Mexico breaks up caravans

Dec. 3, 2024

Mexican rights activists said, this weekend, that authorities broke up two small migrant caravans headed to the U.S. border, supposedly in response to U.S. demands.

The first of the caravans started out from Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, on Nov. 5, the day Trump was elected. At its height it had about 2,500 people. In almost four weeks of walking, it had gone about 430 kilometers to Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca, reports the Associated Press.

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has made migration a focal point of his discourse about Mexico. His tough talk and threats to slap significant tariffs on imports bely a simple fact: “In reality, Mexico has been controlling migrant flows on behalf of the US for years,” reports the Guardian. “Where migrants passing through Central American countries simply receive a document that allows them to pass through the country, in Mexico they face a complex and shifting migration bureaucracy that limits their mobility.” (See last Tuesday’s post.)

Regional Relations

• Optimists believe Trump’s bluster of tariffs against neighbors are just a negotiating tactic — but there is a real risk that Mexico will be left out of the North American free trade agreement, argues Michael Stott in the Financial Times. (See yesterday’s briefs.)

• Already the threats have created a diplomatic split between Canada and Mexico, after Canadian officials said problems with the two countries’ borders shouldn’t be compared, reports the Associated Press.

• “At the crossroads of U.S. protectionism and China’s expansion, Mexico should leverage its position within the USMCA to advocate for regional solutions focusing on innovation and trade diversification,” argues Heidi Jane Smith in Americas Quarterly. “Rather than relying on tariffs, which risk exacerbating inflation, Mexico can strengthen its economic ties with the U.S. and Canada by promoting innovative and competitive industries.”

• Argentine President Javier Milei plans to lobby for Mercosur nations to be able to enter into bilateral free trade agreements without the rest of the bloc — a position previously espoused by the outgoing Uruguayan president, Luis Lacalle Pou. (La Nación)

Colombia

• Colombia's illegal armed groups have taken advantage of the government's pursuit of peace to strengthen themselves militarily and economically, the commander of the country's armed forces said yesterday - Reuters

Ecuador

• Ecuadorean police found 10 dead bodies at a property in Guabo, a community in El Oro province, last weekend. (Reuters)

• They were gunned down and dismembered, reports InSight Crime, the latest in a recent series of massacres in Ecuador that “is further evidence that more access to high-powered weapons, heightened impunity, and an atomized criminal landscape are leading to more mass killings.”

Regional

• Elections in Latin America in recent years have been dominated by an anti-incumbent trend. Boz adds a new corollary: “win big or not at all” — which represents yet another challenge to democracy. (Latin America Risk Report)

• Presidential political survival in Latin America seems to hinge, in part, on the strength or weakness of the country’s political parties, according to Christopher A. Martínez. “When a country’s parties are very strong or very weak, presidencies often survive. It’s when they’re in the middle that alliances become fragile, ambitions short-sighted, and the fate of a president can hang by a thread,” he writes in Americas Quarterly.

• Revista Supernova interviewed Jorge Castañeda, who discusses the changes in Latin America’s left over the past 30 years. He notes a split that persists to this day within the non-revolutionary left that he identified in the seminal 1990s book, Utopia Unarmed: “a division appeared at the beginning of the 2000s within this reformist or non-revolutionary, democratic, etc. left, a divergence or a disjunction between the parties, movements or leaders that clearly adhere to all these guidelines, and some that deviate slightly or more sharply as a result of certain events.”

• Among the current trends is a return to the Cold War manichean dichotomy of “freedom” vs “communism,” but what does this mean in a world where communism is not actually disputing power in a meaningful way, analyze Alejandro Galliano and Tomás Borovinsky in Supernova.

Argentina

• Argentine President Javier Milei wants to revolutionize the country — the question is whether Argentina will survive it’s shock therapy, writes Jon Lee Anderson in the New Yorker. “Argentina can seem like a country of economists … Even by local standards, though, Milei is unusually fixated.”

Brazil

• Brazil's planned greenhouse gas emissions cuts are more ambitious than the programs of countries that have historically generated climate-impacting emissions, its climate change envoy told the top UN court earlier today. (AFP)

• “Brazil’s economy once again shot past expectations in the third quarter, bolstered by hefty consumer and government spending that’s fanning above-target inflation and rattling markets,” reports Bloomberg.

Haiti

• Haiti is one of the worst places in the world to be a child, according to UNICEF: they lack food, are malnourished, many on the brink of starvation, displaced by gang violence and without access to education, reports the Miami Herald.

Venezuela

• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday that the Venezuelan government violated the political rights of former opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles in 2013, by using state resources to bolster incumbent Nicolás Maduro’s bid. (Associated Press)

El Salvador

• The Roman Catholic Church called on the president of El Salvador not to lift the country’s ban on gold mining, reports the Associated Press.

Mexico

• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum recently released a new strategy meant to address violence against women —”but these proposed reforms come amidst cuts by the Sheinbaum administration in spending for gender policy programs in 2025,” notes Pirate Wire Services.

• Mexico City’s subway system hosts a long-standing, unofficial “queer hub.” The Nation analyzes the history and sociological trends of “el último vagón.”