Will Freeman

To the extent that foreign crises helped shape the outcome of November’s U.S. presidential election, it wasn’t the ones in Gaza and Ukraine that had the strongest effect. It was, instead, those closer to home that mattered most: namely, the spread of Mafias and Mafia states throughout Latin America and the corresponding mass exodus of migrants and refugees to the southern border of the United States.

Backlash to the post-2020 spike in undocumented immigration from Latin America weighed strongly in Donald Trump’s favor. He made “closing the border” and the “largest deportation program in American history” centerpieces of his campaign, and voters rewarded him for it.…  Seguir leyendo »

In a time of geopolitical upheaval, few parts of the world have weathered greater social and economic upheaval than Latin America. Despite accounting for just eight percent of the world’s population, Latin American countries have suffered more than 40 percent of all deaths from COVID-19; during the first year of the pandemic, they also experienced their greatest economic contraction in more than a century. Then, just as the region was making an economic rebound, it was hit by the twin shocks of Russia’s war in Ukraine and a global inflation crisis. As of October 2022, average inflation across the region was approaching 15 percent—about triple the level of Asia’s and one-third higher than sub-Saharan Africa’s—while public debt levels have soared to more than 70 percent of regional GDP.…  Seguir leyendo »