the reader and the author. Because of this, the directed audience seems to be tunneled to students or individuals new to the history of human rights in Latin America.

Sonia Cardenas gathers a sufficient amount of information that present an important read for anyone seeking more knowledge on human rights in Latin America. Her engaging questions and empathetic quotes make the case for a strong novel. These questions however, allow me to conceptualize human rights through a variety of lens’ and critically analyze my own perceptions of events in Latin American history. I will use these questions as guides while doing my own research on Latin American political initiatives as well as social dilemmas that continuously plague communities. 

Every year, there are about 200,000 – 400,000 Central Americans from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador who cross Mexico in order to migrate to the United States. 25% of these are women. The paper focuses on the factors that caused the Migrant Caravan to happen and argues that it should be considered a “forced migration” of people. Furthermore, it considers the migration a resistance against three forms of violence from the state, the market, and the patriarchy.

The essays uses ethnographic data from the Caravan of Central American Mothers and research by Central American feminists. One strength of the paper is that it characterizes the different factors that led to the Migrant Caravan: violence from the state, the market, and the patriarchy. For example, for state violence, it argues that migrants experience extortion from public officials such as the police or are victimized by the criminal networks that are administered and protected by the state. As for problems with the market and the patriarchy, migrants are affected by the violence stemming from the neoliberal market that affected all areas of their daily lives and allowed for the use of violence against women (p.3). In particular, women migrate not for leisure but for survival, in order to rescue their daughters and mothers from the violence in Central America. They seek to migrate in order to gain a life of dignity.

Another strength is that it continues to break down and expound on these factors cohesively: first, the neoliberalization process of the region, second, a reflection on feminicidal violence, and third, delving into the violence that comes from the market and femicide violence from necropolitical violence.

One weakness of the paper is that it does not discuss much the history of women’s rights in Central America and why women experience and disparity in rights.

According to her website biography, the author, Amarela Valera Huerta is a PhD in Sociology from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Autonomous University of Barcelona) with a specialty in migration from the Pontificia de Comillas University in Madrid and a degree in Journalism and Coommunication Sciences from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Authonomous University of Mexico). Furthermore, she is a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico. She has worked extensively in media as a journalist and producer of radio and television in the news field in Mexico and as a correspondent abroad. Her academic work focuses on migration, social movements, interculturality, and communication. Moreover, she is the author of the book “For the Right to Remain and to Belong, a Sociology of the Struggle of Migrants” (Traffickers of Dreams, Madrid, 2013) and wrote “Defying Borders: Control of Mobility and Migratory Experiences in the Capltalist Context (Frontera Press Oaxaca, 2013) with Alejandra Aquino and Fred Decosse. Lastly, she has published several academic articles in indexed journals and scientific disseminations. The intended audience for this are the people who are interested in migration studies and human rights.

As we continue to discuss human rights, we also have to be aware that not all human rights/laws are created equally and there are populations that still fall through the cracks. This is where abuse happens. This paper is important because it tackles the severe importance of writing laws that specifically protect women, especially in places like Central America where violence against women is rampant.

Works Cited:
“Migrantólogos.” Amarela Varela Huerta. Accessed January 24, 2019. http://www.migrantologos.mx/es/integrantes/13-amarela-varela-huerta.

by Lauren Junco, Jasmin Sanchez, Jennifer Mendoza, and Daniella Reyes

Eleven years old and pregnant in Tucumán Argentina, that is the latest headline that appeared in the New York Times. After weeks of what the young girl thought was stomach pain, she went to a health clinic in a rural Tucumán province of Argentina and found that she was 19 weeks pregnant. The young girl admitted that she was raped by her grandmother’s boyfriend and that she wanted to terminate the pregnancy at the local public hospital. Instead of following the girl and her mother’s wishes, the hospital gave her pills to increase the growth rate of the fetus and invited anti abortion groups into her private hospital room, further delaying her pregnancy and not giving her the desired abortion.  When confronted with legal authorities the doctor at the hospital verbally refused to give her an abortion. Two private sector doctors were forced to perform a cesarean section on the then 12 year old because she was too far along to have an abortion (Politi 2019). Cases like this are common in Argentina and bring to light the human rights being violated in these circumstances. We chose to open with this news story to show the devastating, real life effects of inaccessibility to abortion.

This situation is an example of the reality for women in Argentina and around the world where abortion is banned. In Argentina there are only two situations in which abortion is legal: if the woman was raped or if the pregnancy puts the woman’s health at risk (Specia 2018). Conflicting views of whose rights matter more are at the center of the issue with regards to whose life holds more value: the mom or the unborn child’s? On one side, there is the Catholic church who says the killing of an unborn child is considered murder. On the other hand, there are the women protesting in Buenos Aires with symbolic green bandanas who feel their rights to have a choice are being violated. Throughout our research exploring the fight for legal abortion in Argentina, the same question arose time and time again, who’s rights matter more the unborn child or the mother’s? The Catholic church’s influence on Argentina is present in its legislation and its influence over the country. The church has more connections with politicians and resources to assert its power and combat groups who don’t agree with catholic ideology (Blofield 2008, 399-419). Groups like the Encuentros and NGOs go against the Catholic church in order to try to change legislation in an attempt to make the country more progressive. These groups want legal abortion for all women since 500,000 women have been hospitalized from poorly executed abortions (Kulczycki 2011, 199-220). But at UN conferences, any pro abortion or sexual health act immediately gets shut down by the Catholic Church out of fear of producing more homosexuals or other ungodly people (Teutonico 2017, 247-263). Female activism as a whole has been rising in Argentina which heightens the debate on abortion, bringing to light more arguments from both sides. (Borland and Sutton 2002, 700-722). This push could be from social changes happening in other countries in Latin America or the lasting effects of the dictatorship in the 1980s and how that has shaped social perspectives (Morgan 2015, 138-140). With the influence of conflicting outside agencies like the United Nations and the Catholic church, and the Argentine government, which is influenced heavily by Catholicism, the strive for progress faces an arduous journey.

Here is the full dossier.

By Hannah Ross, Lina Mantanona, and Brooke Richards

Brazil is one of the most progressive country in Latin America in terms of institutionalized LGBT rights, yet it is the most dangerous country in the world for the LGBT community. The violence against LGBT people in Brazil has recently skyrocketed from its already leading numbers in murders and attacks on people due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. This spike has been attributed to the election of now president Jair Bolsonaro, who has made international headlines for his extreme hate speech condemning LGBT citizens. The new leader of Brazil has gained his political position through a widespread grassroots movement, based on a conservative and religious platform. Bolsonaro’s attitudes towards the LGBT rights are exemplified through blatant statements made in reference to the LGBT community: “yes, I’m homophobic – and very proud of it,” and “I would rather have a dead son than a gay one”. These remarks have led to the surge of violence against sexual minority groups, but have only enhanced the discriminatory ideology that has already existed in Brazil for years.

Brazil has a long standing history of oppression against many groups including women, Afro-Brazilians, Indigenous groups, and members of the LGBT community. The discrimination that these groups face comes from both the state and societal level and stem from deeply rooted Christian beliefs. While Brazil was one of the first countries in Latin America to formally separate church and state in 1891, the influence of religion remains a decisive factor in legislation and political actions to maintain alignment with the ideology of the Catholic church. This record of religiously leveraged corruption in the Brazilian government can be most recently seen through Bolsonaro’s appointment of an evangelical pastor who pledges to promote Christian values above all else as Brazil’s new Human Rights Minister.

As a primary function of state governments is to protect the rights of their citizens, it is important to understand that state-sponsored isolation and violence against the LGBT community threatens the security of rights for all citizens of Brazil. State sponsored violence has continued to rise, and in 2016, 4,424 citizens were murdered by police with no repercussions or due process, leaving victims and their families with no viable course for justice. The failure to acknowledge state sponsored acts of violence has created a culture of impunity within Brazil that allows for prejudice and homophobia thrive. Despite recent progress gained for LGBT rights, the homophobic rhetoric following the election of Bolsonaro has spiked violence that has threatened the human right to life, security of person, and to live free from discrimination. Based on Bolsonaro’s incitement of anti-LGBT terror, his political goals of repealing the LGBT rights won, and his desire to increase police and military presence in public spaces, the human rights of LGBT people in Brazil are severely endangered.

