Marco Ugarte / AP photo at USA Today. Caption: “Mexican soldier Gaspar Sanchez sits over his recently adopted puppy ‘Cloee’ following his troop’s overnight patrol along the Suchiate River, the natural border with Guatemala near Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Jan. 21, 2021, after a caravan of Honduran migrants dissipated before reaching the river. Sanchez said he adopted the puppy from a litter of street dogs near his base in Tapachula.”

(Even more here)

January 22, 2021

Colombia

“Con los Estados Unidos debemos volver a conversar sobre la paz que ellos apoyaron con el acuerdo firmado con las Farc, proceso del cual la administración del Presidente Obama participó”

Sacarlo de la militancia para acercar a otros sectores democráticos y, muy importante, tomar distancia de las disidencias que con sus acciones generan miedo entre la población

Analistas aseguran que con la llegada de Biden a la Casa Blanca se retome la agenda de paz en Colombia como uno de los puntos centrales entre las relaciones de las dos naciones

Líderes y lideresas sociales, defensores y defensoras de los derechos humanos, así como miembros de partidos políticos también siguen siendo, lamentablemente, víctimas

Mexico

Both governments later confirmed that Lopez Obrador and Biden would speak by phone on Friday afternoon

U.S.-Mexico Border

What will become of a border wall that’s already been partially built? What does it take to reverse the damage to communities and ecosystems along the U.S.-Mexico border?

“They hear that there will be opportunities, or at least they hope there will be”

Venezuela

The socialist government of Nicolás Maduro and the U.S.-backed opposition are accusing each other of playing politics with proposals to finance United Nations-supplied vaccines

A Colombian businessman was carrying a letter from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accrediting him to Iran’s supreme leader when he was arrested on a U.S. warrant last year

January 21, 2021

Central America Regional

En el caso de un político, empresario corrupto o un narcotraficante, perder el acceso a los Estados Unidos es un gran problema para los negocios

Rather than shrink from Trump, the presidents of the three countries took advantage of his transactional nature

Colombia

On January 20, Defend the Peace Colombia (Defendamos la Paz, DLP) published a statement addressed to President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in regard to the current state of Colombia’s historic 2016 peace accord

El Directivo para la veeduría de la Defensa aseguró que no hay claridad en “cómo va a ser distinta la política de Biden de la del segundo periodo de Barack Obama. Muchos de los encargados ya nombrados del gabinete de Biden vienen del gobierno de Obama”

This violence has a direct and damaging effect on the reintegration process and the implementation of the Peace Agreement and we join our other Council members and colleagues in saying it must end

Mexico, U.S.-Mexico Border

After Wednesday, Trump’s outspoken political appointees will be gone and the 99% of CBP and Border Patrol employees who are career public servants will remain to work under a new administration with near opposite priorities

U.S.-Mexico Border

The order leaves billions of dollars of work unfinished — but still under contract — after Trump worked feverishly last year to build more than 450 miles

Pause work on each construction project on the southern border wall, to the extent permitted by law, as soon as possible but in no case later than seven days from the date of this proclamation

The funding appropriated by Congress since 2018 is enough to pay for 298 miles of barrier, about 71 miles of which have been completed. That would potentially oblige the Biden administration to complete up to 227 additional miles

For the opening salvo of his presidency, few expected Joe Biden to be so far-reaching on immigration

Even the Democratic senator leading the charge acknowledged on Thursday that passing it would be “a Herculean task.”

Effective tomorrow, January 21, the Department will cease adding individuals into the program. However, current COVID-19 non-essential travel restrictions, both at the border and in the region, remain in place at this time

Since the emergency controls were invoked, nearly 400,000 “encounters” have been made, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP