[George Friedman. The Storm Before the Calm. America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond. Doubleday. New York, 2020. 235 pp.]

review / E. Villa Corta, E. J. Blasco

The degree scroll of the new book by George Friedman, the driving force behind the geopolitical analysis and intelligence agency Stratfor and later creator of Geopolitical Futures, does not reference letter to the global crisis created by the Covid-19 pandemic. When he speaks of the crisis of the 2020s, which Friedman has been anticipating for some time in his commentaries and now explains at length in this book, he is referring to deep and long-lasting historical movements, in this case confined to the United States.

Beyond the current pandemic, therefore, which is somewhat circumstantial and not addressed in the text (its composition is previous), Friedman suggests that the United States will reinvent itself at the end of this decade. Like a machine that, almost automatically, incorporates substantial changes and corrections every certain period of time, the US is preparing for a new leap. There will be a prolonged crisis, but the US will emerge triumphant from it, Friedman predicts. US decline? Quite the opposite.

Unlike his previous books, such as The Next Hundred Years or Flashpoints, Friedman this time leaves Friedman's global geopolitical analysis to focus on the United States. In his reflection on American history, Friedman sees a succession of cycles of approximate length. The current ones are already in their final stages, and the reinstatement of both will coincide in the late 2020s, in a process of crisis and subsequent resurgence of the country. In the institutional field, the 80-year cycle that began after the end of the Second World War is coming to an end (the previous one had lasted since the end of the Civil War in 1865); in the socioeconomic field, the 50-year cycle that began with Ronald Reagan in 1980 is coming to an end (the previous one had lasted since the end of the Great Recession and the arrival of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the White House).

Friedman does not see Donald Trump as the catalyst for change (his effort has simply been to restore the status created by Reagan for the working class average , affected by unemployment and loss of purchasing power), nor does he believe that whoever replaces him in the coming years will be. Rather, he places the turnaround around 2028. The change, which will take place in a time of great confusion, will have to do with the end of the technocracy that dominates American political and institutional life and with the creative disruption of new technologies. The author wants to denote America's skill to overcome adversity and take advantage of "chaos" in order to achieve fruitful growth.

Friedman divides the book into three parts: the creation of the nation as we know it, the cycles we have gone through and the prognosis for the next one. In this last part he presents the challenges or adversities that the country will have to face.

Regarding the creation of the country, the author reasons about the subject of government created in the United States, the territory in which the country is located and the American people. This last aspect is perhaps the most interesting. He defines the American people as a merely artificial construct. This leads him to see the U.S. as a machine that automatically fine-tunes its functioning from time to time. As an "invented" country, the U.S. reinvents itself when its cycles run out.

Friedman presents the training of the American people through three overlapping types: the cowboy, the inventor and the warrior. To the cowboy, who seeks to start something completely new and in an "American" way, we owe especially the social construct that is so unique to the United States. To the inventor belongs the drive for technological progress and economic prosperity. And the warrior condition has been present from the beginning.

The second part of the book deals with the aforementioned issue of cycles. Friedman considers that US growth has been cyclical, in a process in which the country reinvents itself from time to time in order to continue progressing. After reviewing the periods so far, he locates the next great change in the US in the decade that has just begun. He warns that the gestation of the next stage will be complicated due to the accumulation of events from past cycles. One of the issues that the country will have to resolve has to do with the paradox between the desire to internationalize democracy and human rights and that of maintaining its national security: "liberating the world" or securing its position in the international sphere.

The present moment of change, in which, agreement to the author, the institutional and socio-economic cycles will collide, is a time of deep crisis, but a long period of calm will follow. Friedman believes that the first "tremors" of the crisis were felt in the 2016 elections, which showed a radical polarization of American society. The country will have to reform not only its complex institutional system, but also various socio-economic aspects.

This last part of the book - dedicated to the resolution of problems such as the student debt crisis, the use of social networks, new social constructions or the difficulty in the educationalsector educationalis probably the most important. If the mechanicity and automatism in the succession of cycles determined by Friedman, or even its very existence, are questionable (other analyses could lead other authors to consider different stages), the real problems that the country has today are easily ascertainable. Thus, the presentation of proposals for their resolution has an undoubted value.

The Trump Administration's Newest Migration Policies and Shifting Immigrant Demographics in the USA

New Trump administration migration policies including the "Safe Third Country" agreements signed by the USA, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have reduced the number of migrants from the Northern Triangle countries at the southwest US border. As a consequence of this phenomenon and other factors, Mexicans have become once again the main national group of people deemed inadmissible for asylum or apprehended by the US Customs and Border Protection.

▲ An US Border Patrol agent at the southwest US border [cbp.gov].

ARTICLE / Alexandria Casarano Christofellis

On March 31, 2018, the Trump administration cut off aid to the Northern Triangle countries in order to coerce them into implementing new policies to curb illegal migration to the United States. El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala all rely heavily on USAid, and had received 118, 181, and 257 million USD in USAid respectively in the 2017 fiscal year.

The US resumed financial aid to the Northern Triangle countries on October 17 of 2019, in the context of the establishment of bilateral negotiations of Safe Third Country agreements with each of the countries, and the implementation of the US Supreme Court's de facto asylum ban on September 11 of 2019. The Safe Third Country agreements will allow the US to 'return' asylum seekers to the countries which they traveled through on their way to the US border (provided that the asylum seekers are not returned to their home countries). The US Supreme Court's asylum ban similarly requires refugees to apply for and be denied asylum in each of the countries which they pass through before arriving at the US border to apply for asylum. This means that Honduran and Salvadoran refugees would need to apply for and be denied asylum in both Guatemala and Mexico before applying for asylum in the US, and Guatemalan refugees would need to apply for and be denied asylum in Mexico before applying for asylum in the US. This also means that refugees fleeing one of the Northern Triangle countries can be returned to another Northern Triangle country suffering many of the same issues they were fleeing in the first place.

Combined with the Trump administration's longer-standing "metering" or "Remain in Mexico" policy (Migrant Protection Protocols/MPP), these political developments serve to effectively "push back" the US border. The "Remain in Mexico" policy requires US asylum seekers from Latin America to remain on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border to wait their turn to be accepted into US territory. Within the past year, the US government has planted significant obstacles in the way of the path of Central American refugees to US asylum, and for better or worse has shifted the burden of the Central American refugee crisis to Mexico and the Central American countries themselves, which are ill-prepared to handle the influx, even in the light of resumed US foreign aid. The new arrangements resemble the EU's refugee deal with Turkey.

These policy changes are coupled with a shift in US immigration demographics. In August of 2019, Mexico reclaimed its position as the single largest source of unauthorized immigration to the US, having been temporarily surpassed by Guatemala and Honduras in 2018.

US Customs and Border Protection data indicates a net increase of 21% in the number of Unaccompanied Alien Children from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador deemed inadmissible for asylum at the Southwest US Border by the US field office between fiscal year 2019 (through February) and fiscal year 2020 (through February). All other inadmissible groups (Family Units, Single Adults, etc.) experienced a net decrease of 18-24% over the same time period. For both the entirety of fiscal year 2019 and fiscal year 2020 through February, Mexicans accounted for 69 and 61% of Unaccompanied Alien Children Inadmissible at the Southwest US border respectively, whereas previously in fiscal years 2017 and 2018 Mexicans accounted for only 21 and 26% of these same figures, respectively. The percentages of Family Unit Inadmisibles from the Northern Triangle countries have been decreasing since 2018, while the percentage of Family Unit Inadmisibles from Mexico since 2018 has been on the rise.

With asylum made far less accessible to Central Americans in the wake of the Trump administration's new migration policies, the number of Central American inadmisibles is in sharp decline. Conversely, the number of Mexican inadmisibles is on the rise, having nearly tripled over the past three years.