Anastasie Lenoir, Katrina Manrique, Sarah Mayorga, & Nicole Rapista

In 2017-2018, the caravana migrante, or migrant caravan, composed of Central American migrants fleeing violence, political repression, and economic instability, started to make its way from the Northern Triangle through the Guatemala-Mexico border, and the Mexico-United States border. Men, women, and children from the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are migrating in large numbers in the hopes of finding freedom from such societal instability to create better lives for themselves and their families. When traveling in the caravan, volunteers, humanitarian groups, shelters, and churches have offered assistance to the migrants as they make the hard, and dangerous journey north. Although some agencies are interested in helping the migrants, others often make their journey one that is similar to the very reasons and experiences in which they have fled their country for. Since the 1990’s, the US-Mexico border has become a heavily militarized, cold welcome for migrants as border patrol operations like “Operation Hold the Line”, the Merida Initiative, and other advanced operations have deterred migrants, and often ignored asylum claims. With such operations being implemented at the US-Mexico border, the US has put increasing pressure on Mexico to secure their borders, which has resulted in little to no government support of migrants, and institutional and economic legacies of the drug war taking place in Mexico allowing for the exploitation of Central American migrants through economic violence.

As migrants make their journey through Mexico in the hopes of reaching the US, they are often subject to rape, robbery, kidnapping, human trafficking, exploitation, and other forms of abuse, while also facing dismemberment and death through migration transportation such as “La Bestia” and physical landscapes. Central American migrants are the main actors in this case, but the US and state/non-state actors in Mexico are also key actors as they often make or break the migrant experience in terms of how migrants are able to, or not able to, receive the support they need on their journey. As mentioned, the United States’ rigorous immigration and asylum seeking process along with the pressure it puts on Mexico has resulted in Mexico itself committing human rights violations against Central American migrants as migrants are often deemed as using Mexican resources and taking jobs away from Mexicans. This belief system on behalf of Mexico then perpetuates the violence committed against migrants in the name of capitalism and economic gain. It has been said by scholars, journalists, and those who aim to provide support for migrants on their journey through Mexico that Mexico has often times ignored the ways in which non-state actors are violating migrant safety and rights. State actors are ignoring the migrants needs as they are not providing them with the aid they need in order to be able to move through Mexico without the fear of being abused and violated. Legal and government institutions are also not allocating and directing funds intended for migrant support, which leaves the migrants with little to no resources besides the ones given to them by churches, volunteer organizations, etc., on their journey. Central American migrants themselves are seeking rights within Mexico to be able to work and provide for themselves and their families without the fear of violence and abuse perpetrated by Mexico. Migrants have personally voiced their struggles of having to deal with injustices and human right violations within Mexico that are similar to the ones they have faced in their home countries, and that such experiences are not only disheartening, but also reinforces their main goal: to get to the United States.

This case is not only relevant as the migrant caravan continues to make its way north, but it also highlights some complex human rights issues in regards to Latin America as a whole. Each of the actors in this case are a part of Latin America and share identities based off of that association, but what we see with this case is that Mexico is committing human rights violations against Central Americans, which is problematic as Mexico itself has been subject to human rights violations. It seems as though there should be a shared sense of struggle and compassion in terms of both Mexicans and Central Americans facing violence, abuse, and instability within their own countries, and wanting to flee those circumstances. Instead, Mexico has used Central American bodies as economic vessels, which has left Central Americans vulnerable and dehumanized on their migration journey.

To understand how and why such human rights violations are taking place in Mexico against Central Americans, it is necessary to understand the reasons behind Central American migration and how violence has taken form within Central American countries to influence people fleeing them. It is then necessary to look at the history of Mexican institutions that have allowed for such economic, political, and social instability that has then translated into the migrant experience of extortion, robbery, kidnapping, human trafficking, and even death in Mexico. In analyzing these concepts, the journey of Central American migrants can be acknowledged to create an environment in which their rights are established and protected.

For more information on Central American migration in Mexico, visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SdolmxMUc-57aBY-lxd3Wozlaj6wggpFn9o-ex3OHF4/edit?usp=sharing

Annotated Bibliography

“9 Questions (and Answers) About the Central American Migrant Caravan.” WOLA

Advocacy for Human Rights in the Americas. October 22, 2018. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://www.wola.org/analysis/9-questions-answers-central-american-migrant-caravan/.

This article was written by a prominent advocacy organization for human rights in the Americas. It answers nine basic questions about the Migrant Caravan, such as who is part of it, who the key players are (government and non-government), and what is currently going on in the region. For instance, it talks about why people are leaving and specifically in this moment, if Trump can cut aid to Central America, why people are traveling as a caravan, why there is so much vitriol in the public discourse, what Mexico’s policies are towards the caravan, and touches briefly upon their situation in Mexico. I think this article will be useful for our paper because it provides a succinct and bird’s-eye-view summary of the situation, which helps frame our paper to both have a macro and micro- analysis and connect the complex points of history how it led to severe contemporary issues.

“Alliance for Progress (Alianza Para El Progreso).” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

and Museum. Accessed March 11, 2019.

https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/alliance-for-progress.

Castillo, Manuel A. “Mexico: Caught Between the United States and Central America,

Migration Policy Institute, April 2006, https://search.oecd.org/development/pgd/43082688.pdf (accessed February 18, 2019).

This article from the Migration Policy Institute is an informational/informative piece that gives a brief history of Central American migration to Mexico and the refugee/border situation in the country. The article focuses specifically on the Mexican State of Chiapas and the Guatemalan immigrants within the state. The article first discusses the history of Chiapas in relation to Guatemalan refugees. It states that Chiapas has been a historically agricultural, impoverished community and that after the 1970s, Guatemalan migrants were able to work seasonally in the state. After the various civil wars in Central America took their tolls on the livelihoods of Central Americans, Central American migration to Mexico skyrocketed and Mexico had to find ways to deal with the influx on immigrants. Certain policies were implemented to try to ensure humanitarian protection and assistance. The fact however remains that migration is not easy and Central Americans face human rights violation like robbery, rape, extortion, and other corrupt practices on their way through Mexico. In the 1990s and until this day, there has been increased pressure from the US to secure the Mexican border and in doing so, has further promoted deportation policies. The end of the article states that much needs to be done in terms of protecting immigrants and creating rationale immigration policies. The author of this article is a professor at the University of Mexico and he specializes in demographics and urban planning. Castillo’s background is important to this article as it focuses on different communities and how immigration could affect the social and urban landscape of countries like Mexico. The intended audience of this article could be anyone interested in Central American migration, the experience of migrants, and the future of immigration policy. This article’s importance lies in its ability to document the history of migration in Mexico and how it has shifted in recent years due to the pressure the US is putting on Mexico to secure their border. This article is useful for our research as it provides factual information on migration through Mexico, but also highlights the process of seeking asylum and how pre-existing policies and new policies need to be improved to ensure that Central American migrants are protected in and on their journey through Mexico. The article provides evidence that through their journeys, Central American migrant bodies are commodified and exploited for their monetary value through the forms of violence mentioned in the article. This article also prompts questions about what exact policies would help the situation of Central Americans in Mexico.

Corchado, Alfredo. “Central American migrants face grueling journey north”, The Dallas

Morning News, 2014.

This article from The Dallas Morning News documents the experiences and stories told of and by Central American migrants in Mexico. This article is not necessarily an argumentative piece, but more of a field report in the way in which it collects personal, first-hand accounts of Central American migration through Mexico. The article discusses the hardships that Central Americans face while traveling through Mexico and mentions “La Bestia” and other dangerous methods of migrant transportation where the migrants are subject to rape, robbery, and death. The article also mentions that Mexico has been taking more measures and implementing more policies to deter migrants, which often makes their journeys harder and more dangerous. The author of the article is an award-winning journalist and author who covers Mexico, and specifically the US-Mexico border along with the drug wars and corruption in the country. Given that Corchado is on the “front lines” so to speak as he places himself within places and environments where current events are actually taking place, his authority over the subject matter he discusses in his article is strong as he is interacting with and telling the actual stories of the Central American migrants embarking on the difficult journey north. The article is presented in different sections that focus on different regions in Mexico and the stories told are of Central American migrants who are traveling these busy migrant routes. The sections focus on migrants in the areas of Tenosique, Palenque, Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, and La Patrona. A different story is told by each different migrant that Corchado has interviewed. In Tenosique, Honduran migrant Jose Adolfo Orellano Lopez and his friend Melvin Anderson Solidre have been washing car windows for tips. Orellano says that while traveling on the train, they are “exposed to the world” and their fate is “more than ever at the mercy of people.” In La Patrona, Doña Leonidas discusses her want to help the migrants as she delivers them food and other goods. She states “we didn’t know who they were, or where El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras was…now they’re part of our family.” In providing such stories and experiences, the author is able to connect emotionally with the audience and emphasize the reality of the migrant experience and those who help along the way. The importance of this article is that although it doesn’t provide hard statistics or historical background surrounding Central American migration to Mexico, it puts into perspective that actual human beings are facing terrible human rights violations, while ultimately braving out the journey and continuing on their quest for a better life. This source is useful to our research as is provides first-hand accounts of the migrant experience, and serves as a primary source to prove that such hardships are not only taking place, but also the dynamics between migrants and the Mexican population. This source will also be helpful when discussing state actors, and non-state actors and how they interact with migrants and ultimately shape their experiences. The distinction between those who want to help and those who want to hinder will be crucial to understanding how and why Central Americans are facing such human rights violations.

