Spanish Colonial Period

During a fierce competition for raw materials by the European Great powers, the Spanish royals, Ferdinand II and Isabella I, financed the voyage by Christopher Columbus to try to find alternative trade routes to Asia by going West, rather than East. As we all know (except Columbus, maybe, who never admitted his error), Columbus never reached Asia. Instead, he stepped onto an island in the Caribbean, which he renamed San Salvador, which is part of the Bahamas today. After colonizing several Caribbean islands, the Spanish turned their attention to the American mainland (the continents, not USA). Lured by rumors of vast lands filled with gold and silver, the Spanish conquered the Aztecs by force in 1521 (using superior weaponry, enlisting the help of local native groups not friendly to the Aztecs, and the unexpected lethal weapon of "Old World" diseases). In 1532, another conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, conquered the Incan Empire. Soon other conquistadors defeated other indigenous groups so that by the middle of the 16th century, Spain had created an American empire that included New Spain (the Caribbean islands, Mexico, and the rest of Central America and what is now Venezuela), as well as other lands in South America known as the Viceroyalty of Peru.

The great powers of Europe used mercantilist policies to compete for wealth against one another from the 16th through 18th centuries. Mercantilism relies on three economic policies. First, the Spanish royals prioritized the extraction of precious metals as both trade and war among the great powers were financed with gold and silver bullion. Second, mercantilists during this time focused their efforts on the extraction of raw materials (including metals, food products, spices, cotton, rice, timber, etc.) from colonies that can be transferred back to the imperial power. To extract raw materials from its colonies, Spain offered nobility vast acreage and access to mining areas in the colonies to be worked by indigenous people. Though Spain's policy nominally was anti-slavery (as the Spanish had been slaves themselves under the Roman Empire), the encomienda system was extractive, exploitive, and brutal. As more and more indigenous people succumbed to diseases introduced by the Spanish, the crown agreed to the importation of enslaved people from Africa to work the mines and in the burgeoning sugar cane economy throughout the Caribbean as well. A final mercantilist policy used during this time was the sale of colonial finished goods back to their colonial markets. Spain, however, was among the last of the European powers to industrialize, so the colony relied on imports from other great powers, and toward the end of Spanish rule, manufactured some of the goods within the colony.

Independence & The U.S.'s Good Neighbor Policy

Revolutionary fervor in Latin America and the Caribbean was motivated by the earlier American and French Revolutions. The initial push for independence occurred in Haiti, a French-colonial holding. It was the leader of the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture, who captured the complex political nature and hypocrisy of France's continued control over Haiti after its own Revolution when he wrote in a letter to Napoleon Bonaparte, "It is not a liberty of circumstance, conceded to us alone, that we wish; it is the adoption absolute of the principle that no man, born red, black, or white, can be the property of this fellow man." While France was embroiled in its own struggle, half a million Haitians (230,000 of which were enslaved) took control of the island and by 1804 Haiti was independent.

Once Spain became embroiled in a war with France during the Napoleonic Wars, the Spanish colonists organized under Simón Bolívar from Venezuela and José de San Martín from Argentina. By 1830 the once-massive Spanish empire of the Americas had been reduced to just two islands - Cuba and Puerto Rico. Brazil had a different story altogether. Though initially, the Portuguese crown attempted to maintain its control over Brazil (choosing to flee Napoleon by moving to the colony), in 1822 the colonists petitioned and won their independence in a bloodless revolution.

With the removal of colonial political, economic, and social orders came upheaval and deep uncertainty. Though early adopters of new governments modeled their governments off of northern Europe and the United States, setting up republics across the region, the creation of democratically elected executives proved difficult to implement after more than three centuries of Spanish colonial rule and factions across regions and within the elite class arose as people began vying for control. By the 1830s, governmental reforms in many Latin American states led to the adoption of stronger executives and more centralized roles of the state. Some leaders (including Bolívar) encouraged the model of a Napoleonic state with a powerful president-for-life as well as hereditary senate seats.