Chain migration factors at play in Mexico may be contributing to this demographic shift. On September 10, 2019, prominent Mexican newspaper El discussion published an article titled "Immigrants Can Avoid Deportation with these Five Documents." Additionally, The Washington Post cites the testimony of a city official from Michoacan, Mexico, claiming that a local Mexican travel company has begun running a weekly "door-to-door" service line to several US border points of entry, and that hundreds of Mexican citizens have been coming to the municipal offices daily requesting documentation to help them apply for asylum in the US. Word of mouth, press coverage like that found in El discussion, and the commercial exploitation of the Mexican migrant situation have perhaps made migration, and especially the claiming of asylum, more accessible to the Mexican population.

US Customs and Border Protection data also indicates that total apprehensions of migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador attempting illegal crossings at the Southwest US border declined 44% for Unaccompanied Alien Children and 73% for Family Units between fiscal year 2019 (through February) and fiscal year 2020 (through February), while increasing for Single Adults by 4%. The same data trends show that while Mexicans have consistently accounted for the overwhelming majority of Single Adult Apprehensions since 2016, Family Unit and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions until the past year were dominated by Central Americans. However, in fiscal year 2020-February, the percentages of Central American Family Unit and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions have declined while the Mexican percentage has increased significantly. This could be attributed to the Northern Triangle countries' and especially Mexico's recent crackdown on the flow of illegal immigration within their own states in response to the same US sanctions and suspension of USAid which led to the Safe Third Country bilateral agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

While the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration from the Northern Triangle countries has effectively worked to limit both the legal and illegal access of Central Americans to US entry, the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration from Mexico in the past few years has focused on arresting and deporting illegal Mexican immigrants already living and working within the US borders. Between 2017 and 2018, ICE increased workplace raids to arrest undocumented immigrants by over 400% according to The Independent in the UK. The trend seemed to continue into 2019. President Trump tweeted on June 17, 2019 that "Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in." More deportations could be leading to more attempts at reentry, increasing Mexican migration to the US, and more Mexican Single Adult apprehensions at the Southwest border. The Washington Post alleges that the majority of the Mexican single adults apprehended at the border are previous deportees trying to reenter the country.

Lastly, the steadily increasing violence within the state of Mexico should not be overlooked as a cause for continued migration. Within the past year, violence between the various Mexican cartels has intensified, and murder rates have continued to rise. While the increase in violence alone is not intense enough to solely account for the spike that has recently been seen in Mexican migration to the US, internal violence nethertheless remains an important factor in the Mexican migrant situation. Similarly, widespread poverty in Mexico, recently worsened by a decline in foreign investment in the light of threatened tariffs from the USA, also plays a key role.

In conclusion, the Trump administration's new migration policies mark an intensification of long-standing nativist tendencies in the US, and pose a potential threat to the human rights of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. The corresponding present demographic shift back to Mexican predominance in US immigration is driven not only by the Trump administration's new migration policies, but also by many other diverse factors within both Mexico and the US, from press coverage to increased deportations to long-standing cartel violence and poverty. In the face of these recent developments, one thing remains clear: the situation south of the Rio Grande is just as complex, nuanced, and constantly evolving as is the situation to the north on Capitol Hill in the USA.

The changes, although significant in some cases, will not substantially modify trade flows between the three countries.

The new Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico is now ready for implementation, following ratification by the congresses of the three countries. The revision of the previous treaty, which came into force in 1994, was demanded by Donald Trump on his arrival at the White House, alleging the trade deficit generated for the US in relation to Canada and especially Mexico. Although some significant corrections have been introduced, following the main US approaches, it does not appear that the revised agreement will substantially modify trade flows between the three countries.

▲ Presidents Peña Nieto, Trump and Trudeau sign free trade agreement in November 2019 [US Gov.]

article / Marcelina Kropiwnicka

On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered into force. More than twenty years later and under the administration of President Donald Trump, the three partner countries opened a review process of the agreement, now called the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico (to which each country has given a different acronym: the Mexicans call it T-MEC or TMEC, the Americans USMCA and the Canadians CUSMA).

The text of the TMEC (its Spanish acronym) finally ratified by the three countries is generally consistent with the old NAFTA. However, there are particular distinctions. Thus, it includes stricter rules of origin in the automotive and textile sectors, an updated labor value content requirement in the automotive sector, increased U.S. access to Canadian supply-managed markets, novel provisions related to financial services, and a specification on the establishment of free trade agreements with non-market economies. The overall goal is to encourage production in North America.

News negotiated in 2017-2018

The three parties started the negotiation in the summer of 2017 and after a little over a year they closed an agreement, signed by the presidents of the three countries in November 2018. The main novelties introduced until then were as follows:

1) The agreement revises the regional value content (RVC) percentage for the automotive industry. Under NAFTA, at least 62.5% of an automobile must be made with parts from North America. The TMEC raises the percentage to 75% with the intention of strengthening the countries' manufacturing capacity and increasing the work force in the automotive industry.

2) Along the same lines, to support employment in North America, the agreement contains new trade rules of origin to boost higher wages by mandating that 40-45% of auto manufacturing be done by workers earning at least $16 per hour on average by 2023; that's about three times the pay a Mexican worker normally receives today.

3) Aside from the automotive industry, the dairy market will be opened to ensure greater access for U.S. dairy products , a core topic demanded by Washington. Currently, Canada has a system of domestic quotas that were put in place to protect its farmers from foreign skill ; however, under the new TMEC agreement , changes will allow the U.S. to export up to 3.6% of Canada's dairymarket , anincrease of 2.6% over the original NAFTA provision. Another core topic achievement for Trump was the negotiation of Canada's elimination of what are known as itsmilk classes 6 and 7.

4) Another new aspect is the sunset clause. NAFTA had an automatic sunset clause or a predetermined termination date for the agreement, which meant that any of the three parties could withdraw from the agreement upon six months notice of withdrawal; if this did not occur, the agreement remained indefinite. However, the TMEC provides for a duration of 16 years, with the option to meet, negotiate and review the document after six years, as well as the possibility of renewing the agreement after 16 years.

5) The three countries' pact also includes a chapter on work that anchors labor obligations in the core of the agreement , making its execution more demanding.

Reforms in Mexico

Precisely to make that last point more credible, U.S. and Canadian negotiators demanded that Mexico make changes to its labor laws to speed up the process of approval and ratification of the TMEC by lawmakers in Washington and Ottawa. U.S. House leaders had doubted Mexico's ability to specifically comply with the agreement's labor rights points. One of President Trump's main objectives in the renegotiation was to assure U.S. workers that unequal skill status would be overcome.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador sent a letter to the US congress guaranteeing the implementation of a four-year plan to ensure the achievement of adequate labor rights. Lopez Obrador committed to an outlay of $900 million over the next four years to change the labor justice system and ensure that disputes between workers and employers are resolved in a timely manner. Mexico has also invested in the construction of a Federal Center for Labor Conciliation and Registration, where labor disputes will be addressed prior to their hearing in court.

Obrador showed his commitment to labor reforms by assuring at least a 2% increase inMexico'sminimum wage. Most B that the requirement of direct voting for union leaders will change the functioning of workers' organizations. With direct elections, decisions on collective bargaining agreements will be more transparent. Mexico's plan to improve the labor environment will begin in 2020.

What's new in 2019 to facilitate ratification

Faced with demands raised in the U.S. congress , particularly by the Democratic majority, to ratify the treaty, negotiators proceeded with two major revisions to NAFTA. One of them aimed primarily at revising a large number of provisions relating to intellectual property, pharmaceuticals and the digital economy:

6) The chapter dedicated to intellectual property rights seeks to respond to U.S. concerns to boost innovation, generate economic growth and support work. For the first time, according to the U.S. Trade Representative, the additions include: strict rules against circumvention of technological protection measures for music, movies and digital books; strong protections for pharmaceutical and agricultural innovation; broad protections against trade secret theft; and official document authority for officials to stop suspected counterfeit or pirated goods.

