• Francisco Goldman, “The Atenco Warning” (The New York Times, June 30, 2017).

Goldman persuasively argues that a 2006 government massacre, under the rule of then-Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, is emblematic of how Mexico is governed right now.

• Melissa del Bosque, “Over the Wall: How Texas Border Communities Are Gearing Up to Fight Trump” (The Texas Observer, June 28, 2017).

If any of Trump’s wall gets built, it will be in Hidalgo County, Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley near the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not a popular idea there. Del Bosque talks to many local officials and citizens.

• Daniel R. Mahanty, “The “Leahy Law” Prohibiting Us Assistance to Human Rights Abusers: Pulling Back the Curtain” (Just Security, June 28, 2017).

“Anybody who has touched the Leahy Law has an opinion about it, but it’s hard to find anybody fully satisfied by the way it is interpreted or implemented,” writes a former State Department official who carried out this important but hard-to-implement set of human rights conditions on foreign military aid.

• J. Weston Phippen, “What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Ms–13” (The Atlantic, June 27, 2017).

Phippen disputes the notion that Central American gang members are coming over the border as “unaccompanied children.” Instead, vulnerable kids are ending up in U.S. neighborhoods with serious gang problems.

• Alex Daugherty, “The Trump Whisperer: Marco Rubio Has the President’s Ear on Latin America” (The Miami Herald, June 28, 2017).

In the absence of a Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Florida hardliner with great access to the White House is running much of U.S. policy toward Latin America right now.