Further, as noted above, for centuries Spain extracted raw materials from the colonies and required them to buy finished goods. Once the colonies declared their independence and new states were established, old colonial trade patterns were destroyed and new ones needed to be put in place. As these new economies had not yet found a consistent new orientation, the economic burdens they faced were great. First, the new states were responsible for levying their own taxes to finance the government and military, whereas they had once relied on these functions from the monarchy. As a result, almost immediately states went into debt as there was the need for government and military services but no apparatus yet in place to collect taxes to finance it. Further, the refusal to continue to allow any Spanish-born officials to work in government or in the military meant there were no technocrats to help ease this transition. Second, the wars of independence were successful, but costly, as much infrastructure and productive land (e.g. farms, ranches, etc.) had suspended production through the war or were destroyed.

Early leaders across Latin American relied on the few exports in which Latin America had a comparative advantage following independence (e.g., sugar, coffee, and silver). As Latin American countries directed their economies toward export economies, this resulted in what many refer to as a neocolonial economic order. That is, many Latin American states continued to export raw materials to Europe (and increasingly, the US) and imported manufactured goods from these states in return. Though this led to economic growth, there was little incentive to produce manufacturing sectors within these states. Meanwhile, many of the imported manufactured goods replaced smaller-scale artisans and weavers. Thus, as during the colonial period, the economic market for these states relied on exports of a few key raw goods.

One of the early successes of exports from Latin America to the U.S. market was the banana. The banana was introduced to the U.S. market by a railroad magnate, named Henry Meiggs in the 1880s. As Meiggs was working to build railroad lines in Central America for coffee and sugar exports, he noticed that his local workers used bananas as snacks throughout their workday. He decided to establish the United Fruit Company (today Chiquita) and introduce the product in the United States, and well, people went bananas(!). Before refrigeration in containerships, the banana was an ideal export as it could be picked unripened, its peel served as its own packaging, and it could satisfy an untapped demand for fresh tropical fruits that could not be supplied domestically.

When World War I and the Great Depression disrupted and later suppressed international trade routes, some within Latin America began to push for more diverse economies than those that rely on the export of raw materials. Within this group, socialist ideas (promoted by Marxist-Leninist followers) began to take hold in urban areas across Latin America. Labor unions began to form and people began to push for government policies that would encourage better economic opportunity for those not in the raw export economy. In response to these calls for Latin American states to move closer toward Communism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded by enacting his "Good Neighbor" policy, which attempted to assure neighboring states that the days of U.S. interventions were over. It was during this time that the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Responsibilities of States was adopted, guaranteeing that states not interfere in the domestic affairs of other states.

This policy of non-intervention by the U.S. in Latin American affairs lasted until the Cold War. As the Soviet Union rose as a distinct enemy and ideological threat, and Cuba offered a Communist alternative to the U.S. right off its coast, the United States began to invest in preventing any Communist takeovers throughout the region.

In some cases, the Communist insurgents became so powerful as to instigate full civil wars. In response, the United States provided military and economic assistance to anti-Communist dictators and worked to overturn Communist leaders who successfully came to power. In 1954 (one year after reinstating the Shah in Iran) the CIA assisted in the overthrow and assassination of a democratically elected leader in Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. The U.S. chose to depose Arbenz because he had enacted agrarian reforms that redistributed land once belonging to the United Fruit Company to impoverished Guatemalan farmers. Fearing that Arbenz's redistribution of land was the first step in a Communist agenda, the U.S. deposed him and installed Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a right-wing military dictator, in his place. Armas lasted six years in office before Guatemala erupted into civil war, lasting 36 years.

The U.S. would continue to be involved in the domestic policies of Latin American countries for the next decades and the CIA would play influential roles in indirectly assisting or directly deposing leaders deemed too far left in the Dominican Republic (1961), attempted coups against Castro in Cuba (1959-2010s), Bolivia (1971), Chile (1973), Argentina (1976-1983), and Nicaragua (1981-1990), Grenada (1983), and Panama (1989-1994).