7) A new chapter on digital trade has also been included that contains stricter controls than any other international agreement , consolidating the foundation for the expansion of trade and investment in areas where the US has a competitive advantage.

8) The final draft eliminates a 10-year guarantee of intellectual property protection for biological drugs, which are some of the most expensive drugs on the market. It also removes granting an additional three years of IP exclusivity for drugs for which a new use is found.

A second group of late-breaking changes reference letter to greater environmental and labor protections:

9) Environment covers 30 pages, outlining obligations to combat trafficking in wildlife, timber and fish; strengthen law enforcement to stop such trafficking; and address critical environmental issues such as air quality and marine debris. New obligations include: protecting various marine species, implementing appropriate methods for environmental impact assessments, and complying with the obligations of seven multilateral environmental agreements. In particular, Mexico agreement to improve surveillance to stop illegal fishing, and the three countries agree to stop subsidize fishing for overfished species. To increase environmental accountability, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives urged the creation of an interagency oversight committee. However, the treaty does not address climate change issues.

10) To ensure that Mexico delivers on its labor promises, House Democrats forced the creation of an interagency committee to monitor the implementation of Mexico's labor reform and compliance with labor obligations. Despite the new and unique 'LVC' requirement, a labor value content rule, it will still be difficult to impose a minimum wage on Mexican automakers. However, U.S. Democrats hope that the condition will force automakers to buy more supplies from Canada or the U.S. or cause automakers' wages in Mexico to increase.

The agreement finally ratified will replace the one that has been in force for 25 years. Overall, the move from NAFTA to the TMEC should not have a drastic effect on the three countries. It is a progressive agreement that will entail slight changes: certain industries will be affected, such as the automotive and dairy industries, but in a small proportion. In the long term, given the changes introduced, wages should increase in Mexico, which will decrease Mexican migration to the US. Businesses will be affected in the long term, but with backup plans and new redesigns, the transition process should hopefully be smooth and mutually beneficial.

[Jim Sciutto, The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America. Hasper-Collins. New York, 2019. 308 p.]

review / Álvaro de Lecea

With the end of the Cold War, which pitted the former Soviet Union against the victorious United States of America, the international system went from being bipolar to a hegemony led by the latter. With the United States in the lead, the West focused on the spread of democracy and commercial globalization, and if anything concentrated its geostrategic concern on the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11, so the focus shifted and today's Russia was put on the back burner. However, Russia continued to slowly reconstitute itself, in the shadow of its former enemy, which no longer showed much interest in it. Russia was joined by China, which began to grow by leaps and bounds. At this point, the United States began to realize that it had two great powers nipping at its heels and that it was engaged in a war it did not even know existed, the Shadow War.

This is the term used by Jim Sciutto, CNN's chief national security correspondent, to designate what he describes in detail throughout his book and which has largely come to be known as hybrid or gray zone warfare. Sciutto prefers to speak of Shadow War, which could be translated as war in the shadows, because this better denotes its character of invisibility under the radar of open or conventional warfare.

This new war was started by Russia and China, not as allies, but as powers with a common enemy: the United States. It is a subject of hybrid warfare, so it contains both military and non-military methods. On the other hand, it does not contemplate a direct military confrontation between the two blocs. In The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America, Sciutto explains seven situations in which one can clearly observe the strategies that China and Russia are following to defeat the United States in order to become the major world powers and to be able to impose their own international rules.

First of all, it is important to note that Russia and China, while pursuing similar strategies, are different types of adversaries: on the one hand, China is a rising power, while Russia is more of a declining power that is trying to return to what it was before. Nevertheless, both share a number of similarities. First, both seek to expand their influence in their own regions. Second, they are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy within their borders. Third, both seek to right the wrongs of history and restore what they perceive as their countries' rightful positions as world leaders. And finally, they possess great national unity, so the majority of their people would do whatever it takes for their nation.

In the shadow war, thanks to the rules established by Russia and China, any major player can win, regardless of the power it has or the influence it exerts on the other international players. Following the theories of international relations, one could consider that these rules follow a very realistic patron saint , since, in a way, anything goes to win. The power of lies and deception is the daily bread, and lines that were thought to be unthinkable are crossed. Examples of this, as the book explains and elaborates on, are the militarization of the artificial islands built by China in the South China Sea when Xi Jinping himself had promised not to do so, or the hacking of the Democratic Party's computer system in the 2016 US election campaign by Russian hackers, which could have helped Donald Trump to emerge victorious.

To all this must be added an essential part of what is happening in this context of non-traditional warfare: the particularly mistaken idea that the United States has about everything that is happening. To begin with, the first mistake made by the United States, as Sciutto explains, was to set aside Russia as a relevant focus in the international arena. It believed that, having defeated it in the Cold War, the country would no longer re-emerge as a power, and so it failed to see the clear clues that it was slowly growing, led by President Vladimir Putin. Similarly, it failed to understand the true intentions of the Chinese government in situations such as the South China Sea or the submarine degree program . All this can be summed up by the fact that the United States believed that all international actors would play by the rules established by Washington after the Cold War, without imagining that they would create a new scenario. In conclusion, the United States did not understand its opponents.

In his latest chapter, Sciutto makes it clear that the United States is currently losing the war. Its biggest mistake was not realizing the status until it was in front of it, and now it finds itself playing on a disadvantaged stage. It is true that the United States is still the world leader in many respects, but Russia and China are overtaking it in others, following the new rules they themselves have set. However, a change of attitude in U.S. policies could turn the tables completely. Thus, the author proposes a number of solutions that could help the United States get back in the lead.

The solutions he proposes focus, in the first place, on total knowledge of the enemy and his strategy. This has always been their great disadvantage and would be the first step to begin to control the status. In the same way, he recommends a greater unity within the allied block, as well as an improvement of their own defenses. He also recommends a better understanding of the new scenario in which the whole conflict is taking place, so that a series of international treaties regulating these new spaces, such as cyberspace, would be of great financial aid. Further on, he proposes setting clear limits on enemy actions, raising the costs and consequences of such actions. And finally, he encourages the United States to exercise clear leadership.

In conclusion, Sciutto's thesis is that the United States finds itself fighting a war whose existence it has just discovered. It is a subject of a war it is not accustomed to and with a set of rules that are alien to what it preaches. Although it is still the leader of the current international system, it finds itself losing the game because China and Russia have been able to discover its rival's weaknesses and use them to their advantage. The biggest mistake of the United States was to ignore all the signs of this shadow war and to do nothing about it. New scenarios have been introduced and the rules of the game have been changed, so the United States, if it wants to turn the status quo around and once again emerge as the victor, the author argues, will have to unite more than ever internally as a nation and strengthen its alliances, and know its enemies and their intentions better than ever before.

As for an evaluation of the book, it can be stated that it manages to convey in a clear and concise manner the most relevant points of this new contest. It manages to make clear the strengths and weaknesses of each actor and to make a general assessment of the current status . However, the author does not manage to be too goal in his judgments. Although he admits the failures committed by the United States, he offers a negative image of its rivals, taking for granted who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. That objectivity is lacking in some cases, since neither the good guys are always so good nor the bad guys are always so bad. That said, Sciutto does a great analysis of the current international status of the world's major powers.

[Eric Rutkow, The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway and the Quest to Link the Americas. Scribner. New York, 2019. 438 p.]

REVIEW / Marcelina Kropiwnicka

Though the title tries to convince the reader that they will merely be exploring the build-up to the largest link between the United States of America and its southern neighbors, The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway and the Quest to Link the Americas covers much more. The book is written in more of a novel-fashion than a textbook-fashion. Author Eric Rutkow, rather than simply discussing the nitty-gritty development of the highway alone, is able to cover historical events from political battles in the homeland of the US to economic hardships encountered among the partner countries. Divided into three main blocks, the book chronologically introduces the events that took place during the Pan-American Highway's construction, beginning with the dream that a railway would connect the two hemispheres.

