Mexico

Monday Memo: Mercosur Summit – General Hugo Carvajal – Gov. Jerry Brown – Mexican Energy Reform – Argentine Debt

This week’s likely top stories: Mercosur leaders meet in Caracas; former General Hugo Carvajal returns to Venezuela; California Governor Jerry Brown visits Mexico; Mexican Congress discusses energy reform; Argentina nears its debt deadline. Mercosur leaders to address Israel at Mercosur summit: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is expected to lead Mercosur leaders in condemning Israel’s military … Read more

Latin America at the Winter Olympics

Latin American and Caribbean countries may not be as well-known for their winter sports as Canada, Russia or the United States, but the region does have a storied tradition at the Winter Olympic Games. Argentina, the first Latin American country to participate, sent a five-man bobsled team to the second-ever Winter Games in 1928. Chile … Read more

From the Think Tanks

Human Rights Watch, Brookings Institution, Corporación de Estudios para Latinoamerica The Venezuelan government’s response to the protests that began on February 12, 2014, led to accusations of human rights abuses. In its report, “Punished for Protesting: Rights Violations in Venezuela’s Streets, Detention Centers, and Justice System,” Human Rights Watch analyzes 45 allegations of abuses perpetrated … Read more

Dispatches: Mexico’s New Demographic Dividend

With contributing research from Miryam Hazán and Carlos López Portillo Maltos of Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together (MATT). Read a sidebar on Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together (MATT’s) electronic job bank. Read a sidebar on Mexican migrants’ return to restaurant work. José Antonio Pérez remembers as a child seeing migrants climbing onto La Bestia (“The … Read more

Policy Advocacy: NAFTA and the New Regionalism

The world has changed dramatically since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed. Today, 20 years later, we live in an era of mega-regionalism. This new reality calls for a new strategic vision for North America. “Distant neighbors.” That’s how Alan Riding, then The New York Times bureau chief in Mexico, labeled the … Read more

The Future of Latin American Studies

The field of Latin American studies has been a target for critics ever since it became a prominent feature of the U.S. academic landscape in the 1960s. Earlier critiques were quite severe, often permeated by the premise that studying Latin America from the North (and even the very concept of “Latin America” as an object … Read more

Student Debt in the Americas

The promise of upward mobility for Latin America’s new middle classes has led to swelling university enrollment rates, but also to growing debt.1 In Colombia, high school graduates enrolling in higher education rose from 24.87 percent in 2002 to 45.02 percent in 2012.2 Meanwhile, in 2011, 23 percent of 25- to 34-year-old Mexicans had attained … Read more

Dispatches from the Field: Return Migration in Mexico

Can Mexico exploit its new demographic dividend? (slideshow available)

Academic Brain Drain

A recurrent theme in the immigration debate is how the United States can keep and attract the world’s brightest minds. President Barack Obama and others favor maintaining and perhaps even expanding the number of visas for high-skilled immigrants. In his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama said the U.S. needed to “attract the highly … Read more

Protest U.

Millions of students have taken to the streets across Latin America in recent years in protests that reflect an unprecedentedly broad mobilization of popular opinion. Following massive demonstrations led by secondary school students in 2006 in Chile, university students launched a series of protests in May 2011. Powered by a coalition of public and private … Read more

La Jaula de Oro

Hoping to protect herself from the journey ahead, 15-year-old Sara cuts her hair, binds her chest, and changes into a dirty T-shirt and a baseball cap. Emerging as a slouching teenage boy, she leaves her home in a Guatemalan slum for a better life in the United States. This poignant scene opens director Diego Quemada-Díez’s … Read more