For those countries in which a left-wing leader did not yet take hold, the U.S. worked to perpetuate the continued leadership of right-leaning governments, even if this meant choosing the autocrat over democratically elected leaders. The U.S. supported El Salvador's military dictatorship in its fight against leftist guerillas from 1979 to 1992. Similarly, in Honduras, the U.S. supported the right-leaning military dictatorship from 1962 to 1972. Even once elections occurred, the U.S. provided financial assistance to the military in Honduras, using it in its "war against leftist revolutionary movements in neighboring Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala and ignored its human-rights abuses and corruption" in return.

Fragile States: Definition & Measurement

A fragile state (also sometimes referred to as a failing state) is one that has lost one or more of the key components of statehood. Conceptually, if the criteria for statehood in the Montevideo Convention illustrate a thriving state, the absence of one or more of these criteria suggests this state is fragile or failing. The Fund for Peace, a thinktank, created a Fragile State Index with twelve indicators for state fragility. Each indicator mirrors the loss of one of the key criteria of statehood. As noted in the Montevideo Convention, a state's territory is an essential component of its statehood. Thus, a fragile state may have lost control over some of its territory and no longer is considered the exclusive legitimate authority on the use of force within that territory. One indicator within the Fragile State Index attempt to capture this loss is "External Intervention." Second, as a permanent population is a key component of statehood, a state with "large-scale involuntary dislocation of the population" can be considered fragile or failing. Indicators within the Fragile State Index attempting to capture this loss include "Human Flight and Brain Drain," and "Refugees and Internally-Displaced Persons." Third, the state may have lost its political authority to govern over its population. More often than not, political authority is lost when a state is unable to provide the public services either promised or provided historically. Indicators within the Fragile State Index measure the effectiveness of the "Security Apparatus" in a state, broad perceptions of "State Legitimacy," and broad provision of "Public Services." And finally, when a state is believed to be unable to act as a full member of the international community, it can also be seen as fragile. Indicators attempting to capture the loss of international reputation focus on "Economic Decline" and lack of adherence to the protection of "Human Rights and the Rule of Law." This organization suggests that state fragility can come quite rapidly, from an outside event that leads to state's immediate weakening demise (known as "explosion") including the interference of another state (i.e., "invasion"), to an internal dramatic shift in power (i.e., "implosion"). The Fund for Peace assets, however, that many fragile states occur over time (i.e., a process known as state "erosion"). Not everyone agrees with the Failing State Index's approach to measuring states (read a critique of this index here).

Overview of Fragile States in Latin America

Though not the region with the most fragile states, Latin America has seen a steady erosion in state capacity within the region for decades. When ranking the 193 states in the world from most fragile to least fragile, Haiti is the 13th most fragile state, Venezuela the 25th, Honduras the 58th, Guatemala the 59th, El Salvador the 82nd, and Mexico is 90th (the United States is 143rd). Some of the key concerns in the region include political instability and violence, few economic opportunities for a growing population, and natural disasters (e.g, extended droughts interspersed with devastating hurricanes) affecting daily lives and agricultural production. Though we can discuss all of these countries in great detail, this section will focus on the states from where we see the greatest number of migrants seeking refuge at the U.S. southern border.

According to a recent Pew Research poll, the number of migrants at the U.S. southern border is at a 21-year high. According to the Department of Justice, within the last several years, nearly three-quarters of all cases of migrants and around 63% of all asylum-seekers at the U.S. border were people who originated from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Mexico

Whereas the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) created the free movement of goods and services across Mexico, Canada, and the United States and increased trade among these states exponentially, two ommissions to the agreement have had lasting effects on Mexico and the U.S.-Mexican border.

