The Politics of Asylum: Mexico and the Central American Refugees

1984 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth G. Ferris
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Central America ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Central American ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Political Refugees ◽  
Considerable Controversy ◽  
United Nations Convention ◽  
Political Persecution ◽  
The U.S

The violence in Central America has displaced an unprecedented number of people in the area. While the majority of the approximately two million displaced individuals remain within their native countries, hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring countries and to the U.S. where they create serious economic and political problems for the host governments. This article explores Mexico's policies toward the estimated 250,000 Central Americans who are seeking protection from the violence of their homelands.There is considerable controversy over whether these individuals are political refugees. The 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees defines refugees as those individuals who “due to a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion have left their country of origin.” The convention's emphasis on individuals singled out for political persecution would seem to disqualify many of the Central Americans fleeing generalized conditions of violence.

UNICEF in Central America

1960 ◽  
Vol 329 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
Alice C. Shaffer
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Central America ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Central American ◽  
The World ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Integrated Programs ◽  
Regional Basis ◽  
The United Nations

Central America has been one of the pioneer areas for the United Nations Children's Fund assisted pro grams. When the United Nations Children's Fund, under a broadened mandate from the United Nations, shifted the emphasis of its aid from emergency to long term and from war-torn countries to those economically less developed, Cen tral American governments immediately requested its assist ance to strengthen and extend services to children and mothers. As one of the first areas in the world to aim at the eradication of malaria and to have engaged in an inten sive campaign against malnutrition on a regional basis, the Central American experiences in these fields have become known, watched, and studied by people from many countries. Against this background, international and bilateral organi zations are working together with governments as they broaden the scope and the extent of their programs. Ten years of co-operative action have highlighted the need for train ing of personnel, both professional and auxiliary. This period has also made clear the value of more integrated programs with wider collaboration both within the ministries of government and between the international organizations.

U.S. Guns Kill U.S. Nuns

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-130
Author(s):  
Theresa Keeley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Central America ◽  
Central American ◽  
White House ◽  
Protest Movement ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Church ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the murders of the churchwomen and how Reagan officials' critiques, which revealed that intra-Catholic conflict had become an integral part of United States–Central America policy with Reagan's ascension to the White House. It looks at remarks that bolster the Salvadoran junta's reputation or diminish the murders' impact on the protest movement against U.S. policy. It also discusses that the murdered churchwomen symbolized the church's championing of the poor and a U.S. foreign policy that was morally corrupt and politically unsound for training and arming their killers. The chapter cites that two murdered Maryknollers were members of a Catholic order and represented a dangerous trajectory for U.S. foreign policy and the church. It elaborates how the U.S. government aligned with conservative U.S. and Central American Catholics and amplified their perspective.

Buffering North America

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-159
Author(s):  
David Scott FitzGerald
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Central America ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The United States ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
The U.S

Washington and Ottawa have tried to keep out most of the Central Americans fleeing to North America beginning in the civil wars of the 1980s. Central America and Mexico buffer the United States, which in turn buffers Canada. The U.S. government has propped up client states in Central America; paid for refugee camps; and provided training, equipment, and financing for migration controls further south. Mexico has weak rights of territorial personhood, so rather than strictly controlling entry across its southern border, its entire territory has become a “vertical frontier” with the United States. Aggressive U.S. enforcement at the Mexican border traps transit migrants in Mexico and creates an incentive for the Mexican government to deport them. But harsh U.S. enforcement on its border and the fact that it targets Mexicans as well as third-country nationals impedes the bilateral cooperation that would make Mexico a more effective buffer.

Charles Lennox Wyke and the Clayton-Bulwer Formula in Central America, 1852-1860

1991 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richmond F. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Central American ◽  
British Government ◽  
Imminent Danger ◽  
Permissive Attitude ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Bay Islands ◽  
The U.S

People here don't care two straws about Central America, or Mosquitia or the Bay Islands or the Honduras boundary,” complained British Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon to Prime Minister Lord Palmerston in December 1857, “all they wish for is freedom of interoceanic communication and this they believe can be achieved without a quarrel with the U.S.” Clarendon's bitter remark reflected his government's enduring frustration in arranging British holdings in Central America in accord with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850. That diplomatic landmark was to have commenced an unprecedented era of Anglo-American cooperation in Central America that would finally fulfill the ancient dream of rapid interoceanic transit through the isthmus. The treaty prohibited colonization or fortification of Central America by either side and provided Anglo-American protection for a U.S. company's canalbuilding venture in Nicaragua. But the unfortunate document had yet to bring about the desired ends. No canal had materialized and the “Central American Question” would not go away. In vain the British government had tried to extricate itself from its embarassingly forward position in Central America. In the meantime, a wave of U.S. filibusters, urged on by the bold words and permissive attitude of their government, threatened to trample underfoot the treaty's prohibitions against foreign colonization. By the end of 1857, the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was in imminent danger of U.S. abrogation, and Palmerston and his cabinet had nearly despaired of ever exiting the isthmian quagmire with British honor intact, without at the same time opening the gates for the “most disageeable” Yankees.