With the New World just barely beginning to grasp its potential, writer Hinton Rowan Helper's first-hand experience of traveling from the United States to Argentina in the mid-1800s made him come to the realization that there must be an alternative method of traveling between the two countries. After enduring the long voyage, he came to the conclusion, "Why not by rail?" The first quarter of the book hence explains the early attempts made towards linking the wide span between North America and Southern Argentina through the use of a railroad. Thus, when in 1890 the Intercontinental Railway Commission was created, the idea of a Pan-American railway began to flourish and preliminary work began.

The idea was passed on from one indefatigable supporter to another, keeping in mind the cooperative aim of pan-Americanism and the potential for US economic expansion. Yet still by the early 1900s, over half of the projected length of the railway remained unassembled. Despite multiple attempts and investment in building and rebuilding the rail (mainly due to logistical purposes), the project came to a final halt with the realization that the Pan-American Railway was beginning to look like what it was: an unfeasible dream. President Theodore Roosevelt had concluded similarly in 1905, when he gave preference to developing the Panama Canal, regulating the rules of the railway and building the US Navy. In the subsequent and comparatively short chapter of the book, Rutkow introduces the era when automobiles and bicycles were on the rise, causing a demand for the increased construction of roads and exhaustive efforts to build decent thoroughfare within the US. Also made note of in the book was the diverging attention from the railroad as a result of the outbreak of the First World War. These events combined would ultimately cease continuation of the railroad's assembly.

The second half of the book is dedicated to the continuation of the dream of connecting the two spheres using a different method: the building of the Pan-American Highway. Although only a sister to the railway project, the two ideas arise from the same ideal. The new project seemed especially tangible due to the growth of the 'motoring generation' and the strengthened advocacy of Pan-Americanism. The belief was that the highway would foster "closer and more harmonious relations" among the nations in the Americas. Nevertheless, the highway remains unfinished due to a mere 50-mile wide gap, known as the Darien Gap, located between Panama and Colombia ("mere" considering the highway today stretches more than 20,000 miles, connecting Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina).

The most engaging part of the book emerges in the last chapter, when Rutkow attempts at connecting the missing link between the two worlds, but isn't able to, which reminds us that the road remains unfinished. The chapter, which is committed to the Darien Gap, is able to give light to the idea that once, the two spheres had a dream of connecting, contrasting to what we see today with the pressure of erecting walls along the southern US border. Though the dream continues to overcome the gap and finish the road, a new challenge had finally emerged: Panama had changed its policy and refused to finish the pavement.

As for such a well-researched book of one of the largest projects on the American continent, there's a peculiar laxity: the coverage on South America is far less complete in comparison to all the focus that the United States' government efforts to organizing and funding the link received. In terms of critiquing the book as a literary piece, not every quotation within the book would be considered absolutely necessary to telling the story. Ironically there's a certain scarcity when it comes to describing the road itself or its surrounding environment. Perhaps the author makes up for this blunder with his meticulous choosing of maps and images to provide the reader with a context of the environment and era in which the dream was being pursued.

For decades, the U.S. closed its doors to Mexican avocados; today it needs them to meet its growing demand.

In 2019, there will be a record of Mexican avocado imports in the United States: almost 90% of the million tons of avocados consumed by Americans will come from the neighboring country, which leads world production. After being banned for decades in the US -alleging phytosanitary issues, mainly invoked by California producers-, the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement opened the doors of the US market to this Mexican product, first with reservations and since 2007 without restrictions. The arrival of Trump to the presidency marked a drop in imports, but then they have not stopped rising.

▲ Interest in healthy food has increased avocado consumption around the world

article / Silvia Goya

Social trends such as veganism or "real fooding" have increased the world production of avocado, a fruit valued for its healthy fat and vitamin contribution, which is a good complement to a multitude of dishes. In the United States, moreover, the food tradition of millions of Hispanics - the avocado comes from a tree native to Central and South America(Persea americana) - has encouraged the consumption of a product that, like few others, marks the relations between the United States and Mexico.

The US department Agriculture (USDA) forecasts that to meet the growing domestic consumption of avocado (which has increased 5.4 times since 2000, from 226,000 tons to 1.2 million in 2018), in 2019 the country will have to increase its imports significantly, so that they will go from 87% to 93% of the availability product. That will mean an increase in imports from Mexico, which in 2018 already contributed 87% of the avocado from abroad. This need for imports is partly due to production problems recorded in California, the state with the highest production in the US (about 80%), well ahead of the second, Florida, and a great litigator in the past to prevent the skill of Mexican avocados.

Donald Trump's first year in the White House meant a slight decline in Mexican avocado imports, which in 2017 dropped to 774,626 tons. However, in 2018, a new record was reached, with 904,205 tons, up 17%, in a context of non-materialization of the trade threats launched by the Trump Administration, which finally agreed to the renewal of the free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. Last year, imports from Mexico accounted for 87% of total avocado purchases abroad; the rest, up to 1.04 million tons, corresponded to those from Peru (8%), Chile (2.5%) and Dominican Republic (2.5%).

History of a veto

The B in avocado sales in the US has attracted the attention of drug cartels, which have clashed for control of the business in some Mexican states such as Michoacán - the major producer of avocados, especially the Hass variety, which is the most widely marketed - giving rise to a "new drug trade". However, the history of controversy between the two countries over this berry goes back a long way. It was in 1914 when the then US Secretary of Agriculture signed a quarantine notice declaring the need to prohibit the importation of avocado seeds from Mexico due to a weevil that the seed carried. In 1919 the "Quarantine of nurseries, plants and seeds" was enacted. This regulatory framework was in force for decades.

During the period of the 1970s, the discussion on the entrance of Mexican avocados into the U.S. market remained in the political limelight due to the insistence of Mexican Plant Health Service officials. Investigations in several Mexican avocado-producing states, however, found weevils in some of the seeds, which did not allow a change in the regulatory policy of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the USDA department Therefore, in 1976 the USDA, in a letter to its Mexican counterpart, stated that it should continue "as in the past, against the issuance of permits for the importation of avocados from Mexico".

Following these events, U.S. policy toward avocados from its neighboring country remained restrictive until trade liberalization and harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary measures began to change the context in which governments considered plant health problems and imports. For most of the 20th century, the policy of protection had been to deny access to products that might harbor pests; in the last decade, however, the rules began to change.

The creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and the World Trade Organization in 1995 paved the way for new Mexican requests for access to the U.S. avocado market. Although NAFTA's main goal was the elimination of tariffs by 2004, it also provided for the harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary measures between trading partners. However, this free trade agreement explicitly recognizes that each country can establish regulations to protect human, animal and plant life and health, so when the risk of pest infestation is high, the country has the legitimacy to place restrictions on trade.

With the implementation of NAFTA in 1994, the U.S. government came under increased pressure to facilitate the importation of agricultural products from Mexico, including avocados. This led to a shift in USDA's phytosanitary policy to a new policy of "mitigation or technological solutions". APHIS is the branch of government charged with implementing the phytosanitary provisions of NAFTA in the case of the US. APHIS considered that fruit flies - present in a wide variety of species - could also be found in Mexican avocados, so Mexican Plant Health Service officials had the difficult task of proving that the insect was not present in their avocados and that those of the Hass variety were not susceptible to Mexican fruit fly attack. Between 1992 and 1994, Mexico submitted two work plans with their respective research. The first was rejected while the second, despite pressure from the California Avocado Commission (CAC), was accepted.