Dibble, Sandra. “Central American migrants move north through Mexico in new caravan”,

The San Diego Union Tribune, 2019.

This article focuses on the ways in which Mexico’s new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has been trying to implement new policies that will benefit and provide assistance to Central American migrants making their way north through Mexico to the US. The article states that more recently, the president has been trying to welcome the migrant caravan and provide them with one-year humanitarian visas, which is more help than they have received in the past. In doing so, the migrants are able to live and work anywhere in Mexico without fearing deportation. Although many migrants have applied for the visas, they still hope to make it to the US. The article provides quotes from migrants stating that the economic situation in Mexico is similar to their home countries, and therefore; it’s the US or bust. The article also provides information from the Mexico Immigration Commissioner who states that the country’s goals now are to provide assistance to the migrants and enact policies in the correct manner. Towards the end of the article, the author mentions the president of the US, Donald Trump, and how his anti-immigrant sentiments challenge Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s efforts to ensure the humane treatment of Central American migrants in Mexico. The author of this article is a journalist who covers the US-Mexico border and other international and multicultural topics. Although this article is brief, it draws the attention of a wide and broad audience who is interested in the migrant caravan, US-Mexico relations, migrant humanitarian assistance, and political figures like Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Donald Trump and their political platforms. The importance of this article is its ability to highlight the ways in which Mexico is trying to improve in terms of the treatment of Central American migrants. Our paper will focus largely on the hardships and struggles that immigrants face while traveling through Mexico, which often includes commodification, extortion, and other forms of structural violence, but this article provides a sense of hope in that Mexico is trying to improve the rights that migrants possess within the country. It is important to discuss how state actors are enforcing such forms of violence which we have gathered evidence of, but this paper provides accounts of state actors engaging in the opposite activities which aim to help migrants. In addressing state actors and non-state actors in Mexico in regards to human rights violations, it is important to discuss the different actions being taken and how these actions challenge one another and affect how Central Americans experience migration through Mexico.

Del Frate, Anna Alvazzi. “When the Victim Is a Woman.” In Global Burden of Armed

Violence 2011, 113-44. Vol. 2. 2011. Accessed February 21, 2019. http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/GBAV2/GBAV2011_CH4_rev.pdf.

Found within the same report as “Characteristics of Armed Violence”, “When the Victim is a Women” focuses on the intersection between armed violence and gender. It does so by introducing the concept of femicide and then analyzing its relationship to armed violence, intimate partner violence, and other hidden forms of gender violence. While this article does not exclusively focus on Latin America nor migration, it provides several useful charts and graphs that identify Central American country’s rate of femicide. In Fig 4.6, for example, it analyzes femicide trends amongst El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and the United States over a 5 year period. It also breaks down difference between male- and female-violence. This data will again be used as a way of comparing data from the past with current data on gender violence. Furthermore, it provides a general framework of what identities, communities, and intersections to consider when discussing violence.

El Salvador: Another Vietnam?Directed by Glen Silber and Teté Vasconcellos. Performed

by Mike Farrell. Internet Archive. Accessed March 11, 2019.

https://archive.org/details/elsalvadoranothervietnam.

Estrada, Andrea. “The Migrant Caravan and Central American History A Failing Social

Order Has Led to an Exodus from Central America.” Santa Barbara Independent, December 17, 2018. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://www.independent.com/news/2018/dec/17/migrant-caravan-and-central-american-history/.

One of the key features of this article is that it shines a light on how the mainstream media in the US has grossly and deliberately de-historicized and decontextualized the crisis in Latin America – particularly absolving the US of any wrongdoing or role in the destabilization of the region. It expounds on the intricate web of globalization, agribusiness, tourism, and corrupt political institutions and their hegemonic hold on Latin America. For example, from the era of 1990s-2000s, came a powerful wave of globalization where transnational agribusinesses were able to set up giant plantations and upscale tourist complexes for the wealthy while the locals were stripped of their land and served as peasants for oil plantations and farms owned by foreigners. This will help our paper because it gives a strong argument for how the mainstream news may not provide the most accurate representation of the crisis. By providing a deep historical analysis, we are able to properly contextualize the current situation in Latin America.

Firearms Trafficking in Honduras. August 2017. Accessed February 21, 2019.

https://www.insightcrime.org/images/PDFs/2017/Firearms-Trafficking-Honduras.pdf.

“Firearms Trafficking in Honduras” is a report published by InSight Crime and the Asociacion para una Sociedad Mas Justa. This report exclusively provides context towards the arms trafficking occuring within Honduras, one of the countries within the Northern Triangle. This could provide more specific context as to why Hondurans are leaving Honduras. The report is helpful for our dossier for three reasons. First, it discusses the failure for Honduran institutions to account for and regulate the sale of arms. Second, it identifies neighboring countries (i.e. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico) and their influence on Honduras’ firearm trafficking. A primary focus of our dossier is to discuss how institutions within Latin America contribute and perpetuate to injustices happening in Latin America. Third, it provides data on the Honduran military supply of firearms. Since the military is considered an institution, the data provided in this section can help us identify how institutions such as the military contribute to the mass migration of Hondurans and Central American individuals.

“Firearms within Central America.” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Accessed

March 11, 2019. https://www.unodc.org/documents/toc/Reports/TOCTASouthAmerica/English/TOCTA_CACaribb_firearmssmuggling_within_CAmerica.pdf.

González, Yaatsil Guevara, Sheldon X Zhang, Gabriella E Sanchez, and Luigi Achilli.

“Navigating with Coyotes: Pathways of Central American Migrants in Mexico’s Southern Borders.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 676, no. 1 (2018): 174-93

This article explore the effect of the migrant shelters as a social environment on the planned and actual trajectories of the migrants of their way to the United States.  It also explores the relationships between the coyotes and migrants and describes them as mutually beneficial and part of the economics of the Mexican society. Smuggling has become and industry and business for many people and they attempt to use the migrant shelters and ways to obtain more business, which the shelters do not approve of and  causes tension and problems. It also discusses the social impact of the migrant shelters within the communities they arise in. Racism and fear play a role in the impact of these shelters. This article helps to demonstrate further the perils and assistance that migrants face as they travel. This article helps our group to once again demonstrate the economic impact of human smuggling and the lack of interest in the Mexican institutions to either change their policies or protect migrants.

Goodman, Colby. “US Firearms Trafficking to Guatemala and Mexico.” Wilson Center.

April 2013. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/US Firearms to Guatemala and Mexico_0.pdf.

Huerta, Amarela Valera. 2017. “La Trinidad Perversa de La Que Huyen Las Fugitivas

Centroamericanas: Violencia Feminicida, Violencia de Estado y Violencia de Mercado.” Debate Feminista 53 (January): 1–17. doi:10.1016/j.df.2017.02.002.

Every year, there are about 200,000 – 400,000 Central Americans from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador who cross Mexico in order to migrate to the United States. 25% of these are women. The paper focuses on the factors that caused the Migrant Caravan to happen and argues that it should be considered a “forced migration” of people. Furthermore, it considers the migration a resistance against three forms of violence from the state, the market, and the patriarchy. The essay uses ethnographic data from the Caravan of Central American Mothers and research by Central American feminists. One strength of the paper is that it characterizes the different factors that led to the Migrant Caravan: violence from the state, the market, and the patriarchy. For example, for state violence, it argues that migrants experience extortion from public officials such as the police or are victimized by the criminal networks that are administered and protected by the state. As for problems with the market and the patriarchy, migrants are affected by the violence stemming from the neoliberal market that affected all areas of their daily lives and allowed for the use of violence against women (p.3). In particular, women migrate not for leisure but for survival, in order to rescue their daughters and mothers from the violence in Central America. They seek to migrate in order to gain a life of dignity. Another strength is that it continues to break down and expound on these factors cohesively: first, the neoliberalization process of the region, second, a reflection on feminicidal violence, and third, delving into the violence that comes from the market and femicide violence from necropolitical violence.  One weakness of the paper is that it does not discuss much the history of women’s rights in Central America and why women experience and disparity in rights. According to her website biography, the author, Amarela Valera Huerta is a PhD in Sociology from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Autonomous University of Barcelona) with a specialty in migration from the Pontificia de Comillas University in Madrid and a degree in Journalism and Coommunication Sciences from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Autonomous University of Mexico). Furthermore, she is a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico. As we continue to discuss human rights, we also have to be aware that not all human rights/laws are created equally and there are populations that still fall through the cracks. This is where abuse happens. This paper is important because it tackles the severe importance of writing laws that specifically protect women, especially in places like Central America where violence against women is rampant.

Kelly, Patty & Kovic, Christine. “Migrant bodies as targets of security policies: Central

Americans crossing Mexico’s vertical border”, Dialectical Anthropology, 41:1-11.

This article draws on information gathered from the United States Assistant Secretary of International Affairs and Christine Kovic’s field research in Mexico to highlight the violence that Central American migrants face in Mexico. The article states that migrants are subject to kidnapping, especially along the migrant train routes in Mexico. It also states that along with kidnapping, many migrants are victims of extortion, assault, rape, injury, detention, and other forms of abuse. The article argues that US and Mexico policies enforce the violence migrants face in Mexico as they have no protection from risk and danger. The article argues that these policies make migrant bodies vulnerable, and that in highlighting such issues, the authors hope to promote state accountability and remembrance of victims and their stories. The authors of this article are both Professors of Anthropology, which explains why they are focusing on the cross-cultural, and societal aspects and perceptions of migration in relation to Central America, Mexico, the US, and other factors like law and government. The intended audience of this article could be anyone interested in physical violence against Central American migrants, border policies, and even feminist scholars as both of the authors are females and specialize in anthropology and cross-cultural studies. The article is divided into three sections titled “Security within and outside the law: Mexico’s vertical border”, “Structured accidents and the security of violence: dead, dismembered, or disappeared”, and “Resisting the assaults of security: reinscribing life”. The first section draws on the expertise of the United States Assistant Secretary of International Affairs and discusses border policies like “Operation Hold the Line”, increased funds going towards border enforcement, and the Merida Initiative that have pushed migrants to take more dangerous routes to get to Mexico and the US. The ideas in section one transition well into section two, which discusses how on these dangerous routes, migrants are then subject to robbery, kidnapping, dismemberment, and death from physical violence or the physical landscape/methods of migrant transportation (freight trains). The last section discusses how such violence against migrants is often overlooked and unacknowledged by Mexico and that such behavior on behalf of the country promotes a lack of accountability and basic human rights. In structuring the article this way, the authors are able to track the migrant journey from policy to practice/experiences and how such dehumanization needs to be addressed. This article is important as it relates to our ideas about migrant bodies being sites of violence, discrimination, and commodification as policies and state/non-state actors within Mexico physically abuse and economically exploit migrants, all while ignoring their wrong-doings. This article also shows how the same factors that influence Central American migration like the search for economic stability and to flee from violence, are often the same challenges that they face while in Mexico, which will be crucial points to make when discussing the reason why people leave their home countries, but how their struggles still translate to a different country on their journeys.

Linthicum, Kate. “There Is Only One Gun Store in All of Mexico. So Why Is Gun Violence Soaring?” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2018. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mexico-guns-20180524-story.html.

Reported on the LA Times, this article looks at one of the only gun stores located in Mexico. Through its report, it attempts to understand the paradoxes between Mexico’s strict gun laws and the continued import of weapons from the United States to Latin American.

Malby, Steven. “Characteristics of Armed Violence.” In Global Burden of Armed Violence

2011, 87-112. Vol. 2. 2011. Accessed February 21, 2019.

http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/GBAV2/GBAV2011_CH3.pdf.

“Characteristics of Armed Violence”, written by the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, is part of a larger report entitled the Global Burden of Armed Violence in 2011. This overview is important because armed violence is one of the several reasons which account for the mass migration of Central Americans. In general, this section provide a general overview of armed violence and its correlation towards homicides within developing countries. While the source does not particularly focus on Central America, it can be used as a general guide to understanding the institutional components which perpetuate and motivate armed violence (i.e. legal system, police, etc.)

Furthermore, it offers a few figures which compares firearm-related violence to several countries including Central America. There are three figures in particular which mention firearm violence in relation to a Central American country: Fig 3.9 and Fig 3.12. Fig 3.9 shows the rate of firearm-related homicides in El Salvador in comparison to other countries. While Fig. 3.12 shows how a country’s rule of law potentially correlates with homicide rates. Fig 3.12 features data on Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. What is particularly strong about this source is its ability to generalize the various ways institutions are complicit in perpetuating armed violence.

Manz, Beatriz. Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua): Patterns of

Human RIghts Violations. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Status Determination and Protection Information (DIPS). Writenet Independent Analysis. August 2008. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/48ad1eb72.pdf.

This research essay talked about the history of the Central American countries of Guatemala, ElSalvador, and Honduras and the patterns of human rights violations that have occurred. It gives a regional historical background, regional contemporary background, and contextualizes regional gang violence. It delves deeper into each country by talking about the different human rights violations people experience under the hands of death squads, and their experiences with gender-based violence, violence against children, and violence against sexual minorities. This

research is important for our group because it provides a comprehensive historical background of

the region, which will help us give a holistic analysis as to why the Migrant Caravan exists and

explain the circumstances that made people flee their homeland.

Nowak, Matthias. “Small Arms Survey Research Notes: Armed Violence.” Small Arms

Survey. February 2012. Accessed February 21, 2019.

http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-14.pdf.

Provided by the organization Small Arms Survey, “Femicide: A Global Program” is a report which compares the rate of homicides against women on a global level. It uses data reported by the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development in order to make comparisons between the femicide rates amongst various countries. In particular, we will potentially be referencing Figure 2. “Average femicide rates per 100,000 female population in 25 countries and territories with high and very high rates, 2004-09”. This figure is relevant to our dossier in that it provides the femicide rates of El Salvador and Honduras (countries which comprise the Northern Triangle).

While the data for this figure refers to 2004-2009, the data could still be relevant to our study in two primary ways. First, it could be used to compare how current data on gender violence within Central America compares to earlier data. Second, the article also provides more specific numerical data on Intimate Partner Violence and Firearms for countries such as El Salvador and Brazil.

Romero, Luis G. “Dozens of migrants disappear in Mexico as Central American caravan

pushes northward”, theconversation.com, Nov. 2018, https://theconversation.com/dozens-of-migrants-disappear-in-mexico-as-central-american-caravan-pushes-northward-106287 (accessed February 18, 2019).

This article/post from the online journal The Conversation focuses on the disappearance of Central American migrants, who are a part of the caravana migrante, as they make their journey through Mexico. The article states that Central Americans have been fleeing their home countries ravaged with gangs, corruption, and poverty, only to be met with similar horrors in the country of Mexico on their way to the United States. The article discusses the disappearance of men, women, and children within Mexico, and how such violence is influenced by the current war taking place in Mexico between the country’s armed forces and drug cartels. The article also focuses on the asylum process in Mexico and how Mexico is currently falling short in terms of the assistance and funds they are supposed to use to support Central American refugees in Mexico. The US-Mexico border is also mentioned in regards to the rigid, often cold militarized personnel that greets the migrants as they arrive to the US where they most likely will be denied asylum. The article ends by stating that although Central Americans are facing a tough and violent journey north, they nevertheless endure such hardships in the hopes of a new life for themselves and their families in the US. The author of this article is a Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Rights, and Legal Theory at the University of Wollongong Australia. The article is split up into four different sections that are titled “Mexico’s ambiguous welcome”, “Asylum overload”, “Militarizing the US-Mexico border”, and “No relief at the border”. In sectioning the article this way, the reader is able to understand how international influences are affecting the ways in which people are able to migrate and the difficulties they face when doing so. The author also uses statistics and other quantitative measures to prove his main points such as mentioning the number of immigrants who have experienced violence en route ( which is ⅔) and the percentage of Mexicans from survey polls who want migrants to go back to Central America (which is 33%).The importance of this article is its usefulness in helping to explain why Central Americans are facing human rights violations in Mexico on their journey to the US. This article highlights issues like the drug war in Mexico, perceptions of Central Americans in Mexico, and the military and legal institutions that give little to no support to refugees. This article is important to our research as we are trying to uncover the human rights violations that Central Americans face when migrating through Mexico to the US, and it provides not only evidence of such violations, but also how legal and social institutions are making it easier for such violations to take place. In understanding these concepts through this article, we are able to easier see the connections between law, society, and violence.

