Replicating Plan Colombia's failed approach, a Washington aid program for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador combines neoliberal economic reforms with military aid.
Washington has succeeded in creating an entrenched drug-war bureaucracy across Latin America. But the momentum in favor of reform is building in unexpected places.
The Obama administration has expanded its financing of Mexican and Central American military forces—many of whom committed the mass killing and torture of political opponents and indigenous communities only two decades prior.
A scathing report on the U.S. Border Patrol's use of deadly force reveals warzone conditions—the result of more than 25 years of Mexico-U.S. border militarization.
While southern Arizona continues to be ground zero for the most extreme measures of border militarization today, it is also home to powerful nodes of civil resistance. On December 8, local residents from Arivaca and the surrounding area held their first protest at a Border Patrol checkpoint—one out of about a dozen located throughout the region. I documented the event in the video posted below.