Wola Podcast

On March 15, 2025 President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for only the fourth time in U.S. history. The target, this time, is citizens of Venezuela. His administration sent hundreds out of the country on the merest suspicion of ties to a criminal organization, the Tren de Aragua. In this explainer episode recorded on March 21, with help from WOLA’s Venezuela Director Laura Dib and Central America Director Ana María Méndez Dardón, Defense Oversight Director Adam Isacson walks through what has happened over the past six dark days in U.S. history. The Alien Enemies Act did not use any standard of due process, and many of those sent out of the country, it is now very apparent, were documented in the United States and were not guilty of anything. All it took was for U.S. agents to decide that they did not like the way these young men looked. The Trump administration ignored a clear order from a federal judge to turn the planes around, and is now resisting that judge’s demands for information.

This Women's Month, WOLA launched a special podcast series to amplify feminist voices fighting for human rights in Latin America. Our second episode was our first-ever Spanish-language episode. Our president, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, spoke with Quimy de León (Guatemala) and Sofía López Mera (Colombia), two feminist communicators and human rights defenders. We explored the crucial role of communication in human rights advocacy and how to approach it from a feminist perspective. We also discussed the additional challenges women in this field face, from gender-based violence to censorship. This episode is an English recap of that conversation.  Our Guests Sofía López Mera is a journalist, lawyer, and human rights defender in Colombia. She works at the Corporación Justicia y Dignidad and is a member of the National Movement of Mothers and Women for Peace. Her work focuses on supporting grassroots communities affected by armed conflict, using popular communication as a key tool for organizing, mobilizing, and ra

**This podcast is in Spanish. Stay tuned for an English summary! Este Mes de la Mujer, en WOLA lanzamos una serie especial de nuestro podcast para amplificar voces feministas que luchan por los derechos humanos en América Latina. En nuestro segundo episodio, hablamos sobre comunicación, defensa de derechos humanos y feminismo. En nuestro primer episodio en español, nuestra presidenta, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, conversó con Quimy de León (Guatemala) y Sofía López Mera (Colombia), dos comunicadoras feministas y defensoras de derechos humanos. Hablamos sobre el papel fundamental de la comunicación en la defensa de los derechos humanos y cómo hacerlo desde un enfoque feminista. También discutimos los desafíos adicionales que enfrentan las mujeres que se dedican a este trabajo, desde la violencia de género hasta la censura.

To kick off our series for International Women’s Month, we sat down with WOLA President Carolina Jiménez Sandoval to discuss gender justice in the Americas. In this episode of the WOLA Weekly Podcast, Carolina reflects on her decades of experience as a human rights advocate and the crucial role of feminist movements in defending democracy. As President of WOLA, Carolina has chosen to make gender justice a strategic priority of the organization. In the interview, She shares with us her perspective on the troubling backlash against gender rights, why these rollbacks signal a deeper threat to democracy itself, and what WOLA is doing to fight back. Despite her analysis of a very difficult moment in history, she leaves us with a hopeful message: to remember the achievements of women from our past and to draw inspiration from their struggles.   Tune in for an inspiring conversation on resistance, resilience, and the power of women.  

In an expected but still stunning escalation, the Trump administration has imposed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, citing cross-border flows of fentanyl as justification. The move has sent shockwaves through U.S.-Mexico and North American relations, rattling markets and generating a general outcry. In this episode, Stephanie Brewer, WOLA’s director for Mexico, and John Walsh, WOLA’s director for drug policy, unpack the political, economic, and security implications of the tariff imposition and an apparent return to failed attempts to stop drug abuse and drug trafficking through brute force. Brewer breaks down how the tariffs and other new hardline policies, like terrorist designations for Mexican criminal groups and fast-tracked extraditions, are reshaping and severely straining the bilateral relationship. Walsh explains why Trump’s focus on supply-side crackdowns is doomed to fail, drawing on decades of evidence from past U.S. drug wars. He lays out a harm reduction strategy that would sa