“School of the Dictators.” New York Times, September 28, 1996. Accessed March 11, 2019.

“Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) & Migration Fact Sheet.” Kids in Need of

Defense. January 2017. Accessed February 21, 2019.

https://supportkind.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/SGBV-and-Migration-Fact-Sheet.pdf

The “Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) & Migration Fact Sheet” provides numerical data regarding gender violence within the Northern Triangle and its relationship towards migration. This resource is offered through the collaboration of 3 non-governmental organizations: Kids in Need of Defense, the Latin America Working Group, and the Women Refugee Commission.

This fact sheet contains four particular strengths related to our study. First, it focuses on gender violence specifically within the Northern Triangle, which is the main concern of our dossier. Furthermore, the facts sheet was released in January 2017 and could provide recent statistical evidence leading up to the October 2018 Migrant Caravan. Third, it shows numerical data for various intersections of gender-based violence. For instance, it breaks down forms and variations of gender-based violence within gangs, domestic partnerships, etc. Lastly, it shows limited numerical data regarding the LGBTI community, a group which is often silenced or underrepresented in media and scholarship.

Our group will be referencing this numerical data to discuss how systems of gender based violence within Central America influenced mass migrations to North America. In particular, we will use the data to show how there are barely any systems in built in Central America to report instances of gender violence.

Stohl, Rachel, and Doug Tuttle. “The Small Arms Trade in Latin America.” NACLA:

Reporting on the Americas Since 1967. March 6, 2008. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://nacla.org/article/small-arms-trade-latin-america.

Tseng-Putterman, Mark. “A Century of U.S. Intervention Created the Immigration

Crisis.” Medium(blog), June 20, 2018. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://medium.com/s/story/timeline-us-intervention-central-america-a9bea9ebc148.

This is an incredibly interesting article that enumerates the ways in which the US has intervened in Latin America in the past century and argues that the actions of the US played a central role in the immigration crisis we have today. Tseng-Putterman states that since Theodore Roosevelt declared in 1904 the US’s right to exercise an “international police power” in Latin America, it has left a lasting impact on the region that limited its ability to grow. For instance, the US-backed military coups, corporate plundering, and neoliberal policies have drained the region of resources and led to instability, poverty, and violence. This paper is important to us because it provides a comprehensive analysis of how policies like the CAFTA-DR – a free trade agreement between the US and Central American countries led the economy in the region to restructure and become dependent on the United States.

“Where the Guns Go: US Arms and the Crisis of Violence in Mexico.” American Friend

Service Committee. November 2016. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://www.afsc.org/sites/default/files/documents/2016 Where the Guns Go.pdf.

Women on the Run: First-Hand Accounts of Refugees Fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala,

Honduras, and Mexico. October 2015. Accessed February 21, 2019. https://www.unhcr.org/56fc31864.html.

Published by the UN Refugee Agency, “Women on the Run” provides first-hand reports of women feeling from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. While this article may not exclusively focus on the Northern Triangle, it provides first hand accounts from women who are migrating. For instance, within the Executive Summary, it offers a primary account from an El Salvadorian woman fleeing gang violence. This report is particularly strong, not only because it aligns with the subject and focus of our dossier, but it provides several first-hand accounts from women themselves. We will also be using the maps provided within this resource to trace areas of particular violence or concern for women. Finally, we will also be using this article to identify legal and institutional obstacles of obtaining asylum outside of Latin America and in Mexico.

Srikrishnan, Maya. “Everything You Need to Know About the Migrant Caravan, and

Those That Came Before.” Voice of San Diego. October 23, 2018. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-migrant-caravan-and-those-that-came-before/.

This news article talks about the Migrant Caravans have existed for the past decade, starting with the caravans of Central American mothers whose children have “disappeared” while make the dangerous trek to the United States. Their caravan was a protest of the injustices that people who try to cross suffer. Next, it talks about why people are leaving Honduras and what will happen to the caravan members who arrive at the US-Mexico border. I think this paper will be useful for us because it gives us more personal stories from the mothers and participants of the caravan, which will help ground our dossier more on the urgency of the problem. As important stats and analysis our, I think it will help our paper be stronger if we add the narratives of those who are on the trail.

Vogt, Wendy (2015) “The War on Drugs is a War on Migrants: Central Americans Navigate the Perilous Journey North,” Landscapes of Violence: Vol. 3 : No. 1, Article 2. DOI: 10.7275/R57P8W9F. Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/lov/vol3/iss1/2

This article draws the focus of human rights violations to the longer trajectory of security initiatives across the Americas.  Giving details about the Plan Colombia, Merida Initiative and the Central American Regional Security Initiative, the authors show how these policies created conditions that worsened the plight of migrants headed to the United States.  It also discusses how migrants, activists and Central American governments have begun to increase pressure on Mexico to reform its outdated and punitive migration policies. The article contributes to the dossier our group is creating as it helps to define and establish some of the external factors that contribute to violence against migrants.

Vogt, Wendy (2016) Stuck in the Middle With You: The Intimate Labours of Mobility and Smuggling along Mexico’s Migrant Route, Geopolitics, 21:2, 366-386, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2015.1104666

This article discusses the relationships that develop between smuggler and migrant.  It offers a short historical account of how migration has been going on for years between the US, Mexico and Central America, and how the media bolstered fears of an invasion and contamination that are not new, and reflect a longer history of “othering” at the US southern border and also how the US is using the “War on Drugs” to prevent migrants from coming to the US.  Also, it discusses some of the measures that the US is taking to creating more economic stability within the borders of the Northern Triangle to prevent migration. It draws attention to the deeper political and economic process that fuel the highly profitable industry of smuggling, not just in the Americas, but world wide. This article assists our group in giving context to why human rights violation are ignored as the system of human smuggling is part of the economics on the Mexican government.

Vogt, Wendy A. “Ethnography at the Depot: Conducting Fieldwork with Migrants in Transit.” In Where Is the Field? The Experience of Migration Viewed through the Prism of Ethnographic Fieldwork, 66-86. Studia Fennica Ethnologica. Helsinki, Finland: Finnish Literature Society.

This study gives rich details to the amount of Central American migrants who have died in Mexico, at the hands of transnational gangs, Mexican police and military, immigration official, local people and other migrants.  It states that these violation happen with impunity to the perpetrators and that there are multiple mass graves that have been uncovered in Northern Mexico that contain mostly Central Americans. Once again, this article helps to define the violations that the migrants suffer from, and the dangers they face as they travel north.  It helps to defend the position that the institutions within Mexico are not interested in protecting migrants. It also discusses the roles that migrants safe houses play in protecting migrants as they travel north. All of this information helps our group to adequately frame the circumstances, choices for migrating, and process that these migrants face.  It adds context to the way in which the institutions dehumanize and abuse these people.

Willers, Susanne. “Migration and Reproductive Strategies of Central American Women in Transit through Mexico.” Journal of Family Studies 24, no. 1 (2018): 59-75.

This article looks specifically at the experiences of women as they migrate.  Women are in much weaker positions and are more vulnerable to abuse on their journey north.  The women are assigned the roles of caregiver, and men are the ones who migrate more often, historically,  However, this trend is changing. Women also have the added responsibility, and sometimes guilt, of either bringing their children along the journey, or leaving them with family back in the country of origin.  If they choose to bring them, they have the pressure of worrying about their safety and the child’s, and if they leave them at home, they have the pressure of trying to find a job while on the move to send money home to their family taking care of their children.  This article helps to illustrate powerful limitations on migration strategies and mobility of migrant women. These arise from the context of undocumented migration, the criminalization of undocumented status and the the particular gender roles. One of the interviews speaks of a woman who’s son was kidnapped after she was raped by 12 men.  There are no punishments for these crimes. Once again, it goes to document how the Mexican government is not interested in protecting migrants.

