The Poblete Dispatches

On the edition, Jason Poblete speaks with Ana Quintana, from the Heritage Foundation. Ana is a Senior Policy Analyst, Latin America, and the Western Hemisphere who leads Heritage's U.S. policy efforts toward Latin America. Ana has authored numerous policy studies included but not limited to Mexico, Central America, Cuba, Colombia, and Venezuela. Like Jason, Quintana was born and raised in Miami an...

After the illegal drug trade, slavery and human trafficking are two of the most profitable criminal activities in the world today. This gross violation of fundamental rights occurs on every continent, and the victims include men, women, and children from every walk of life imaginable. As part of its mission to defend fundamental rights and strengthen the rule of law, the Global Liberty Alliance is...

Under Article 268 of Guatemala's Constitution, the main duty of the Constitutional Court of Guatemala is the defense of the constitutional order. The Court is supposed to do this by impartially and its functions are clearly outlined in the Constitution, particularly Article 272. It is supposed to the guardian of rule of law and constitutional order, yet jurists and rule of law activists in Guatema...

On March 17, 2016, Ms. Nazanin Ratcliffe, a U.K. national, traveled to Iran with her newborn baby girl, Gabriella, to visit her family and celebrate Nowruz, the Iranian new year. Close to four years later, she remains a hostage in Iran. On this podcast, Jason talks with Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin's husband (and Gabriella's dad), who has tirelessly waged a four-year campaign to secure Nazanin's rel...

In this edition, we head south to South Florida to speak with lawyer and human rights defender, Mr. Santiago A. Alpízar. A native of Cuba and born after the socialist takeover of Cuba in 1959, he became a lawyer in Cuba who managed a wide range of casework early in his career. Yet, Santiago paid a high price for refusing to join the Communist Party, and he talks about his journey to freedom and th...

This week's GLA Podcast goes beyond Latin America's "Troika of Tyranny," Venezuela, Cuba, & Nicaragua, to explore the role of tyranny in transnational crime and U.S. national security interests throughout Latin America.  Guest Dr. Ryan Berg is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on transnational organized crime, narco-trafficking, and illicit networks...

On this podcast, GLA's Jason Poblete talks with Washington, D.C. International Human Rights litigator, Ms. Abbe Jolles. Abbe represents clients worldwide, including in conflict zones. She has handled individual and corporate, criminal, and civil matters involving unlawful property confiscation, incarceration, or risk of incarceration, and other fundamental rights violations.  Ms. Jolles is admitte...

A schoolteacher and former Florida state legislator who went on to serve in the Congress for almost 30 years, former U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), or Ileana, as she prefers to be called, has dedicated her professional life to public service. A long-time human rights champion, Ileana talks with Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance about the importance that Americans remain enga...

In this GLA podcast, Jason Poblete speaks with Maria Werlau, the Executive Director of the Free Society Project. The Free Society Project is better known in these parts as Cuba Archive (“Archivo Cuba” in Spanish), a non-profit organization incorporated in 2001 in Washington, D.C, operating from Miami, San Juan, and other U.S. cities.  Cuba Archives promotes the understanding, recognition, and obse...

Religious liberty is a national security issue. Where the right of people to worship as they desire comes under assault, bad things, sooner or later, will most assuredly follow. In this podcast, we go to Central America, to Managua, to talk with a brave Catholic priest on the frontlines of an increasingly brutal war where several Americans have died too.  Indeed, religious liberty is under assault...

We invited former diplomat and Guatemalan vice-presidential candidate Betty Marroquin back to the podcast to pick up where we left off the last time we spoke a few weeks ago. You should listen to the first podcast too because it places in context a lot of what we talk about in this episode.  There is a link below that will take you to a short but informative interview at The Impunity Observer whos...

In this podcast, I talk with August Wallmeyer, a former journalist, speechwriter, and energy trade lobbyist who spent many years working in the Virginia Assembly. A few years ago I read his book, the Extremes of Virginia, a book about areas of the Commonwealth that a majority of us rarely if ever visit or think about when it comes to politics or policy matters. Wallmeyer, who traveled hundreds of...

Have you ever heard of the Northern Triangle? It's not the Bermuda Triangle, the Triangle of Terror, or the Tri-Border Area in South America. It's a region in Central America that, usually, includes including Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. By the way, why so many triangle references in the Western Hemisphere? We'll talk about it in a later episode.  This episode is about the rule of law, or...

The Global Liberty Alliance is a non-government organization based in Alexandria, Virginia. Its mission is to strengthen the rule of law, empower human rights defenders, and advance the cause of justice. In the podcast, we talk with Mr. Roberto Bendaña an American businessman of Nicaraguan ancestry who paid a very high price for standing up to the Ortega-Murillo regime because of his political wor...

The Global Liberty Alliance is a non-government organization based in Alexandria, Virginia. Its mission is to strengthen the rule of law, empower human rights defenders, and advance the cause of justice. In this first episode of a series on Iran & Hezbollah in Latin America, Jason Poblete, President of the Global Liberty Alliance, talks with Toby Dershowitz with the Foundation for Defense of D...