Americas 360

Femicide has long plagued the Americas. In 2018, the Latin American region included five of the twelve countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world. Across the region, social and economic insecurities created by the COVID-19 pandemic have deepened the crisis, creating what some are calling a shadow pandemic of violence. In this episode of Americas 360, our experts discuss femicide in the Americas and the region's attempts to address this persistent and deadly problem.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of the conditions that cause food insecurity worldwide. The United Nations estimates that 59.7 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean faced hunger in 2020, an increase of 13.8 million people from the year prior. In this episode of Americas 360, our Wilson Center experts consider what can be done to improve food security across the Western Hemisphere.

Disturbing images of Haitian migrants being mistreated by U.S. Border Patrol agents as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande has put the Haitian issue at the center of debate over the U.S. immigration system. The arrival of thousands of Haitians at the U.S. border calls attention to Haiti's chronic political turmoil, economic insecurity, and the impact of natural disasters. In this episode, Latin American Program Fellow Niambi Carter joins us to discuss the root causes of Haitian migration.

In this special presentation of Americas 360, Colombian President Iván Duque, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, and the Wilson Center's Ambassador Mark Green and Cynthia Arnson discuss the current humanitarian and development challenges facing Colombia as well as what the international community can learn from Colombia's generous treatment of migrants and refugees.

Crisis-driven migration is nothing new in the Americas, but recent crises, from the COVID-19 pandemic to hurricanes and other natural disasters have added to the number of people leaving their homes and countries. In this episode of Americas 360, our experts are joined by Wilson Center Global Fellow James Hollifield, an expert on migration and immigration policy, to discuss what is driving these migration flows, where people are moving, and how these population shifts are changing the region.

In July 2021, the Americas have been hit by a variety of extreme weather events, including major heat waves in Canada and the United States and intense tropical storms in Central America. Recent droughts and fires in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest have killed nearly 2.5 billion trees, greatly hampering its function as a carbon sink. These events, as well as historic droughts in Mexico, Central America, and South America, have re-invigorated discussions about climate change and its impact on the region.

The recent discovery of 751 unmarked graves at a former residential school in Saskatchewan, Canada, sent shockwaves throughout the country and brought attention to the country's past and present mistreatment of its indigenous population. While shocking to some, for indigenous peoples across the hemisphere, this discovery is another example of discrimination and unfair treatment stretching back 500 years. In this episode, we discuss the history of indigenous cultural assimilation and erasure in the Americas.

The first year of implementation of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the USMCA, was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic shockwaves it sent throughout the region and the world. Difficulties aside, the pandemic also served to reinforce the importance of North America as an economic bloc. Wilson Center Public Policy Fellow Earl Anthony Wayne, former Ambassador of the U.S. to Mexico and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada, joins us to discuss the first year of the USMCA.

On Sunday, June 6, voters participated in the largest election in Mexico's history, choosing officials for over 21,000 offices. That same day, Peruvians also went to the polls for the run-off presidential election between Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori. In this episode of Americas 360, Alejandro Moreno, Director of Public Opinion Polling at Mexico's El Financiero, and Cynthia Sanborn, a Professor of Political Science at the Universidad del Pacífico in Peru, join our Wilson Center experts discuss the results of these elections.

Over the last month, Colombia has erupted in protest, with citizens taking to the streets in frustration over pandemic lockdowns and rising poverty and unemployment, among other issues. Demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, but some have been marked by extreme violence, extensive property damage, and deadly clashes with the police. Is Colombia a harbinger of things to come elsewhere in Latin America, where countries struggle with a third wave of COVID-19 and the continued battering of their economies?