This second plan called for access of Mexican avocados to 19 of the 50 U.S. states during the months of October through February. In late June 1995, the USDA issued a proposal rule outlining the conditions under which Hass avocados grown on approved plantations in Michoacán could enter the United States. It was in late 1997 that the USDA issued a final rule authorizing the importation of such avocados into the US. This was the first time that the USDA used the so-called "systemsapproach " to manage the risks posed by quarantine pests.

At the conclusion of the second shipping season in February 1999, Mexico requested an expansion of the program to increase the issue of U.S. states to which it could export and allow the shipping season to begin one month earlier (September) and end one month later (March). In 2001, the USDA met with the Mexican Plant Health Service and agreed to consider expanding the importing states to 31 and the import dates from October 15 to April 15. The good relationship established between Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox had a clear influence on this expansionary movement.

Imports in tons. In 2018, imports of 1.04 million tons (87% from Mexico)source: USDA].

Liberalization

For five years Mexican avocados had been shipped to the U.S. without detecting a single pest. Although the expansion of Mexican avocado imports seemed inevitable, the CAC filed a lawsuit against the USDA from California, alleging that Mexican avocados did have pests. In response, the USDA conducted an research and published a draft "pest riskassessment " in 2003 confirming that Mexican avocados did not carry the fruit fly.

The USDA had shifted from its previous position of domestic protection to a new position that benefited importation. Thus, in 2004 the USDA issued a new rule to expand the import program to all 50 states for 12 months of the year. This rule provided for California, Florida and Hawaii to delay the importation of avocados for up to one year in order to test the effectiveness of the proposed regulations. Therefore, it was not until January 2007 that Mexico was allowed to export avocados to California and Florida; since then it has been allowed to export to all states year-round, thus quickly making the US the world's largest importer of Mexican avocados.

Until 2017, the import of Mexican avocados remained stable; however, as previously indicated, with Trump's arrival to the White House, US-Mexico relations again faltered around various issues, one of them being the export of food from Mexico to the US, with avocados as an emblematic case. The new US president threatened a 20% tariff on Mexican avocados to finance the wall he intended to build on the border.

In June 2018 Trump again threatened to place a 25% tariff on avocados and later in May 2019 threatened to impose a 5% tariff on all goods from Mexico.

In March 2019, when the migratory wave occurred, the US president threatened to close the border with Mexico and consecutively withdrew his decision, however, the mere fact that Trump threatened to close the border already escalated the price of avocado by 34%.

U.S.-Mexico avocado relations remain unstable. Although much progress has been made since the implementation of NAFTA, various interests are still at stake that could lead the US to reduce imports of Mexican avocados. Avocados can hardly escape the uncertainty of the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

▲ US border patrol vehicle near the fence with Mexico [Wikimedia Commons].

ESSAY / Gabriel de Lange

I. Current issues in the Northern Triangle

In recent years, the relationship between the Northern Triangle Countries (NTC) -Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador- and it's northern neighbors Mexico and the United States has been marked in mainstream average for their surging migration patterns. As of 2019, a total of 977,509 individuals have been apprehended at the Southwest border of the US (the border with Mexico) as compared to 521,093 the previous year (years in terms of US fiscal years). Of this number, an estimated 75% have come from the NTC[1]. These individuals are typically divided into three categories: single adults, family units, and unaccompanied alien children (UAC).

As the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reports, over 65% of the population of the NTC are below 29 years of age[2]. This is why it is rather alarming to see an increasing number of the youth population from these countries leaving their homes and becoming UAC at the border.

Why are these youths migrating? Many studies normally associate this to "push factors." The first factor being an increase in insecurity and violence, particularly from transnational organized crime, gangs, and narco-trafficking[3]. It is calculated that six children flee to the US for every ten homicides in the Northern Triangle[4]. The second significant factor is weak governance and corruption; this undermines public trust in the system, worsens the effects of criminal activity, and diverts funds meant to improve infrastructure and social service systems. The third factor is poverty and lack of economic development; for example in Guatemala and Honduras, roughly 60% of people live below the poverty line[5].

The other perspective to explain migration is through what are called "pull factors." An example would be the lure of economic possibilities abroad, like the high US demand for low-skilled workers, a service that citizens of NTC can provide and be better paid for that in their home countries. Another pull factor worth mentioning is lax immigration laws, if the consequences for illegal entry into a country are light, then individuals are more likely to migrate for the chance attaining better work, educational, and healthcare opportunities[6].

II. US administrations' strategies

A. The Obama administration (2008-2015)

The Obama administration for the most part used the carrot and soft power approach in its engagement with the NTC. Its main goals in the region being to "improve security, strengthen governance, and promote economic prosperity in the region", it saw these developments in the NTC as being in the best interest of US national security[7].

In 2014, in the wake of the massive surge of migrants, especially UACs, the administration launched the reform initiative titled the Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity (A4P). The plan expanded across Central America but with special focus on the NTC. This was a five year plan to address these "push factors" that cause people to migrate. The four main ways that the initiative aims to accomplish this is by promoting the following: first, by fostering the productivity sector to address the region's economic instability; second, by developing human capital to increase the quality of life, which improves education, healthcare and social services; third, improving citizen security and access to justices to address the insecurity and violence threat, and lastly, strengthening institutions and improving transparency to address the concerns for weak governance and corruption[8].

This initiative would receive direct technical support and financing from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). In addition, major funding was to be provided by the US, which for the fiscal years of 2015-2018 committed $2.6 billion split for bilateral assistance, Regional Security Strategy (RSS), and other regional services[9]. The NTC governments themselves were major financiers of the initiative, committing approximately $8.6 billion between 2016-2018[10].

The administration even launched programs with the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The principle one being the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), with a heavy focus on the NTC and it's security issues, which allotted a budget of $1.2 billion in 2008. This would later evolve into the larger framework of US Strategy for Engagement in Central America in 2016.

The Obama administration also launched in 2015 the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which currently allows individuals who were brought to the US as children, and have unlawful statuses to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation[11]. It is a policy that the Trump administration has been fighting to remove these last few years.

Although the Obama administration was quite diplomatic and optimistic in its approach, that didn't mean it didn't make efforts to lessen the migration factors in more aggressive ways too. In fact, the administration reportedly deported over three million illegal immigrants through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the highest amount of deportations taking place in the fiscal year of 2012 reaching 409,849 which was higher than any single one of the Trump administration's reported fiscal years to date[12].

In addition, the Obama administration used educational campaigns to discourage individuals from trying to cross into the US illegally. In 2014 they also launched a Central American Minors (CAM) camp targeting children from the NTC and providing a "safe, legal and orderly alternative to US migration"[13]. This however was later scrapped by the Trump Administration, along with any sense of reassessment brought about by Obama's carrot approach. 

Number of apprehensions and inadmissibles on the US border with Mexico [Source: CBP].

B. The Trump administration (2016-present)        

The Trump administration's strategy in the region has undoubtedly gone with the stick approach. The infamous "zero tolerance policy" which took place from April-June 2018 is a testimony to this idea, resulting in the separation of thousands of children from their parents and being reclassified as UAC[14]. This was in an attempt to discourage individuals in the NTC from illegally entering the US and address these lax immigration laws.

From early on Trump campaigned based on the idea of placing America's interests first, and as a result has reevaluated many international treaties and policies. In 2016 the administration proposed scaling back funds for the NTC through the A4P, however this was blocked in Congress and the funds went through albeit in a decreasing value starting with $754 million in 2016 to only $535 million in 2019.

Another significant difference between the two administrations is that while Obama's focused on large multi-lateral initiatives like the A4P, the Trump administration has elected to focus on a more bilateral approach, one that goes back and forth between cooperation and threats, to compliment the existing strategy.