In the five weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the landscape for migrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border has shifted dramatically. The new administration is pursuing an aggressive crackdown on asylum seekers, closing legal pathways and ramping up deportations. Migrants who had secured appointments through the CBP One app under the Biden administration found those suddenly canceled. Many are now stranded in Mexico, left in legal limbo and vulnerable to exploitation and danger. The administration is meanwhile increasing its deportations into Mexico of thousands of migrants from Mexico and elsewhere. This episode takes a deep dive into the current situation in Nogales, Sonora, where asylum seekers and deported individuals are facing increasing hardship and uncertainty. We speak with three frontline experts from the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), an organization providing humanitarian aid, advocacy, and psychosocial support to migrants in crisis. Our guests—Karen Hernández, KBI’s advocacy coord

The director of WOLA’s Venezuela Program, Laura Dib, joins the podcast to discuss the political, human rights, and diplomatic reality following Nicolás Maduro’s January 10 inauguration. Maduro’s new term begins amid severe tensions, as he plainly lost July 28, 2024 presidential elections and has employed waves of repression, including rounding up and in some cases forcibly disappearing political prisoners, to deny the result.   Despite the context of repression and intimidation, Laura underscores that on January 9 Venezuelans still took part in 157 reported protests, including one with the participation of opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is in hiding. The response was further crackdowns, including the temporary detention of María Corina, the enforced disappearance of the son in law of the election’s true winner Edmundo González Urrutia, and the enforced disappearance of Carlos Correa, director of NGO Espacio Público, who was recently released after being missing for nine days.   With repr

In this podcast episode WOLA’s Central America Director, Ana María Méndez Dardón, reflects on Bernardo Arevalo’s first year in office, as January 14, 2025 marks one year since the inauguration that followed his unexpected election. As we discussed with Ana María in a podcast episode shortly after his inauguration, Bernardo Arevalo and his Semilla party had a very difficult time reaching inauguration day, notably due to active obstruction from Guatemala’s traditional, ruling elites, including the Attorney General’s Office. While citizen mobilization, largely indigenous groups’ mobilization, made it possible for Arevalo to democratically take office, the difficulties he and his party faced back then have remained, making it difficult to govern and, in turn, negatively affecting his popularity due to unmet expectations. Three prominent obstacles that the Arevalo administration will continue to face from his first year to his second, Ana María highlights, are the office of the Attorney General and the powerful p

WOLA’s director for Colombia, Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, is just back from taking a U.S. congressional delegation to Colombia. In addition to Bogotá, the group visited Cali and the Pacific Coast port of Buenaventura. The latter two cities are in the department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia’s third most populous. Much of the population is Afro-descendant, and Buenaventura, on the coast is majority Black. Buenaventura has a vibrant and resilient array of community organizations that has played a greater role in local governance since a 2017 general strike. The government of Gustavo Petro, which took office in 2022, has fostered a negotiation between gangs operating in the city, part of its nationwide “total peace” policy. As at the national level, the results are mixed. The Petro government has sought to move forward many negotiations at once, and some are stalled. Implementation of the 2016 peace accord with the FARC suffers from bureaucratization and lack of organization more than from lack of political will. Rur

On November 25, President-Elect Donald Trump announced via social media that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada unless migration and fentanyl trafficking ceased entirely. The announcement caused widespread alarm, spurring a flurry of responses and an unclear conversation between Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. The event was instructive about what we might expect after Trump assumes the presidency in January, observe WOLA Director for Mexico Stephanie Brewer and Director for Drug Policy John Walsh. Brewer explained the "tariff threat" incident, how it plays into the political agendas of both Trump and Sheinbaum, and the danger of doing serious damage to a multifaceted, interdependent bilateral relationship. Host Adam Isacson, who covers border and migration policy at WOLA, joined the discussion to point out that Trump seeks to bully Mexico into carrying out a crackdown on migration that has, in fact, already been underway for some time with serious human ri