Alicia Cahuilla, a member of the Waorani tribe in Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park, stands upon one of the many oil drilling sites in the Amazon. These oil production sites are putting Ecuador’s environment and Ecuadorian people’s human rights at risk. Image credit: Antonia Juhasz

Over the course of the last few decades, oil companies have been releasing billions of gallons of toxic pollutants and petroleum into the Amazon forest (the Oriente), posing a threat to both the environment and the health and welfare of the local Ecuadorian population. The presence of this oil production reflects problems in the Ecuadorian government and its policies, specifically exposing its disregard for basic human rights. More so, the Ecuadorian government’s failure to protect its people and prevent contamination of the Amazon is a direct violation of its citizens’ human rights to a healthy and safe environment. Oil producers, such as Texaco and Chevron, are given permission to operate on sacred land and conservation areas, dispossess indigenous groups, local people, and small farmers from their land, and lie about the impact of their projects. Because these companies and the government are not held accountable for their actions, the rights of local and indigenous people are constantly overridden.

The Oriente, home to hundreds of thousands of different animals and wildlife, is one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. The Amazon is also inhabited by several indigenous groups who rely on the environment and resources from the Amazon to sustain their lifestyle. As the Oriente becomes an increasingly greater target for Ecuador’s oil production, the culture and lifestyle of these people has been put at risk. Since 1972, oil companies have extracted billions of barrels of crude area from the region, releasing toxic wastes directly into the environment in the process. Waste contaminates the water indigenous people drink and bathe in, kills off species of animals that are normally hunted for food, and destroys the environment that supports the life of many. Samples of this waste water have revealed amounts of toxic pollutants several levels higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allows. Additionally, the number of cases of cancer and oil-related diseases have spiked in recent years as exposure to oil sources increases. The people living near these areas of destruction are most often living in poverty or apart of indigenous groups or small businesses and must deal with the consequences of the destruction while big companies reap the benefits. The health risks posed to Ecuadorian people further indicate a direct violation of basic human rights due to oil production in the Oriente. This blatant injustice has led to tension and disagreements between oil companies, the Ecuadorian government, and a coalition of indigenous and environmental groups. The latter groups are battling for the survival of the rainforest and the biodiversity it sustains, as well as for the rights and justice of its indigenous inhabitants.

Yasuni villagers use their surrounding environment for resources for survival. Because this environment is tainted by oil production, the villagers are potentially at an increased risk of various health concerns, including cancer. Image credit: Antonia Juhasz

While Ecuadorian law recognizes the human right to health and a healthy environment, this is often overlooked by the government as global demand for petroleum increases and opportunities for economic profits arise. For several years, the Ecuadorian government allowed oil extraction to occur without any oversight. Even though some regulations have been put into place now, they are still flawed and not nearly as stringent as they should be. Many of the state agencies in charge of these environmental regulations lack the resources, information, and political support needed to truly implement their authority. Until these groups and agencies gain the power to correctly manage and enforce the existence of environmental and human rights, the Ecuadorian government will keep disregarding any environmental laws and human rights that hinder their economic success.

The purpose of this dossier is to demonstrate how Ecuador’s government and oil development policies in the Amazon have violated the human rights of indigenous and local people. Individuals and entire communities are being put at risk as their surrounding environment is destroyed by the irresponsible actions of oil companies. Ecuador’s focus on economic profit through the exploitation of natural resources completely ignores basic human rights and the importance of protecting the environment.

Find complete dossier here: HIS 161 Group 17 Final Dossier.

Group 17: Jesse Landesman, Christine Bayliss, Justin Courtney, and Hadley Roberts-Donnelly

By Angel Cardoza, Mysee Xiong, Krista Keplinger, Shaylene Fischmann

…“we must not be silent, we must continue to write. Silence is an act of death and complicity.” — Jesús Javier Valdez Cárdenas

Over time, freedom of press and speech in Mexico has been systematically and purposefully eroded — leaving anyone who dissents at risk. According to ARTICLE 19, an organization tracking crimes against journalists, attacks against the press in Mexico have increased 163% from 2010 to 2016. The population of Mexico lacks full, unhindered access to information, and the pursuit of finding information and reporting on it has become a dangerous job. There were more than 20 reported killings of Mexican journalists from 2016 to 2017. When these human rights abuses occur, those responsible rest soundly, knowing the high impunity rate in Mexico will make it nearly impossible for them to face repercussions. Government and military officials, police, illegal authorities such as cartels, and those looking to protect their own wealth all seek to silence journalists, silence protest, and withhold information for various reasons, all of which stem from the desire for power and accumulation of wealth.

The Mexican government denies these civil rights to journalists, activists, protestors, individuals seeking information, the loved ones of victims, and the general Mexican public, who are systematically provided partial or false truths. When media cannot freely investigate, report, or publish due to systematic silencing of journalists, and freedom of the press is under attack, the society as a whole and democracy is under attack. Mexican federal investigators reviewed 117 killings going back to 2000, and only one has been solved. Of the 117 killings, only a handful of the cases have been further reviewed. The deaths are overwhelmingly determined to be unrelated to the journalist’s work, and not a crime against freedom of press/speech. These crimes are so prolific that Mexico is now considered one of the most dangerous countries to be a journalist.

Journalists in Mexico risk their lives to report, and many are killed. In May 2017, Jesús Javier Valdez Cárdenas, who risked his life to report on organized crime and created the news-outlet Ríodoce,was murdered, and his fellow journalist, Jonathan Rodríguez, was murdered the same day. Moisés Sánchez, The Union publisher, was killed after delving into a story of a local mayor stealing money, and Regina Martínez, who was an independent journalist that criticized local and the national governments, was murdered in 2012 after pursuing the mysterious death of a political official. These journalists died because of their occupations — they were murdered because of the truth they sought, and because of the public service they provided the general Mexican population and Mexican democracy as a whole. However, due to the high impunity rate in Mexico, guilty parties are rarely, if ever, held responsible. This creates an incentive for powerful elites to threaten, kidnap, or kill journalists if they believe their interests are at stake. This has eroded freedom of speech in Mexico, and has essentially made the truth inaccessible to the public in order to maintain power — which does not bode well for the future of Mexico’s democracy.

Crimes against protestors, activists, and the general Mexican public span back decades, with a complex and tangled history of political abuse, false truths, and human rights violations. Massacres and large disappearances of students and protesters have taken place with no answers from authorities. One of these atrocities was the Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968. The massacre silenced hundreds of people dissenting against the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s policies, and directly afterwards, authorities gave unreliable death counts, harassed and threatened journalists who sought to uncover the truth, and exempted those who perpetrated the massacre from punishment via impunity. The massacre was a massive human rights violation, and an abuse of freedom of speech. The violence was perpetrated with the intention of protecting wealth and reputation — but the silence was broken and the false truths the government presented were challenged by individuals such as John Roda, who lived to recount the massacre.

However, these human rights violations did not stop in 1968 — instead, they have not only persisted, but have actually worsened over time. In 2014, a large disappearance of 43 students occurred. The students were ironically traveling to protest the very massacre that happened in Tlatelolco Square in 1968. The 2014 missing students case was blown open when evidence collected by journalist Anabel Hernández indicated the disappearance was masterminded by government officials and cartels such as Guerreros Unidos.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) aims to count and track journalists who have been threatened or killed. The CPJ states that 48 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 1992. However, other sources claim higher numbers. The CPJ provides assistance with detailed information on murdered journalists with full names, type of murder, and the journalists’ affiliated news outlet. The effectiveness of CPJ lies in the diligent record-keeping of journalists violations, which assists in later prosecution and judicial court usage. ARTICLE 19, an organization with a similar motive to CPJ’s, records threats and murders of journalists, but furthermore, the organization also calls on the government to make changes. Though truly progressive reform to protect freedom of speech and press remains to be seen, their website calls “on the Mexican government to accept the request for a country visit by the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and invite the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression and the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial summary or arbitrary Executions to conduct a country visit.” The government’s negligence is persistent, but organizers will not be silenced and will continue the fight for reform.

For the full dossier, click here.