Towards the end of 2018 the US and Mexico had announced the concept of a "Marshal Plan" for Central America with both countries proposing large sums of money to be given annually to help improve the economic and security conditions in the NTC. However in this last year it has become more apparent that there will be difficulties raising funds, especially due to their reliance on private investment organisations and lack of executive cooperation. Just last May, Trump threatened to place tariffs on Mexico due to its inability to decrease immigration flow. President López Obrador responded by deploying the National Guard to Mexico's border with Guatemala, resulting in a decrease of border apprehensions by 56%[15] on the US Southwest border. This shows that the stick method can achieve results, but that real cooperation cannot be achieved if leaders don't see eye to eye and follow through on commitments. If large amount of funding where to be put in vague unclear programs and goals in the NTC, it is likely to end up in the wrong hands due to corruption[16].  

In terms of bilateral agreements with NTC countries, Trump has been successful in negotiating with Guatemala and Honduras in signing asylum cooperative agreements, which has many similarities with a safe third country agreement, though not exactly worded as such. Trump struck a similar deal with El Salvador, though sweetened it by granting a solution for over 200,000 Salvadorans living in US under a Temporary Protection Status (TPS).[17]

However, Trump has not been the only interested party in the NTC and Mexico. The United Nations' ECLAC launched last year its "El Salvador-Guatemala-Honduras-Mexico Comprehensive Development Program", which aims to target the root causes of migration in the NTC. It does this by promoting policies that relate to the UN 2030 diary and the 17 sustainable development goals. The four pillars of this initiative being: economic development, social well-being, environmental sustainability, and comprehensive management of migratory patters[18]. However the financing behind this initiative remains ambiguous and the goals behind it seem redundant. They reflect the same goals established by the A4P, just simply under a different entity.

The main difference between the Obama and Trump administrations is that the A4P takes a slow approach aiming to address the fundamental issues triggering migration patterns, the results of which will likely take 10-15 years and steady multi-lateral investment to see real progress. Meanwhile the Trump administration aims to get quick results by creating bilateral agreements with these NTC in order to distribute the negative effects of migration among them and lifting the immediate burden. Separately, neither strategy appears wholesome and convincing enough to rally congressional and public support. However, the combination of all initiatives -investing effort both in the long and short run, along with additional initiatives like ECLAC's program to reinforce the region's goals- could perhaps be the most effective mechanism to combat insecurity, weak governance, and economic hardships in the NTC.

U.S. agreements with the Northern Triangle may have had a deterrent effect before entering into force

In the first month following the extension of the Asylum Cooperation Agreements (ACA) to the three Northern Triangle countries, apprehensions at the US border have fallen below recent years. The actual reduction in migrant inflows evidenced by this has to do with Mexico's increased control over its border with Guatemala, but may also be due to the deterrent effect of the advertisement the agreements, whose implementation has not yet fully begun and therefore has yet to demonstrate whether they will be directly effective.

▲ Honduran migrants held by Guatemalan border guards, October 2018 [Wikimedia Commons].

article / María del Pilar Cazali

Attempts to entrance the United States through its border with Mexico have not only returned to the levels of earlier in the year, before the number of migrants soared and each month set a new record high, reaching 144,116 apprehensions and inadmissions in May( U.S.Border Guard figures that provide an indirect assessment of the evolution of migration), but have continued to decline to below several previous years.

The month of October (the first month of the 2020 US fiscal year), there were 45,250 apprehensions and inadmissions at the US southern border, below the figure for the months of October 2018, 2015 and 2016 (though not 2017). This allows us to predict that the total number of apprehensions and inadmissions in the new fiscal year will fall clearly below the record of 977,509 recorded in 2019. This boom had to do with the migrant caravans that began at the end of 2018 in the Central American Northern Triangle (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala), following a migratory flow that, with different intensities, began in the 1980s due to political and economic instabilities in those countries.

This migration crisis led President Trump's U.S. administration to implement harsher deportation policies, including changing conditions for expedited deportations. In addition, the White House pressured Mexico with the threat of tariffs on its products if it did not help reduce the flow of migrants crossing Mexican soil, prompting President López Obrador to deploy the newly created National Guard to the border with Guatemala. Trump combined these measures with the negotiation with the Northern Triangle countries of Asylum Cooperation Agreements (ACAs), which were initially improperly referred to as "safe third countries", adding to the controversy they generated.

agreement with Guatemala

Due to US threats to impose tariffs on Guatemala if it failed to reduce the issue of migrants from or passing through Guatemala on their way to the US, the Guatemalan government accepted the terms of an attention announced by Trump on July 26, 2019. The agreement provides that those seeking asylum in the US but who have previously passed through Guatemala will be brought back to the US so that they can remain there as asylees if they qualify. The United States sees this as a safe third country agreement .

A safe third countryagreement is an international mechanism that makes it possible to receive in one country those seeking asylum in another. The agreement signed in July prevents asylum seekers from receiving U.S. protection if they passed through Guatemala and did not first apply for asylum there. The U.S. goal is to prevent migrants from Honduras and El Salvador from seeking asylum in the United States. The responsibility for processing protection requests will fall on Washington in only three cases: unaccompanied minors, persons with a U.S.-issued visa or admission document, or persons who are not required to obtain a visa. Those who do not meet the requirements will be sent to Guatemala to await resolution of their case, which could take years. On the other hand, the agreement does not prevent Guatemalan and Mexican applicants from seeking asylum in the United States.

The president of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, had previously announced that a similar agreement could become part of the immigration negotiations being carried out with the US. In Guatemala, after the advertisement the agreement, multiple criticisms arose, because the security conditions of both countries are incomparable. To this were added rumors about the true content of the agreement that Morales had signed, since it was not immediately revealed to the public. Faced with this uncertainty, the Minister of the Interior, Enrique Degenhart, declared that the agreement was only for Hondurans and Salvadorans, not for nationals of other Latin American countries, and that the text did not explicitly mention the term "safe third country".

The week following the advertisement, three appeals for legal protection against the agreement were filed before the Constitutional Court of Guatemala, arguing that the country is not in a position to provide the protection it supposedly offers and that the expense it would entail would weaken the economic status of the population itself. However, Degenhart defended the agreement saying that the economic repercussions would have been worse if the pact with Washington had not been reached, because the U.S. tariffs would endanger half of Guatemala's exports and the jobs that accompany these sectors.

These criticisms came not only from Guatemalan citizens, but also from public figures such as Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman, Jordán Rodas, citing a lack of transparency on the part of the government. Rodas insisted that Guatemala is not fit to be a safe third country because of its low production, Education, public health and security indicators. Similar ideas have also been expressed by organizations such as Amnesty International, for which Guatemala is not safe and cannot be considered as a safe haven.

In its pronouncement, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala affirmed that the Guatemalan government needs to submit the agreement to the approval of congress in order for it to be effective. This has been rejected by the government, which considers that international policy is the direct skill of the country's president and therefore will begin to implement the decision made with Washington without further delay.

Apprehensions and inadmissions made by U.S. border guards, distributed by month during the last fiscal years (FY) [Taken from CBP].

Also with El Salvador and Honduras

Despite all this controversy generated since July as a result of the pact with Guatemala, the US developed similar efforts with El Salvador and Honduras. On September 20, 2019, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, signed an agreement assimilable to the figure of the safe third country, although it was not explicitly called as such either. It commits El Salvador to receive asylum seekers who cannot yet enter the U.S., similar to the agreement with Guatemala. El Salvador's agreement has the same three assumptions in which the U.S. will have to make a position migrant protection.

The Salvadoran government has received similar criticism, including a lack of transparency in the negotiation and denial of the reality that the country is unsafe. Bukele justified the signature by saying it would mean the extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the more than 190,000 Salvadorans living in the US. In October 2019, the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry said that this agreement is not a safe third country because El Salvador is not in the serious migratory situations in which Guatemala and Honduras are in terms of the flow of people, so it is only an agreement of non-violation of rights to minimize the number of migrants.