This episode was recorded three days after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. It brings together WOLA’s president, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, Vice President for Programs Maureen Meyer, and Director for Defense Oversight Adam Isacson. Together, they possess a combined seven decades of experience working on human rights, democracy, and U.S. policy toward Latin America. All worked on these issues, plus borders and migration, through the first Trump administration.   Maureen, Carolina, and Adam discuss what Trump’s win means for democratic backsliding and relationships with authoritarian governments region-wide, as well as for migration policy, drug policy, cooperation with Mexico, and U.S. foreign aid and security programs.   Both Maureen and Carolina emphasize the importance of journalists, human rights defenders, advocacy groups, and other elements of civil society. Their role in protecting checks and balances and promoting accountability has never been more crucial. The civic space th

In September 2024, Mexico’s legislature quickly approved a series of constitutional reforms at the behest of outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The revisions, among other things, fundamentally change the nature of the country’s judiciary and fundamentally and permanently change the role of the armed forces in public security. Under the overhaul of Mexico’s judiciary, citizens will now directly elect all judges, increasing the likelihood of eroding the judicial branch’s independence. That, in turn, could complicate accountability for organized crime activity, corruption, and human rights abuses. Another reform places the National Guard, a recently created internal security force whose members are mostly former soldiers, directly within the Defense Ministry. This further cements significant increases in military participation in internal security, immigration control, public works, and the economy during the López Obrador administration. These changes pose likely setbacks to the struggle to hold pe

This podcast episode features Kendra McSweeney and Fritz Pinnow, part of a team investigating a new trend: the emergence of coca cultivation in Central America. McSweeney, a professor of geography at Ohio State University, has research human-environment interactions, cultural and political ecology, conservation and development, resilience, demography, and land use/cover change. Pinnow is a Honduras-based journalist and documentary photographer specializing in illicit economies, violence and development in Central America. Photo credit: Fritz Pinnow McSweeney and colleagues have published an article in the journal Environmental Research Letters examining the recent and growing appearance of coca leaf cultivation in Central America, a crop historically associated with the Andean region. McSweeney and Pinnow discuss the environmental and market conditions driving coca cultivation in Honduras and Guatemala. They note that those attempting coca cultivation in the region have competitive advantages over Colombian

WOLA’s President Carolina Jimenez Sandoval is joined by Laura Cristina Dib, WOLA’s director for Venezuela to discuss the state of Venezuela since Nicolás Maduro’s self proclaimed and highly contested July 28 electoral victory. This is a continuation of WOLA’s July 30 podcast, “The Scrutiny Should Be Public to All Citizens:” the aftermath of Venezuela’s July election, with Laura Dib. Carolina and Laura discuss events since Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner by a 51 to 44 percent margin, denied publishing a breakdown of the vote, and suspended the auditing process. The Venezuelan opposition published most official voting tally sheets on an independent website showing opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia’s electoral victory with 67 percent of the vote (verified by independent media outlets). Carolina and Laura explain the varying forms of resistance and outcry by Venezuelan citizens, the Venezuelan diaspora, and the international community, and th

On July 28, 2024, Venezuela held a long-awaited presidential election. More than 25 years after Hugo Chávez was first elected, his successor, Nicolas Maduro, ran for a third term. The opposition coalesced around a candidate; despite many obstacles, the opposition had a big enthusiasm advantage, and turnout on July 28th was very high. In the end, though, Venezuela’s national elections authority declared Maduro the victor, without offering any detail about the vote. As we record this, street protests appear to be intensifying and governments around the region are demanding more transparency about the count. Laura Dib, the director of WOLA’s Venezuela program, explains here what is happening and what is at stake for the Venezuelan people and for the international community.

