IRTF News

President-elect Gustavo Petro and Vice President-elect Francia Marquez won an historic race with the promise to bring about deep social, economic and political change in Colombia. Only about half of the population has formal work. Just a quarter of eligible adults have access to the pension system. The pandemic made matters worse. After years of stagnation, poverty is rising again. Will Petro, the first left-wing president in the history of the country, be able to keep his promises?

Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized abortion last year, loosening decades of restrictive laws in the predominately Catholic nation, leading to more permissive laws in several of its states. Now — because the abortion accessibility landscape that lawmakers had faced in Mexico until recently more closely resembles the terrain in parts of the U.S. — U.S. state legislators have begun to learn how Mexico's policymakers and women’s health advocates managed to provide safe abortion care to women — and how they won back certain abortion rights. “Being able to go to Mexico, and visit activists who have been doing the work on the ground for many, many years, who changed the culture, changed what is possible, who really forced lawmakers and health care providers to think differently about abortion as health care, and then to see the ways in which the policies and the legal landscape and the medical landscape have shifted as a result was incredibly powerful,” said Julie Gonzales, a Democratic Colorado state senator who traveled throughout Mexico with five other state legislators earlier this summer.

Guatemala was once listed among the most violent countries on earth. Today, after years of declining crime rates, violence is once again on the rise in 2022. Of the more than 2,000 people killed since January, the majority were the result of gun violence. The United States’ obsession with guns and its unwillingness to implement reasonable restrictions to accessing them has directly contributed to increased violence and crime in Central America, especially in Guatemala. Easy access to weapons allows criminal groups to illegally export U.S. weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border and bring them into other countries. 

Ice’s database lists about 25,000 detainees nationwide, but does not maintain reliable inmate demographics. Non-profits such as Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) and Black Alliance for Just Immigration estimate that roughly 20% of Black immigrants are waiting for deportation. Advocacy organizations like FFI also say that this demographic experiences higher rates of deportation; sexual, physical, medical, and psychological abuses in detention; and solitary confinement. In the last month alone, FFI has received more than 2,100 complaints nationwide. The most common abuse-related ones are anti-Black discriminatory actions, ranging from forced strip-searches and unprovoked pepper-spraying to prolonged solitary confinement and critical medical treatment negligence.

According to a Pew Research Center article, the latest statistics we have indicate there are about 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Of those two thirds, or six and a half million, have been in the United States for over 10 years. A group of House Democrats just introduced a bill, entitled the Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929, that would allow such undocumented immigrants to apply for immigration papers after seven years in the country. The bill incorporates a rolling component so that future legislation would not be required to update what is called this “registry date.” It is estimated about eight million immigrants could benefit by the bill’s passage. What has not been adequately highlighted so far, however, is how the American immigration system and America as a country would also benefit from the passage of this legislation.

Colombian President-elect Gustavo Petro on Friday met with representatives of U.S. President Joe Biden's administration in Bogota, the Colombian capital, where they discussed topics including drug trafficking, the environment and economic development. Petro, a 62-year-old economist who will become Colombia's first leftist leader next month, has been roundly critical of the U.S.-led war on drugs and was elected on promises to tackle deep inequality and climate change and to seek peace with remaining leftist rebels. "This is a positive meeting because it shows the interest that exists in the government of the United States in Latin America and in Colombia," Petro told journalists, as he was accompanied by U.S. principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer.

A former high-ranking government official in Guatemala has pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to conspiring to commit money laundering while paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to Guatemalan politicians through the U.S. banking system. Acisclo Valladares Urruela, the former economics minister in Guatemala, admitted that he transferred $350,000 in bribery payments to the unidentified Guatemalan politicians through two companies with bank accounts in Miami, according to a factual statement filed with his plea agreement. Valladares also acknowledged that he received $140,000 for moving the dirty money into those accounts, the statement says. Valladares paid the illegal bribes on behalf of a telecommunications company known as Tigo, for which he worked as a corporate officer. As a result of the payoffs, Guatemalan politicians passed a law that paved the way for the telecommunications company to obtain a series of lucrative government contracts in Guatemala, according to court records. The corrupt dealings allowed Valladares to benefit personally and politically, U.S. authorities said.