On September 21, 2019 the Honduran government also made public the advertisement of an agreement very similar to the one accepted by its two neighbors. It states that the U.S. will be able to deport to Honduras asylum seekers who have passed through Honduras. Like the other two countries, the Honduran government received criticism that it is not a safe destination for migrants as it is one of the countries with the highest homicide fees in the world.

Despite the criticism generated over the three agreements, in late October 2019 the Donald Trump administration announced that it was in final preparations to begin sending asylum seekers to Guatemala. However, by the end of November, the sending of non-Guatemalan asylum seekers had yet to occur. The inauguration in early January of President-elect Alejandro Giammattei, who announced his desire to rescind certain terms of the agreement, may introduce some variation, although perhaps his purpose is to extract some more concessions from Trump, in addition to the agricultural visas that Morales negotiated for Guatemalan seasonal workers.

The flood of unaccompanied alien minors suffered by the Obama Administration in 2014 has been surpassed in a 2019 with a new migration peak

In the summer of 2014, the United States suffered a migration crisis due to an unexpected increase in the issue of unaccompanied foreign minors, mostly Central American, arriving at its border with Mexico. What has happened since then? Although oscillating, the Issue of this immigration subject went down, but in 2019 a new record has been registered, hand in hand with the ˝caravan crisis˝, which has led to a rise again in total apprehensions at the border.

▲ U.S. border agents search unaccompanied minors at the Texas-Mexico border in 2014 [Hector Silva, USCBP-Wikimedia Commons].

article / Marcelina Kropiwnicka [English version].

The United States hosts more immigrants than any other country in the world, with more than one million people arriving each year, either as legal permanent residents, asylum seekers and refugees, or in other immigration categories. While there is no exact figure for how many people cross the border illegally, US Customs and Border Control authorities measure changes in illegal immigration based on the number of apprehensions made at the border; these apprehensions serve as an indicator of the total issue of attempts to enter the country illegally. In terms of data, it can be concluded that there have been notable changes in the demographics of illegal migration at the border with Mexico (southwest border, in official U.S. terms) in recent years.

The peak of apprehensions at the border with Mexico was during 2000, when 1.64 million people were apprehended attempting to enter the United States illegally. The numbers have generally declined since then. In recent years there have been more apprehensions of non-Mexicans than Mexicans at the U.S.-Mexico border, reflecting a decrease in the issue of unauthorized Mexican immigrants arriving in the United States over the past decade. The increase, in fact, was largely due to those fleeing violence, gang activity and poverty in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, a region known as the Central American Northern Triangle.

The nations included in the Northern Triangle are among the poorest in Latin America - a high percentage of the population still lives on less than $2 a day (the international poverty line is $1.90) - and there has been little progress in reducing poverty in recent years. Within Latin America and the Caribbean, Honduras has the second highest percentage of population living below the poverty line (17%), after Haiti, according to the latest World Bank data .

Unaccompanied foreign minors

While fewer adults, unaccompanied by family, have attempted to cross the border without authorization in the last decade, there has instead been a surge of unaccompanied alien minors (UACM) attempting to enter the United States from Mexico. The migration of unaccompanied minors is not new; what is new now is the Issue and the need to implement policies in response to this problem. The increase in apprehensions of MENAs in FY 2014 caused alarm and prompted both intense media scrutiny and the implementation of policy responses; attention was sustained even as the phenomenon declined. Numbers dropped again to just under 40,000 apprehensions of minors the following year.

The international community defines an unaccompanied migrant minor as a person, "who is under the age of eighteen" and who is "separated from both parents and is not being cared for by an adult who by law or custom has the responsibility to do so." Many of these unaccompanied minors immediately present themselves to U.S. border security, while others enter the country unnoticed and undocumented. Not only this, but the children have no parents or legal guardians available to provide care or physical custody, which quickly overwhelms local border patrol services.

In 2014 many of the unaccompanied children claimed that they were under the false impression that the Obama Administration was granting "permits" to children who had relatives in the U.S., as long as they arrived by June at the latest. These false convincements and propagated hoaxes were even more potent this past year, especially as President Trump continues to reinforce the idea of restricting migrants' access to the US. The cartels have continued to transport an increasing issue of Central American migrants from their countries to the United States.

Critical moments in 2014 and 2019

In 2014, during Obama's second term, total apprehensions along the border with Mexico reached 569,237 (this figure includes "non-admissible" individuals), a record only surpassed now. While the increase over the previous year was 13%, the increase was much more B apprehensions of MENAs; these went from 38,759 in FY 2013 to 68,541 in FY 2014 (in the US the fiscal year runs from October of one year to September of the next), an increase of almost 80%, more than four times those recorded in FY 2011. In the case of minors from Honduras, the number rose in one year from 6,747 to 18,244; those from Guatemala rose from 8,068 to 17,057, and those from El Salvador from 5,990 to 16,404 (those from Mexico, on the other hand, fell from 17,240 to 15,634). The highest issue of apprehensions occurred in May, a month in which arrests of MENAs accounted for 17% of total apprehensions.

Since 2014, apprehensions of unaccompanied minors, although fluctuating, declined in issue. But 2019 saw a new record high, reaching 76,020, with a peak in the month of May. However, they accounted for only 9% of total apprehensions that month, as this time it was not properly a crisis of MENAs, but rather inserted into a B in total apprehensions. While overall apprehensions dropped significantly during the first six months of Trump's presidency, they then rose, reaching a 2019 total of 851,508 (with "non-admissibles" the figure reached 977,509), more than doubling from 2018. The issue of total apprehensions increased by 72% from 2014 to 2019 (in the case of MENAs the increase was 11%).

Apprehensions of unaccompanied alien minors at the US-Mexico border, between 2012 and 2019 (figure 1), and comparison of 2014 and 2019 by month (figure 2). source: US Customs and Border Patrol.

Reaction

The United States had various domestic policies aimed at addressing the massive increase in immigration. However, with the overwhelming spike in 2014, Obama requested funding for a program to "repatriate and reintegrate migrants to Central American countries and to address the root causes of migration from these countries." Although funding for the program was fairly consistent in recent years, President Trump 's proposed 2018 budget reduced financial aid to these countries by approximately 30%.

The Trump Administration has made progress in implementing its immigration diary , from beginning construction of the wall on the border with Mexico to launching new programs, but the hard line already promised by Trump in his degree program to the White House has proven ineffective in stopping thousands of Central American families from crossing the southwest border into the United States. With extreme gang violence being rampant and technicalities in the US immigration system, the motivation for migrants to leave their countries will remain.

Some U.S. and Canadian diplomats who were in Havana between 2016 and 2018 are still not fully recovered from ailments they suffered

▲ Building of the U.S. Embassy in Cubadepartment of State].

ANALYSIS / Eduardo Villa Corta

Three years ago, U.S. diplomatic staff stationed in Cuba began to feel physical discomfort supposedly caused by strange sounds to which they had apparently been exposed; Washington spoke of a ˝sonic attack˝, but although the symptoms suffered by those affected have been determined to be anomalous, it has not been possible to establish what caused them. However, although the symptoms suffered by those affected have been determined to be anomalous, it has not been possible to establish what caused them. Was it really an attack? Who was behind it? We review here the main hypotheses and conjectures that have been made, and point out their weaknesses.

In late 2016 and early 2017, several U.S. diplomats stationed in Havana, as well as members of their families, reported suffering from dizziness, vertigo and sharp pains in their ears that could be caused by strange sounds to which they had been exposed. According to their testimonies, the sounds came from a specific direction, and they had heard them in their own residences or, in some cases, in hotel rooms, while people staying in neighboring houses or adjoining rooms had not heard any special sounds. The phenomenon also affected Canadian diplomats in the Cuban capital. In all, some forty people were treated for these symptoms.

Acoustic attack

Echoing the facts reported by its staff in Cuba, in mid-2017 the U.S. State department stated that the symptoms could have been caused by a sonic attack by the Cuban government directed against diplomats and their families. In October 2017, President Donald Trump directly accused Havana: "I believe Cuba is manager; yes, I do."