On March 14-22, 2024, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) held its 67th annual session in Vienna, Austria. The session saw a landmark vote that may have important repercussions for drug policy, in Latin America and elsewhere.   The commission approved a U.S.-led resolution encouraging countries to implement “harm reduction” measures to respond to drug overdoses and to protect public health.   The vote marks a major breakthrough in civil society’s decades-long advocacy to center harm reduction, especially since the U.S. government has a history of blocking all such resolutions, and since the Commission has a longstanding tradition of enactment by a “Vienna Consensus” without votes.   This episode features three guests who helped lead civil society’s robust participation at the CND:   Ann Fordham, executive director of International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) Lisa Sanchez, executive director of México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (MUCD) John Walsh, director for drug policy a

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele just won re-election by a broad margin as a massive security crackdown has reduced gangs’ role in everyday life. But the increasingly authoritarian “Bukele model” has a big long-term downside, Douglas Farah explains. --- It has been almost a month since Nayib Bukele was reelected as President of El Salvador by a very wide margin, despite a constitutional prohibition on re-election. While security gains and a constant communications blitz have made Bukele popular, our guest, Douglas Farah of IBI Consultants, highlights some grave concerns about the “Bukele Model” and where it is headed. Among these: pursuit of an “authoritarian playbook” common to many 21st-century political movements, with eroding checks and balances; vastly weakened transparency over government activities; a complicated relationship with gangs and their integration into the political structure; an unsustainable reliance on mass incarceration; and erosion of the independence and professionalism of the poli

A January outbreak of criminal violence in Ecuador made headlines worldwide. Now, a new government is cracking down in ways that recall other countries' "mano dura" policies, and the U.S. government stands ready to help. Is this the right way forward?   While this isn’t the first time Ecuador’s government has declared a state of exception, the prominence of organized crime and the consequential rise in insecurity is a new reality for the country. Ecuador has seen a six-fold homicide rate increase in three years; it now South America’s worst, and Ecuadorians are the second nationality, behind Venezuelans, fleeing through the Darién Gap. How did this happen? How can Ecuador’s government, civil society, and the international community address it? This episode features International Crisis Group Fellow and author of the recent report Ecuador’s Descent Into Chaos, Glaeldys Gonzalez Calanche, and John Walsh, WOLA’s director for drug policy and the Andes. The discussion covers how Ecuador suddenly reached such high

After relentless attempts to block his inauguration and a nine-hour delay, Bernardo Arévalo, who ran for Guatemala’s presidency on an anti-corruption platform, was sworn into office minutes after midnight on January 14. In this highly educational episode, WOLA Director for Central America Ana María Méndez Dardón is joined by WOLA Senior Fellow Jo-Marie Burt. Both were in Guatemala witnessing the high-tension event that was Arévalo’s inauguration. They cover the frustration, excitement, and symbolism that characterized the day, while also diving into a host of topics surrounding the state of Guatemala’s democracy. They assess the main threats to Arevalo’s leadership and the goals of his party, Movimiento Semilla, particularly those related to addressing corruption and impunity. Ana Maria and Jo-Marie touch on the distinct roles of Guatemalan indigenous communities, the United States, and the private sector. They describe the hope that Arevalo represents for the Guatemalan people in terms of security, justice,

As congressional negotiations place asylum and other legal protection pathways at risk, and as we approach a 2024 election year with migration becoming a higher priority for voters in the United States, we found it important to discuss the current moment's complexities. WOLA’s vice president for Programs, Maureen Meyer, former director for WOLA’s Mexico Program and co-founder of WOLA’s migration and border work, is joined by Mexico Program Director Stephanie Brewer, whose work on defense of human rights and demilitarization in Mexico has focused often on the rights of migrants, including a visit to the Arizona-Sonora border at the end of 2023. This episode highlights some of the main migration trends and issues that we should all keep an eye on this year, including: Deterrence efforts will never reduce migration as long as the reasons people are fleeing remain unaddressed (the long-standing “root causes” approach). Such policies will only force people into more danger and fuel organized crime. “The question