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Miguel Gutierrez/EPA photo at The Guardian (UK). Caption: “A burnt-out car in Caracas. Thirty people have died in the violence, which broke out on 20 April. Nicolas Maduro, the president, blames the crisis on rightwingers and foreign interests.”
El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras
- “Northern Triangle Security and Economic Opportunity Task Force” (Atlantic Council, May 5, 2017).
A welcome reminder to official Washington of the need to continue assisting Central America’s “Northern Triangle,” and a useful gauge of where elite opinion currently stands. However, it’s not clear how the report’s recommendations differ from current policy as laid out in the 2016 “Plan for Prosperity” appropriation.
El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico
- Gabriel Stargardter, “U.S. Coaxes Mexico Into Trump Plan to Overhaul Central America” (Reuters **, May 5, 2017).
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who seems to be taking the lead on the Trump administration’s security portfolio with Mexico and Central America, “aims to retool the Obama-era alliance without a large increase in American funding by pressing Mexico to shoulder more responsibility for governance and security in Central America.”
Mexico
- Manny Fernandez, “A Path to America, Marked by More and More Bodies” (The New York Times, May 5, 2017).
An important look into the crisis in Brooks County, Texas, where large numbers of migrants trying to walk around Border Patrol road checkpoints continue to die, preventably, of dehydration and exposure.
- “No Excuse: Mexico Must Break Cycle of Impunity in Journalists’ Murders” (Committee to Protect Journalists, May 3, 2017).
“A lack of political will to end impunity exposes Mexico as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.” See also coverage of spiraling attacks on Mexican journalists in the May 1 New York Times, and an op-ed supporting journalists’ important work by U.S. Ambassador Roberta Jacobson in Mexico’s La Jornada.
Venezuela
- Virginia Lopez, “‘Everything Is in Chaos’: Night of Violence Reveals Depths of Venezuela Crisis” (The Guardian (Uk), May 3, 2017).
Among all the coverage of Venezuela’s tumult, I pay closest attention to any offering clues about what’s happening within two longtime bulwarks of regime support: the military and the poorest Venezuelans. Here is a look into the latter.