scholarly journals First Report of Daylily Rust in the United States

Plant Disease ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 85 (10) ◽  
pp. 1121-1121 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Williams-Woodward ◽  
J. F. Hennen ◽  
K. W. Parda ◽  
J. M. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Central America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Plant Materials ◽  
Original Source ◽  
Initial Symptoms ◽  
Average Size ◽  
Flora Of Japan ◽  
The U.S

In August 2000, rust symptoms were observed on the leaves of daylily plants (Hemerocallis sp. cv. Pardon Me) at a nursery in Dearing, GA. Based on urediniospore characters, the pathogen was tentatively identified as Puccinia hemerocallidis Thuem. Urediniospores were globose to ellipsoid and measured 19 to 30 × 17 to 22 μm (average size of 22 × 19 μm), corresponding to the previously reported description from Japan (1). Teliospores were absent from the sample but were found on daylily plants (cv. Star Struck) with symptoms similar to cv. Pardon Me from the same nursery in Dearing beginning in October 2000. However, the teliospores differed from those in the published description in that many one-celled teliospores (i.e., mesospores), measuring 32 to 43 × 14 to 19 μm (average size of 38 × 16 μm), were produced in addition to two-celled teliospores, which measured 41 to 53 × 16 to 21 μm (average size of 46 × 18 μm). Similar mesospores were present in a slide from an isotype specimen of P. hemerocallidis (US 72719) housed in the U.S. National Fungus Collection (Beltsville, MD). Daylily plants (cv. Pardon Me) were reinoculated with urediniospores by shaking infected plants over uninfected plants and exposing plants to 100% relative humidity for 24 h. Initial symptoms of small, discrete, yellow spots and streaks on the upper surfaces of leaves developed within 3 to 7 days, and uredia with urediniospores were evident at 7 to 14 days after inoculation. Daylily rust is native to Asia and may have been introduced into Georgia on plant materials sent from Central America. The original source of daylily rust is unclear because Central American producers also purchase and import plants from the United States for propagation and then sell divisions back to U.S. growers. Daylily rust is a disease of major concern for both daylily producers and gardeners. References: (1) N. Hiratsuka, et al. The Rust Flora of Japan. Tsukuba Shuppankai, Ibaraki, Japan, 1992.

Prescriptions and Results: Policy Recommendations for Central America in 1984

1985 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Margaret Daly Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Central American ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The U.S

Growing political turmoil and economic stagnation in the Western Hemisphere, especially in Central America, caused the U.S. government and a number of private groups to search in depth for more profound understanding of the problems of the region and for appropriate policy responses. Beginning in 1979, with the anti- Somoza revolution in Nicaragua, a large number of scholars, journalists and commentators began to write about Central America to the amazement and amusement of those three or four academics who had covered the region before. All who studied the Central American situation found plenty wrong with it.

Narco-Accumulation

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-190
Author(s):  
Gareth Williams
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Central American ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Relation ◽  
Social Violence ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
The U.S ◽  
American Migration

This passage examines narco-accumulation—or illicit globalization—as a contemporary modality of war with specific existential connotations. It challenges previously sovereign national territory, which is now reconverted into the ritualized performance, living geography, and paramilitary end-game of post-katechontic force. For example, it realigns Mexico’s military-economic relation to the North, while also redefining and intensifying Mexican paramilitary force’s relation of dominance over the impoverished political spaces of, and the migrant bodies that flee from the social violence in, Central America. The national territory of Mexico becomes the new border, the tomb of the proper, the negation of space by space. The passage ends with the image of contemporary Central American migration to the U.S. as the site for an infrapolitical thinking of existence, capable of undermining the domination of the political over existence. This is the clearing promised throughout the book.

Securing Protection for De Facto Refugees: The Case of Central America's Northern Triangle

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Medrano
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Central America ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Personal Safety ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
High Commissioner

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that the number of requests for international refugee or asylum protection increased fivefold from 2010 to 2015. In the United States these requests are mainly filed by citizens from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—the countries collectively referred to as the Northern Triangle of Central America (TNCA). These applicants flee their countries of origin to escape threats to their lives and personal safety from gang violence, organized crime, and even police and military agents. Though the violence cannot be classified as a “war,” the daily life of many Central Americans is currently marked by human tragedies comparable to those experienced during the regional armed conflicts of past decades.

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