Dossier by Group 2: Francisco Ferreyra, Lucero Morales, Laura Roser, Christian Scott

On March 2, 2016, several heavily armed men broke into Berta Cáceres’ home in Honduras and fired multiple rounds, killing her instantly. These hitmen had connections to the Honduran military and the DESA, a hydroelectric company that funded the Agua Zarca dam construction. Berta Cáceres was a leader of the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, and campaigned against the construction of Agua Zarca [1]. Unfortunately, Berta Cáceres is not a unique case, her murder is part of a deliberate effort by state and corporate actors to silence protests against a variety of development projects. Hundreds of land defenders have been killed and countless have been assaulted in the past decade [2]. The unusual thing about Berta Cáceres’ case is the international media attention over her murder and the prosecution of some of her killers (Watts, 2018; Global Witness 2017).

Honduras and Guatemala are two of the most dangerous countries for land defenders. Since the 2009 coup, 123 people have died in Honduras alone due to their involvement in defending the environment. In Guatemala, six land defenders were killed in a two week period during 2018 (Scurr 2018). Additionally, the killers of land defenders in Central America are almost never prosecuted. Corporations and government officials seeking to silence protests operate with impunity because there are few investigations into crimes committed (Global Witness 2017).

Who are Land Defenders?

We consider land defenders anyone who struggles for the right of the land to exist in its “natural” state and who resists the encroachments of multinational corporations and state interests who seek to exploit the land for economic gain. These defenders have been persecuted for their works against environmental land grabs to create hydroelectric dams, palm oil, banana plantations, mining, and tourism destinations. Since these projects are extracting value from natural resources, land defenders are often indigenous people or campesinos who live in rural areas where natural resources have not yet been over exploited (Global Witness 2017).

Tensions Between Economic Development and Human Rights

Central America in the 1990s and early 2000s started to invest in renewable energy projects because the many rivers and mountain ranges of the region form the perfect location for renewable energy projects. These projects include hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, solar, and other renewable sources of energy to provide electricity to the growing population and expand electrification. Combined, 2.2 million people live in Honduras and Guatemala without electricity (Central Intelligence Agency 2019). The Honduran and Guatemalan governments have invested in these projects along with foreign corporations. These projects come at a cost, as they are often located in indigenous lands and national parks. Many have resulted in indigenous peoples being forced to relocate, resulting in not only a loss of land but a loss of culture. Many indigenous people became land defenders because they were faced with this loss of their identity.

Land defenders in Honduras and Guatemala justify their protests against these environmentally destructive projects based on their rights to clean water, the right to a healthy environment, and their rights as indigenous people to the protection of the lands they have traditionally occupied. These rights are outlined in both the Constitutions of their countries and international law. Article 10 of United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) states that: “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return”. Article 19 also states that “States shall…obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them”. Free, prior, and informed consent is frequently brought up by land defenders in their explanations of their protests because it is a right specifically protected by DRIP. However, DRIP is just declaration and it is not legally binding (Rawls 2013). Therefore, even if indigenous people are forced off of their land or do not give consent for a development project, there is no real international legal recourse for them.

The Guatemalan and Honduran Constitutions also provide protections for the environment and indigenous people. Article 97 of the Guatemalan Constitution protects the environment against pollution and assigns the duty to promote ecological balance to both the state and the people, with water and the land being specifically mentioned. Access to water and sanitation are also declared to be human rights in Article 145 of the Honduran Constitution. The rights and interests of indigenous people are also given special protections by both the Honduran and Guatemalan Constitutions in Article 346 and Section 3, respectively.

Our Purpose

The purpose of this dossier is to explain why the murderers of land defenders in Honduras and Guatemala have impunity by providing historical background and case studies of current land defenders. We argue that the murders of land defenders in Honduras and Guatemala is a human rights issue that needs more attention from the international community because we must rethink our relationship to the environment; the conflict between environmental and economic rights will become increasingly complicated with climate change and environmental degradation.

To read more, visit here.

[1] Global Witness. “Honduras: The Deadliest Country in the World for Environmental Activism”. January 2017 https://www.globalwitness.org/sv/campaigns/ environmental-activists/honduras-deadliest-country-world-environmental-activism/

[2] Ortiz, Sergio, and Bertrand Marianne.“The legacy of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres lives on – as local campaigners call for justice.” Amnesty International. March 2018. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2018/03/legacy-of-honduran-activist-berta-caceres-lives-on/

[3] Watts, Jonathan. “Berta Cáceres case: a warning for those who would kill activists.” The Guardian. November 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/30/ berta-caceres-case-a-warning-shot-for-those-who-would-kill-activists

[4] Scurr, Tara. “Stop the killings of land defenders in Guatemala!”. Amnesty International. November 2018. https://www.amnesty.ca/blog/stop-killings-land-defenders-guatemala

[5] Central Intelligence Agency. “Honduras”. The World Factbook. 24 February 2019. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ho.html

[6] Central Intelligence Agency. “Guatemala”. The World Factbook. 2019. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gt.html

[7] United Nations. “United Nations Declaration on the Right of Indigenous People. March 2008. https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf

[8] Rawls, Dana. “Tracking the DRIP”. November 2013. http://ncis.anu.edu.au/_lib/doc/visitors/Rawls_Tracking-the-DRIP-update.pdf

[9] Francisco Valle Velasco, L. (Trans.). “Guatemala’s Constitution of 1985 with Amendments through 1993”. 2012. https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Guatemala_1993.pdf?lang=en

[10] Constitute Project (Trans.). “Honduras’s Constitution of 1982 with Amendments through 2013”. 2018. https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Guatemala_1993.pdf?lang=en

By Colin Heurlin, Susana Sanchez, Georgia Sherman, Johnathon Skinner

By 17 November 2018, the Venezuelan currency had reached an inflation level exceeding more than 1,300,000% in less than five years (BBC, 2019). The Fund for Peace (FFP) defines a fragile state as one wherein the state does not wield the capacity or legitimacy to provide essential protections and services, leaving citizens vulnerable to a range of various depravities. As Maduro’s regime battles international accusations of illegitimacy, the citizens of the once top-twenty most affluent countries in the world are now enduring a despot who has proved to be more concerned with staying in power than he is providing for his citizens. Our research shows that Maduro’s incompetence to defend basic human rights and provide accessibility to necessities for his people has manifested itself in four key regions: a failed economy, the weaponization of hunger, a toxic environment and extrajudicial violence.

Economically, the people have no ability to purchase food and are literally starving to death as a result of the failed socialist governmental institutions responsible for providing these goods. Regarding hunger, the 2003 creation of mercals has crippled private markets throughout the country, enabling the regime to be the sole proprietor of food across the country. Environmentally, the socialized oil companies that had become state-run and owned were dumping wastewater upstream to drinking water reservoirs, making much of the land and water poisonous. The increased use of violence to curb protests lead to a rise in extrajudicial killings, the “disappearing” of political activists, and substantiated claims of torture utilized by the regime.

What has similarly emerged from this fragile state is the means in which the state maintains its power. Venezuelan security forces have been mobilized at an increasing rate to combat the rising number of political protests, public dissonance, and civil deviance as a result of Maduro’s failure as a leader to properly and effectively provide for the Venezuelan people. These security forces have exercised the sanctioned use of extreme force in order to shut down anti-government demonstrations, largely acting with impunity. Over the last five years alone, thousands of people have been killed through the extrajudicial conduct of security forces. International human rights organizations have reported and detailed the conduct of these security forces during these protests, documenting the excessive use of force, firing live and rubber bullets into crowds, and even firing anti-riot weapons directly into the faces of protestors.

Likewise, thousands of people have been detained or imprisoned with little or no due process guaranteed to them under Title 8, Article 333 of the Venezuelan constitution. Many prisoners or detainees report being tortured by security forces or being held subject to cruel treatment at the hands of military officers. By examining the conduct between the Venezuelan people and the government, it will become clear that the Venezuelan people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the function of the government and the government had responded with massive amounts of oppression and resistance to observance of even the most basic of human rights.

The macro actors in this drama are members of the Venezuelan elite, the United States, the United Nations, and PDVSA, the state-run oil company. Nicolas Maduro is the ex-Vice President and current President of Venezuela who is widely considered to be the linchpin for the endemic corruption of public policy, food and medicine shortages, the increased crime levels, and the collapse of public services. Nicolas Maduro appears to be actively pursuing measures that maintain the power of his regime with no regard to providing for or governing his people. General Padrino is Venezuela’s defense minister and is the operational head of the country’s armed forces. He has declared that the armed forces will support Mr. Maduro against interventionism, coup attempts, or any threat of economic war. Padrino appears to be most interested in enshrining the power wielded by his military and ensuring that the profits coming from his military’s black market economy, dealing seized food and medicine, is not interrupted. The final player is the President of the National Assembly, Juan Guiado, the newest player in the game, claiming that the previous election was jeopardized by Maduro’s interference and that he is the rightful Interim President of Venezuela. He has stated that his purpose is to have truly fair elections and ensure that the Venezuelan President is truly the popular choice of its people by its people.

