As part of a new ‘metering’ policy, US officials are turning asylum seekers away at ports of entry along the southern border. Thousands wait, straining the resources of Mexican border towns.
How did military conflict fit into the end of a mighty civilization?
AP Photo/Moises Castillo
Grisly war trophies made from the heads of vanquished enemies certainly grab attention. But archaeologists are more interested in what they may tell about a tumultuous time of shifting political power.
Stucco frieze from Placeres, Campeche, Mexico, Early Classic period, c. 250-600 AD.
Wolfgang Sauber/Wikimedia
Many people think climate change caused Classic Maya civilization to collapse abruptly around 900 A.D. An archaeologist says that view is too simplistic and misses the bigger point.
Riot police at an anti-government march in Managua, Nicaragua, Oct. 14, 2018.
Reuters/Oswaldo Rivas
A massive protest movement exploded across Nicaragua in April 2018, threatening to topple the country’s authoritarian regime. What happened to Central America’s ‘tropical spring?’
A man hugs his family before leaving for the U.S. border with a migrant caravan from San Salvador, El Salvador, Jan. 16, 2019.
AP/Salvador Melendez
Anthony W. Fontes, American University School of International Service
Thousands of Central American migrants are trying to cross the U.S. southern border. One scholar followed their paths to find out why they make the dangerous, sometimes deadly, journey.
The Mossy Red-eyed Frog is among hundreds of species threatened with extinction at the hands of chytrid fungus.
Jonathan Kolby/Honduras Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Center
Chytrid fungus has caused declines in 501 amphibian species, according to a new analysis. Most of the damage happened in the 1980s, before the fungus itself was even discovered.
Can 37-year-old Nayib Bukele get El Salvador back on track?
Reuters/Jose Cabezas
Thirty-seven-year-old Nayib Bukele is the first modern president who doesn’t represent either of El Salvador’s two mainstream parties. Can he fix what ails this troubled Central American country?
Venezuelan soldiers stand guard on the bridge linking their country and Colombia, under orders to obstruct U.S. humanitarian aid.
AP Photo/Fernando Llano
After 1.3 million migrants from the Middle East and Africa came to Europe in 2015, many countries built fences or closed their ports. That has pushed migrants to take riskier routes into the EU.
Salvadoran immigrants were pivotal in the Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles in 1990. It earned wage increases for custodial staff nationwide and inspired today’s $15 minimum wage campaign.
AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
Central Americans who came to the US in the 1980s fleeing civil war drew on their background fighting for social justice back home to help unionize farmworkers, janitors and poultry packers in the US.
Guatemalans overwhelmingly support the United Nations-backed corruption investigation known as CICIG. President Jimmy Morales is trying to ban prosecutors from the country.
AP Photo/Moises Castillo
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales is defying a constitutional court order to release a UN-backed prosecutor his government arrested and allow his corruption investigation to continue.
Migrants from Honduras, part of the Central American caravan, trying to reach the United States in Tijuana, Mexico, in December 2018.
Reuters/Mohammed Salem
Immigration experts explain who’s really trying to cross the US-Mexico border, what they want — and why immigration, even undocumented immigration, actually benefits the country.
One of 2018’s unforgettable images: Maria Meza and her twin daughters sprint from tear gas lobbed at the border wall between the U.S and Mexico in Tijuana, Nov. 25, 2018.
Reuters/Kim Kyung Hoon
The migrant caravan was one of the biggest international stories of 2018, a roving human drama that laid bare Central America’s pain for all the world to see.
A family from the Central American migrant caravan at the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
Donald Trump portrays migrants as a foreign problem ‘dumped’ on America’s doorstep. That view ignores the global forces that bind nations together, including trade, climate change and colonization.
Migrants begin their day inside a former concert venue serving as a shelter, in Tijuana, Mexico, Dec. 2, 2018.
(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
The psychological health of migrant children will be deeply impacted by their flight from gang violence, and the experience of crowded unhygienic conditions and tear gas at the U.S. border.
Migrants travel in groups through Mexico for safety reasons. But Mexico is still one of the world’s most dangerous countries.
AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
Two trucks carrying migrants have gone missing in Veracruz, Mexico. A witness says that ‘65 children and seven women were sold’ to a band of armed men. Other caravan members have reached the border.
The remains of an Ixil man emerge from the ground, one of the countless victims of the civil war in Guatemala.
Tristan Brand/FAFG Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala
The Ixil people of Guatemala dream of the places where their dead, massacred during the country’s armed conflict might be located.
A new group of Central American migrants walk past Mexican Federal Police after wading across the Suchiate River, that connects Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, Oct. 29, 2018.
(AP Photo/Santiago Billy)
A migrant caravan of almost 7,000 people who left Guatemala and Honduras is heading north towards the United States. The reasons they are leaving are complex but involve a U.S.-backed violent history.
Central American migrants face extortion, robbery, assault, kidnapping, rape and murder on their weeks-long journey through Mexico. Some find safety in numbers.
AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
More than two-thirds of Central American migrants will experience violence on their journey through Mexico, from robbery and extortion to rape. Caravans create safety in numbers.