First, though NAFTA encouraged the free trade of most goods, there were exceptions made for certain sectors deemed important to each state. For the United States, the corn industry was one of the main agricultural sectors in need of political protection and so the U.S. insisted corn grown in the U.S. would continue to be heavily subsidized under NAFTA. The effect of this on Mexican farming was dramatic. Within the first decade of the agreement, Mexico lost over 900,000 farming jobs as Mexico began importing American corn instead of producing domestically. By 2004, the U.S. remained the number one exporter of corn, while Mexico rose to become its number one importer. Though Mexico gained about 450,000 manufacturing jobs after the implementation of NAFTA (jobs lost by U.S. factory workers), this still means Mexico had a net loss of approximately 450,000 jobs. This led Mexican farmers to seek employment opportunities in U.S. agriculture at increasing rates, leading to greater trends in migration than had been anticipated when NAFTA was being discussed.

Second, though the deal focused on the movements of goods and services across the U.S.-Mexico border, the deal made no mention of the impact an increase in transportation across the border would have on increasing the illegal trade of drugs and arms as well. Though Mexican drug cartels had been operating steadily since the U.S. broke up Colombia drug trafficking routes in the 1980s, dwindling economic opportunities in agriculture and a steadily growing demand for narcotics in the United States led cartels to use new streamlined transportation networks created by NAFTA to increase their reach. To combat cartels, the Mexican government has used both military and police enforcement to crack down on these illegal transnational organizations. However, homicide rates in Mexico have continued to hold at record levels (see below), and violence, kidnapping, and corruption remain high.

The Northern Triangle: Honduras, Guatemala, & El Salvador

The three states of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are collectively referred to as the Northern Triangle. Though each had distinct historical paths, these states have all faced political instability, outside interference in domestic affairs, high level of corruption, drug trafficking, violence, and economic desperation that all contribute to the mass migration from these states toward the U.S. border.

Honduras

Toward the end of the 20th century, the U.S. provided military assistance to the Honduran military to both stave off Communist revolutionaries and to fight the war on drugs (as Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador each served as strategic points between the main drug producers in Colombia and the wholesalers in Mexico). Investigations by the Department of Justice have shown that the Honduran military used the financial assistance of the United States to both fight leftist guerilla movements in the region and increase control over the transportation and arms sales in the region. Whereas fighting guerilla movements furthered the United States' anti-Communist Cold War aspirations, the Honduran military bureaucracy likely used its involvement in transportation and arms to aid the trafficking of illicit drugs. And the corruption is believed to reach the highest levels of the Honduran government. According to an ongoing investigation, as reported by the New York Times, President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras promised to "protect drug traffickers using the nation’s security forces and law enforcement agencies, and to help them flood the United States with cocaine."

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Honduras has around 25,000 people involved in gang activity (with most joining two large gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18). In addition to trafficking drugs, HRW reports that gangs extort residents living in certain neighborhoods or towns, where many are kidnapped and forced into prostitution or human trafficked. There are special concerns for children and women. HRW notes that nearly one-fifth of all gang members in Honduras were children, potentially forced into membership. Moreover, one-quarter of all girls become pregnant before turning 18. Of these pregnancies, HRW estimates that half are the result of rape. Hondurans account for the largest share of Northern Triangle migrants intercepted by U.S. border authorities, followed by Guatemalans and then Salvadorans.

Guatemala

Thirty-six years of civil war (from 1960 to 1996) left Guatemala in political and economic devastation. With hundreds of thousands driven from their homes or killed, by the end of the war in the 1990s, 90% of all Guatemalans lived below the poverty line. Though gang violence is present in Guatemala, the United Nations' presence in the country following the civil war has led to an increase in arrests for drug trafficking. Political corruption, however, remains unchecked. According to Human Rights Watch, officials in all three federal branches of the Guatemalan government face corruption charges (including 96 members of Congress).

El Salvador

Within El Salvador, violence against civilians occurs by both the gangs operating within the state and the paramilitary security forces meant to protect civilians from the gangs. Human Rights Watch notes that, as in Honduras, Salvadoran gangs extort residents, recruit children and "sexually abuse women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people," while security forces commit "extrajudicial executions, sexual assaults, enforced disappearances, and torture."