In the United States, the two key players are President Trump and National Security Advisor John Bolton, who both appear to share the desire of toppling the regime and securing resources for private oil interests. Trump’s rhetoric has been quite fierce towards the Venezuelan President, but it is John Bolton’s flagrant strong-arm tactics with USAID and US military that only further exacerbate the pressures felt by Venezuelan elites. In February, Bolton was seen presenting his notepad after exiting a meeting, exposing that the US was planning on deploying five thousand troops to the area. This information most certainly made its way to the President and his allies.

The United Nations has thrown fuel on the fire through its use of sanctions that have all but shut Venezuela off from the rest of the world. These sanctions are intended to weaken the regime and its exploiters, however, it appears to have only served to tighten their grip as black market prices have continued to soar. The PDVSA is Venezuela’s central oil company that enabled the country to prosper as a result of high oil prices, entering into the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and maintaining complete control over the nation’s largest source of GDP. The PDVSA enjoys near complete freedom of operation within Venezuela due to its revenue output and has a long history of polluting the country’s waterways and destroying indigenous land in pursuit of profits.

The claims that human rights are being violated come from the Venezuelan people and opposition figures, the United Nations, and the United States. The Venezuelan people refer to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights’ enumerated articles to aptly indicate the violations that have increasingly taken place since 2012. The United Nations and Human Rights Watch both indicate that numerous human rights are being violated, including articles 1,2,3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,17,18,19,20,21,22 and 23. Additionally, the 2005 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) UN doctrine put in place following the Rwandan genocide dictates an international norm that governments must protect their people from human rights violations, among other things, and that if the country in question’s government is not willing or able to protect its citizens then the international community is obligated to assist. The Venezuelan government is neglecting the UDHR treaty and the responsibility to protect doctrine as it continues its reign, appearing to show neither concern nor respect towards the international norms delineated as being a member of the UN or the larger international system.

One contradictory viewpoint to the stance adopted by our dossier team is that the Venezuelan military, under General Padrino, is the real ringleader of the country. Pro-Maduro supporters believe Maduro is trying his best to keep the country together while dissidence from his most important ally is causing the crisis. An interview with a grandmother in Venezuela shows that there is a belief within the pro-Maduro supporters that Maduro believes the food and the medicine that has been appropriated for certain districts is being intercepted by corrupt officials. She continues to theorize that Maduro believes that the goods are on the trucks, but that Padrino’s men are seizing it before it is distributed and are using it to make themselves wealthy. While not the conclusion reached by this dossier group, more research into the military’s involvement in politics would yield interesting insight into a less researched area of the crisis.

To read the full dossier, click here.

By Daniel Farinha and Edgar Alvarez-Rosa

On December 11th of 2006 the Mexican president Felipe Calderon announced that he would begin a war against drugs by aiming to disband the world’s most powerful and dangerous cartels. Just three years after the beginning of this new campaign the homicide rate in Mexico doubled with no progress towards ending drug trafficking. Today it is obvious that the inception of the drug war started by Calderon has resulted in over 100,000 additional homicides in Mexico. These additional deaths caused by the drug war could have been avoided and they create a legitimate human rights question for the policy makers in Mexico. Regardless of who is committing the crimes, whether they be members of the cartels trying to assert their dominance or Mexican military torturing suspects for information, it is the Mexican government that needs to look at itself for taking responsibility for the rising death toll in Mexico.

The human rights violations that are enabled by the Mexican war on drugs of course includes the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the past 13 years, but it has also enabled human rights violations such as extrajudicial killings, torture, and kidnapping. Kidnapping has been such an issue in Mexico that there have been thousands of missing people who are never found or heard of again. For the government of Mexico to refuse to end the war on drugs and to uphold it after so many years of death and torment is a human rights violation in itself. It has caused massive protests all over the country and created the Mexican Indignados Movement. The Mexican people know that the rising death toll is because of the war on drugs and are urging that laws be changed to decriminalize drugs, create stronger legal systems, and remove soldiers from the streets.

People in Mexico are being subjected to unthinkable amounts of violence, pain, abuse, and death as a result of this drug war. They are powerless to fight against the cartels who force them to join in the war or who are unrestrained by the thought of innocent people being caught in the crossfire. They are powerless to fight against the unlawful detention, interrogation, and torture by federal police. Mexico was not like this before the war on drugs began and the homicide rate gets worse every year. Men, women, and children are all affected as the war does not discriminate when it decides if it will kidnap, rape, or throw a body into a mass grave.

By Elsy Mora, Sabrina Faucette, Cristian Maldonado, Rory Crowly and Dave Ivan Cruz

“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity” -Nelson Mandela

In October of 2018, a caravan of 200 Salvadorans started the journey north to the U.S. in the hopes of finding a better life on the other side of the United States border. The director of the Salvadoran Institute of Migration says that between 200 and 300 people migrate every day.  A migrant says that they are fleeing the violence from gangs and the fear of being killed. The current situation of violence and desire to migrate that the citizens of El Salvador face emanates from the Salvadoran Civil war.

Since the violent and deadly civil war in El Salvador, the state has been characterized by residual trauma and ongoing violence. In 1980, due to civil unrest and political strife, the state erupted into civil war. The conflict lasted until 1992. While the war may have ended, the violence did not. Since the end of the war, many Salvadorans have migrated to escape the violence. This case file will show how the current migration patterns of Salvadorans is caused by the human rights abuses in El Salvador that trace back to the civil war.

There are a number of actors involved in this conflict. The first and foremost actor is the government of El Salvador. Rising to the civil war, the Salvadoran governments strengthened their military and increased the presence of their military throughout the country. The leadership of the country changed hands several times in the time preceding the war. Prior to the civil war, the goal of the government appeared to be an increase of control over the citizens. The government of El Salvador did this because of the increasing opposition to the actions taken by the leaders of the country. Through violent means like increasing the presence of death squads, increased military presence and a declaration of martial law, the government increased their presence within the nation. The United States of America supported the Salvadoran government in the civil war in the form of foreign aid and military training. The U.S. during this time still held the policy of containment and wished to support the government of El Salvador in their efforts to eradicate leftist ideology. The other role that the U.S. plays in this story is that it is the destination that migrants seek. The border between the United States and Mexico is the ultimate obstacle Salvadorans face and U.S. policy affects them greatly.

In response to the actions of the government in the 1970s, leftist opposition groups formed and began protesting the government’s actions. The most prominent groups were the Catholic church and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. (FMLN) These groups wished to stop the increased military presences and violence throughout the country, with the FMLN and other leftists and guerrilla groups taking up arms.

After the end of the war, those affected the most were the citizens of El Salvador. Migration towards the U.S. became an increasingly common trend as a result of the terror and violence that they faced in El Salvador. The aftermath of the civil war left behind a scar of violence and induced trauma that left citizenry with a militarized mindset. This, along with widespread poverty due to failures in economic policies creates limited economic opportunities as an access to a means of survival. This is a perfect breeding ground for an increase in gangs as a form of income. As a result, gang violence is widespread in El Salvador.

Human Rights apply to all people of all states. There is no doubt that citizens of El Salvador have experienced violence, death and repression during the Salvadoran Civil war and continue to do so from non-governmental forces. While it appears that state lead violence has ceased, the citizens suffer human rights abuses from gang members and others along their journey to the U.S. border. We can look no further than the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to detail the rights of all people. The UDHR was written in 1948, more than 30 years before the outbreak of the Salvadoran civil war. Under article 3, the universal document gives humans the right to life liberty and security. Article 5 forbids cruel, inhuman or torturous treatment of any peoples. Article 6 gives humans the right against unfair detention or exile. Article 14 grants the right to seek asylum from persecution in other countries. Article 30 forbids any state to take actions that violate any of the universal human rights. These articles are the most prevalent to the case of El Salvador.  What took place during the civil war and what is taking place now among Salvadoran people violated the principles set out by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For our full dossier, click here.