At the beginning of 2018, the State department issued a travel alertstatement not to travel to Cuba due to a possible health crisis and withdrew a large part of the staff of the diplomatic mission statement in Havana, reducing its activity to the minimum possible. At that time, a total of 24 Americans had been affected.

At the time, the Canadian government also indicated that its diplomats had experienced similar complaints. Ottawa decided to evacuate the families of its employees in Cuba and in early 2019 proceeded to reduce the embassy staff in the face of what appeared to be the appearance of a fourteenth case.

The Cuban government denied from the outset being involved in any harassment operation against the U.S. or Canada. ˝There is no test about the cause of the reported ailments, nor is there any evidence to suggest that these health problems have been caused by an attack of any kind˝, Havana assured. Raul Castro's government offered its cooperation in research the facts, with nothing coming to light that could explain the case. No devices that could have provoked the sounds appeared.

Adding confusion to the status, at least two US diplomats stationed in China, busy at the consulate general in Guangzhou, the largest that the US has in the country, presented in early 2018 also the symptoms already described. Washington evacuated them and issued a health warning about missions in mainland China.

The Associated Press published in October 2017 a recording of the alleged sounds causing the reported ailment, and indicated that government agencies had been unable to determine the nature of the noise and explain its relationship to the bodily disorders caused. Months later, he noted that internal FBI reports did not even establish that there had been an "attack". Other media highlighted the lack of cooperation in the research, due to jurisdictional zeal, between the State department , the FBI and the CIA.

Symptoms of "Havana syndrome".

A medical team from the University of Pennsylvania, at the request of the U.S. Government, examined 21 people affected by what the press began to call "Havana syndrome". The research, initially published in March 2018 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), indicated that most of the patients reported problems with report, concentration and balance, and determined that they appeared to have suffered injuries to extensive brain networks.

Further data from the same team extended to 40 patients, released in July 2019, led to the conclusion that the diplomats had experienced some craniocerebral trauma. The results of the MRI scans, compared with those of a group healthy individuals, revealed differences in the white and gray Issue of the brain, in the integrity of the microstructures of the cerebellum and in the functional connectivity of the subnetworks for hearing and spatial vision, but not for executive functions.

This report concluded that the diplomatic staff had been physically injured, although it could not determine the cause. It also noted that the patients do not experience a usual recovery, as they are not recovering quickly from the symptoms, as in other cases of similar "contusions" or ear problems.

IF IT WASN'T AN ATTACK, WHAT WAS IT?

As no clear cause has been established as to what caused the ills suffered by the U.S. and Canadian diplomatic staff and some of their family members, the very reality of an attack has been called into question. Although several alternative explanations have been put forward, none of them are fully convincing.

1) Collective hysteria

Formulation. Some neurologists and sociologists, such as Robert Bartholomew, have suggested that it could be a case of mass hysteria. Given the pressure to which some of the diplomats working in very unfriendly environments are subjected, and the endogamic relationship in which they live, living almost exclusively among themselves, it could explain a mutual conviction of an external attack that even has somatic consequences.

Weak spot. Both the research of the University of Pennsylvania and the State department doctor, Charles Rosenfarb, who appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee , came to rule out that the symptoms suffered by the diplomats were due to a mere mental mechanism. It is very difficult that about sixty people, including Americans and Canadians, convinced each other of an aggression of this subject and then almost all of them developed the same brain lesions.

2) Microwave

Formulation. The researcher team at the University of Pennsylvania, while not pointing to any possible cause of the ailments, did not rule out certain assumptions, such as that of microwave affectation. This aspect was insisted upon by research published in 2018 in the journal Neural Computation, which considered the symptoms consistent with exhibition to electromagnetic microwave (RF/MW) radiation.

Weak point. Not all the symptoms shown by patients could be a consequence of exhibition radiation of this subject, which also has a diverging literature on its effects on the human body. Moreover, it is not known that there is a microwave weapon that can affect the brain.

3) Ultrasound

Formulation. A team of computer experts at the University of Michigan suggested in 2018 that it could be a case of exhibition to some ultrasound subject , perhaps coming from malfunctioning listening equipment that mixed multiple ultrasonic signals.

Weak point. The recording of one of the sound episodes - the sample released by AP - is not sufficient to determine its nature. It is also possible that the sound was somewhat different in other cases.

4) Crickets

Formulation. A research from the Universities of California-Berkeley and Lincoln, from the existing sound sample , considered in January 2019 that the possible cause of the attacks was made by cricketsspecifically crickets Anurogryllus muticus. The research was a comparative study between the sound emitted by this variant of crickets and the sample of one of the acoustic episodes in Havana.

Weak point. The sound perceived by the diplomats was directional, so it was not heard by neighboring people. If they had been crickets in their natural environment, the sound would have spread around.

5) Neurotoxins

Formulation. A May 2019 joint study by two Canadian research centers attributed the symptoms suffered by diplomats to exhibition to neurotoxins from pesticides used to spray mosquitoes, a common internship in embassy buildings.

Weak point. The diplomats affected related the beginning of their physical discomfort to situations experienced in their own residences or in hotel rooms, where there was no fumigation.

IF IT WAS AN ATTACK, WHO DID IT?

Given that the previous explanations do not seem entirely solid, the US Government maintains the hypothesis of an attack. If it really happened, who was behind it? Here, too, there are various conjectures.

1) Castro regime

The first option considered, assumed in principle by the US given the public accusations made from Washington, has been to attribute the alleged attacks to the Cuban regime itself. With them, Havana would try to maintain pressure on the Americans, in spite of the formal reestablishment of diplomatic relations, with the goal of marking each other's territory.

Weak point. The incidents began to occur during the Obama Administration, in a context of a ˝honeymoon˝ marked by the reopening of embassies and Barack Obama's visit to Havana. The normal thing is that at the end of 2016, in view of the U.S. elections, the Castro regime would not want to give reasons to the next U.S. president to twist the diplomatic line opened by Obama. It could make sense that after Donald Tump's later revocation of the previous openness measures, Cuba would want to punish the new Administration, but not before seeing the direction it would take; in any case, the attacks would only justify the hard line followed by Trump, which does not benefit the island.

2) A sector of Castroism

Fidel Castro was attributed with an unaccommodating attitude towards his brother Raul's decision to reestablish diplomatic relations with the United States. Although he died in November 2016, people around him might have tried to torpedo that rapprochement, convinced that hostility with Washington was the best way to ensure the survival of the regime as conceived by its founder.

Weak point. Although Fidel Castro's reluctance towards rapprochement with the U.S. is true, it is difficult to think that the most conservative sector within Castroism would dare to boycott so directly Raul Castro's fundamental political line. Another thing is that, after he handed over the presidency of Cuba to Miguel Díaz-Canel in April 2018, some sectors within the regime could make internal movements to send certain messages, but the changeover occurred when most of the acoustic episodes had already taken place.

3) A third country (Russia, China)

The third option would be that a third country generated the attacks. American intelligence indicates that the most viable option in this case would be Russia. Moscow has been keen to return to operating in the Caribbean, as in the Cold War, and aggression against U.S. diplomats in Cuba would fit in with its strategy. It has also been suggested that China might want to repay Washington in its backyard with the same harassment that the Chinese believe they feel from the US in their nearest seas.

Weak point. The return of Russia to the Caribbean is certainly documented, and it is conceivable that Moscow could have promoted a punctual action against some specific goal , but it seems difficult that it would have sustained over time an operation that harms Cuba's sovereignty. As for China's presence in the US neighborhood, it is a less confrontational move than the one carried out by Russia. For the rest, if Beijing had chosen foreign soil in order to better erase the traces of an action against US diplomats, then the cases recorded in Guangzhou would not have occurred.