Latin America Today

On June 24, 2026, two consecutive earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude—the strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a century—devastated the country's northern coast, including the city of La Guaira and parts of Caracas. This episode features Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, WOLA's president, who was visiting Venezuela when the earthquakes hit and subsequently traveled to the hardest-hit zone,...

In this episode of the WOLA Podcast, recorded on June 25, 2026, host Adam Isacson speaks with Elijah Maurus, an attorney based in Tijuana who has worked principally with LGBTQ+ asylum seekers since 2018. Maurus relocated to Tijuana during the major migrant caravan that arrived in late 2018, initially working with Al Otro Lado before launching a pilot legal project dedicated to LGBT asylum seekers...

En este episodio de la serie del mes del Orgullo de Latin America Today, Maureen Meyer, vicepresidenta de Programas de WOLA, conversa con Braulio Abarca, activista LGBTIQ+ nicaragüense exiliado, defensor de derechos humanos, y cofundador del Colectivo Nicaragua Nunca Más, sobre lo que significa defender los derechos de las comunidades LGBTIQ+ desde el exilio. Desde 2018, más de 900 mil nicaragüens...

En este episodio especial del mes del Orgullo de Latin America Today, la presidenta de WOLA, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, conversa con Renata Jank Vivas Antonelli, activista y defensora de derechos humanos de la Fundación Santamaría, una organización con sede en Cali, Colombia, que lleva dos décadas documentando la violencia, defendiendo derechos y construyendo poder para las comunidades trans. En C...

This episode examines the first round of Colombia's presidential election, which took place on May 31, 202 6, and previews the June 21st runoff between two starkly different candidates. Gimena Sánc hez- Gar zoli , WOLA's director for Colombia and the And es,  prov ides  deep insight into the candidates, voter concerns, and the election's implications for U.S.-Colombia relations.   The first round...

A year after the arrest of Salvadoran human rights lawyer and anti-corruption advocate Ruth Eleonora López Alfaro, WOLA's Latin America Today podcast revisits her case and the broader situation unfolding in El Salvador. Ruth López, who worked with the human rights organization Cristosal, was arrested on May 18, 2025, when police entered her home late at night. Since then, she has been held in dete...

This episode marks the 50th anniversary of Operation Condor's assassination program, codenamed "Teseo" (Theseus). Condor was the coordinated campaign of state-sponsored terror carried out by U.S.-backed military dictatorships in South America during the 1970s and early 1980s. Our guest is Peter Kornbluh , director of the Cuba and Chile documentation projects at the National Security Archive, who h...

This episode examines the aftermath of Peru's first-round presidential election held on April 12, 2025, recorded just five days later with results still not fully finalized. Host Adam Isacson speaks with Cynthia McClintock , a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University who has studied Peruvian politics for over four decades. The conversation describes...

This episode examines the systematic dismantling of asylum protections in the United States under the Trump administration. Our guests are two attorney-advocates: Heather Hogan, Policy and Practice Counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association ( AILA ), and Peter Habib, Staff Attorney at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies ( CGRS ). Hogan and Habib emphasize that the United States...

Por el Mes de la Mujer, estamos lanzando un episodio especial de Latin America Today con una conversación con Collette Spinetti — activista trans uruguaya, profesora de literatura y la primera mujer trans en ocupar un puesto de secretaria de Estado en Uruguay. En este episodio, Collette conversa con Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, Presidenta de WOLA, sobre lo que significa romper barreras históricas co...

For Women's Month,  we're  releasing a special episode of Latin America Today featuring a conversation with Ana Lorena Delgadillo Pérez — a Mexican human rights lawyer with over two decades of experience working on enforced disappearances, femicides, migrants' rights, and women's rights across Mexico and Central America.   In this episode, Ana Lorena speaks with WOLA's Corie Welch about what the c...

This episode assesses the "transition"—if that is the correct word—in Venezuela nine weeks after the January 3 U.S. military operation that extracted Nicolás Maduro. This conversation with Laura Dib , director of WOLA's Venezuela program, and Francisco Monaldi , director of the Latin American Energy Program at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, focus particularly on the role of o...