Mass Caravans from Latin America to the U.S.

Though immigration to the United States has been a key part of American history, the past decade has seen a rise in the number of mass migrations of people in large groups. Moreover, many of these mass migrations have been comprised of families with small children or unaccompanied minors. According to Vox, beginning in 2018, around 160 Hondurans left their hometown of San Pedro Sula (a city the New York Times referred to as the "murder capital of the world") in search of a better future. By the time this caravan arrived at the Guatemalan border, there were around 1,600 people. By the time it reached the border with Mexico, there were 3,000 people in all. Just one week after the initial group left Honduras, the United Nations estimated that more than 7,300 people had joined the caravan. Though some chose to be processed as asylum seekers in Mexico (more on this distinction below), thousands push forward to the United States border. Though this caravan was far bigger than any that had come before and more publicized as a result, caravans from the Northern Triangle into Mexico have been conducted by migrant rights activists since 2010. Though they have grown to offer a safer passage for those seeking to move northward, their original intent was to highlight the plight of migrants by activists, and in some cases, to search for loved ones who never made it to the United States. No large caravans have successfully reached the U.S. since 2018, in part due to the negative political backlash from people in both the U.S. and Mexico, but this has resulted in people moving in smaller groups. In both early 2021 and summer 2022, new large caravans had formed from the Northern Triangle heading northward in hopes of reaching the U.S. border, but in both cases the Mexican military was successful in breaking them up.

Convention on the Rights of Refugees (1951)

The foundational source of international law that focuses on those seeking asylum are the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Refugees (1951) and its 1967 Protocol. Article One of this Convention defines a “refugee” is a person who has a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” and is "unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to be granted the protection of the state of which they are a national or in which they have lived (in case of having no nationality). Article 33 of this Convention requires all signatories (i.e., states that signed the Convention) to refrain from expelling or returning a refugee "to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." In addition, the preamble of the Convention "recommends that Governments continue to receive refugees in their territories and that they act in concert in a true spirit of international cooperation in order that these refugees may find asylum and the possibility of resettlement." And Further, Article 31 of the Convention notes that illegal entry into the states does not preclude the right for that person to still seek asylum in that state. Instead, it expressly "prohibits the imposition of a penalty on a person who illegally crosses a border" so long as they "present themselves without delay to the authorities,” and they "show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.” Finally, Article 32 allows for the expulsion of such a refugee except in cases of "national security or public order" and only after a decision reached "in accordance with due process of law."

Refugees Act (1980)

Following the Vietnam War and the U.S. experience resettling refugees from Southeast Asia, Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, which incorporated the Convention’s definition of refugee into U.S. law (8 U.S.C. § 1101). U.S. law also balances the principle that the burden of proof on the individual to show that reasons of "race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant" with the understanding that evidence may not always be reasonably obtainable (8 U.S.C. § 1158). As for times in which the U.S. can expel a refugee, the U.S. requires that a refugee be convicted of an aggravated felony or the Attorney General otherwise regulates it (8 U.S.C. § 1158). If a state has not yet heard a case, U.S. law also allows the U.S. to return asylum seekers to a contiguous state other than the one they are fleeing (8 U.S.C. § 1229). Though there is no statute that allows for asylum seekers to face penalties if they enter the U.S. illegally, U.S. law offers both criminal and civil penalties for non-asylum seekers (i.e., "aliens") who do so. If a person "enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers," this person could be fined or imprisoned no more than 6 months. If apprehended while doing so, this person could also face a civil penalty of between $50 and $250. Both time in prison and the civil fines increase for subsequent offenses.

U.S. Policies on Asylum Seeking

Though the right to seek asylum is guaranteed in both international and domestic law, each state (and each administration) has a lot of leeway in how this process works. United States presidents have varied their asylum process in four distinct ways: (1) how many asylum cases they choose to process in a year; (2) where they have asylum seekers stay while their status is pending; and (3) whether they have chosen to penalize asylum seekers for illegal border crossings (which is illegal under international law) and what this means for children who are accompanying adults.

