Several human rights organizations are worried that Vice President Harris's upcoming trip to Mexico and Guatemala risks focusing too much on immigration and not other issues such as rule of law and government corruption.
Campaign season in Mexico has seen a rash of murders, as organised crime seeks to cement its influence no matter which parties win. The government needs to keep trying to break bonds between criminals and authorities, beginning with efforts tailored to the country’s hardest-hit areas.
The Biden administration's first major move on Cuba is the strongest signal yet it has little appetite to reverse Trump-era policies toward the island nation.The State Department this past week listed Cuba as among those "not cooperating fully with United States antiterrorism efforts," renewing a determination first made in 2020.For those in favor of normalizing U.S. ties with Cuba, the move was seen as a purely political decision, but one.
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Source: Francisco Rodríguez, “Crude Realities: Understanding Venezuela’s Economic Collapse,” Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights (blog), Washington Office on Latin America, September 20, 2018.
Rodríguez found that oil production in Venezuela followed the same general pattern as in Colombia until Trump’s financial sanctions were imposed. Production levels in both countries basically tracked international oil prices, but after Trump’s sanctions were imposed production levels in both countries diverged drastically: Venezuela’s plummeted while Colombia’s stabilized. Had Venezuela’s production continued to follow the same pattern as before the financial sanctions, its oil revenues would have been drastically higher.
-The Hagstrom Report
Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., last week introduced bipartisan legislation to lift the Cuba trade embargo.
The Freedom to Export to Cuba Act would repeal the current legal restrictions against doing business with Cuba, including the original 1961 authorization for establishing the trade embargo; subsequent laws that required enforcement of the embargo; and other restrictive statutes that prohibit transactions between U.S.-owned or controlled firms and Cuba and limitations on direct shipping between U.S. and Cuban ports. It would not repeal portions of law that address human rights or property claims against the Cuban government.