This episode features  Mark Ungar , a professor of criminal justice and political science at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York. Ungar has written extensively on the rule of law, policing, and human rights in Latin America, and more recently has focused his research on environmental organized crime across the Amazon basin. Ungar notes that environmental organized crime—illegal go...

This episode is a conversation with John Walsh , WOLA's director for Drug Policy and the Andes, about the ongoing U.S. military attacks on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans. When Walsh and host Adam Isacson recorded this episode, on February 13, 2026, 35 attacks had killed at least 131 people since September 2, 2025—an average of four killings every five days—and another attack la...

Following the Trump administration's January 3, 2026 military operation in Venezuela and its lethal strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs, its threats of unilateral U.S. military action inside Mexico and Colombia have taken on new urgency. WOLA's Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli and Stephanie Brewer join Adam Isacson to examine what such actions would mean for two of Washington's most important partn...

January 20, 2026 is the first anniversary of Donald Trump's second inauguration. As we pass this milestone, WOLA President Carolina Jiménez Sandoval and Vice President for Programs Maureen Meyer join Adam Isacson to take stock of a year that has fundamentally transformed U.S. policy toward Latin America—and not for the better. This episode is a companion of a review analysis that Meyer published o...

After midnight on January 3, 2026, the Trump administration bombed Venezuelan military sites and extracted the country's authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. President Trump declared that the United States is now "running" Venezuela and emphasized access to its oil reserves. The rest of Maduro's government—the key political figures, the generals, the intelligence chiefs, the colectivos —remains i...

In this series from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), prominent decision-makers from across the Americas—those who have been at the heart of democratic governance—share personal reflections and insights on the meaning, challenges, and future of democracy in the region. In each episode, members of the WOLA team sit down with a current or former political figure from the Americas to exp...

WOLA presents a new episode about El Salvador, coinciding with our awarding of our 2025 Human Rights Award to MOVIR, El Salvador's Movement of Victims of the Regime, which supports victims and families of arbitrary detentions carried out by President Nayib Bukele's government. In this conversation,  Ricardo Valencia , assistant professor of public relations in the Department of Communications at C...

A special episode as part of WOLA's 2025 Human Rights Awards Month President Nayib Bukele's government has jailed nearly 2 percent of El Salvador's entire population—the highest incarceration rate in the world. Still, because violence has dropped sharply, political figures across Latin America speak about emulating Bukele's "security model." But behind the videos of mega-prisons and tweets about p...

Since late August, the Trump administration has sent a flotilla of U.S. warships to the southern Caribbean, in the largest naval display in the region in decades. On September 2, a U.S. drone strike sank a small boat near the Venezuelan coast, killing as many as eleven civilians. Administration officials allege the vessel carried cocaine, but have presented no evidence. In this WOLA Podcast episod...

Since January, the United States' migrant detention and deportation system, which was already troubled, has become increasingly opaque. Access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities is restricted, internal oversight agencies have been hollowed out, and credible information about conditions inside is scarce. Yet reports that have emerged, some from those who have recently been depo...

Nearly three years into President Gustavo Petro's term, his flagship "Total Peace" initiative is faltering. On this episode of the WOLA Podcast, Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli , WOLA's Director for the Andes, provides a sweeping overview of Colombia's peace and security reality.

A Special Pride Month Episode This special Pride Month episode brings together the voices of six LGBTIQ+ activists from across Latin America—Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, and El Salvador—who share their experiences as leaders in the fight for equality and justice. Through their stories, we explore what Pride means in contexts of resistance, the state of LGBTIQ+ rights across the region, a...

This special Pride Month episode brings together the voices of six LGBTIQ+ activists from across Latin America—Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, and El Salvador—who share their experiences as leaders in the fight for equality and justice. Through their stories, we explore what Pride means in contexts of resistance, the state of LGBTIQ+ rights across the region, and the ongoing work to build m...