(1) How Many Asylum Cases Annually

Though the U.S. is required under both international and domestic law to offer to hear asylum cases for those seeking it and grant asylum to those believed to be fleeing persecution, there is no requirement that every asylum case is processed in a given amount of time. As a result, most states, including the United States, determine a maximum number of asylum admissions offered each year. This does not mean those awaiting a hearing do not get one, but once the quota is met, they must wait until a subsequent year to have their case heard. Below is a chart from the Migrant Policy Institute (MPI) that shows both the annual ceiling determined by the United States beginning in 1980 and the number of refugees admitted each year. In 1980, Jimmy Carter set the ceiling at the all-time high of 231,700 refugee cases. In 2018, President Trump put the asylum ceiling at an all-time low of 18,000. On average, the asylum-seeking process may take around 1,000 days from the time your documents are submitted to when your case is heard.

(2) Where to Wait?

Though the U.S. is required under both international and domestic law to not return people to the state in which they may have been persecuted, there is no requirement as to where to house people (or whether to house people) while they await their hearing. Traditionally, the U.S. has chosen one of three different plans. It has allowed individuals to (1) be free to live within the country on specialized documents and appear for hearings when they are scheduled, (2) be housed within refugee facilities, or (3) remain in a different country (e.g., Mexico) until their asylum case can be processed so long as these individuals are not Mexican or fleeing Mexico. President Trump implemented the "Remain in Mexico" plan in 2018, and by the time he left office in January 2021 an estimated more than 71,000 asylum seekers were in Mexico awaiting hearings.

(3) Criminal Charges for Illegal Entry?

The U.S. is required under Article 31 of the Convention on Refugees to not impose a penalty for refugees, even if they cross the border illegally. Beginning in the 1920s, the U.S. law determined that foreigners who cross the border illegally will face criminal and/or civil penalties (per U.S. Code Title 8, Section 1325). Prior to 2005, the U.S. made a practice either informally expelled without charges (called "returns" or less formally "catch and release") or charged for an offense before being expelled (called "removals"). In cases of removals, judges will determine a set amount of time before that individual can attempt to legally cross the border (from three to ten years usually).

Following the September 11th attacks and the establishing of the Department of Homeland Security, President George W. Bush began to shift the policy from more returns to more removals in a policy shift called Operation Streamline and President Obama continued these policies (with some difference in focus). For both administrations, three exceptions to the removal policy were in place. First, in cases in which someone is seeking asylum, the asylum process would occur in lieu of criminal charges. Second, if families crossed the border illegally and did not request asylum, they could either be returned, the adult's removal could be fast-tracked (and children would be detained with their parents), or they could be released to appear back at a later court date. Third, in the case of unaccompanied minors, both administrations followed an agreement made under Clinton to not hold any unaccompanied minors beyond twenty days before releasing them from a detention center into the care of their parents, legal guardians, or a foster care option.

Unlike the previous administrations (which had most people removed, but not all), Trump Administration's "zero policy" at the border required all people who crossed the border illegally to be criminally charged. Further, Trump expanded this policy to include those who were originally considered exceptions, specifically asylum-seekers and families. In cases of asylum, Trump went against Article 31 of the Geneva Convention by charging people even who claimed the right to seek asylum. In cases in which families were detained, instead of releasing them, detaining them together, or releasing them until a future court date, he determined to detain the adults under the Department of Homeland Security while transferring the kids to be placed under the Department of Health and Human Services (where they would be housed for 20 days in a DHS facility, released to either a next of kin, or placed in foster care).

When Biden came to office in January 2021, he has signed executive orders ensuring all asylum seekers will be granted that right. Further, he rescinded the "zero-tolerance" policy (instead encouraging individual assessments on whether to bring criminal charges against border crossers), and has suspended the separation of families and created a Family Reunification Task Force for reuniting thousands of children still separated from their families.