Skip to main content
Support

Latin American Program in the News: Mexico develops southern border strategy

Eric L. Olson

Associate Director Eric L. Olson discusses Mexico's approach to security along their southern border.

"[...] Mexican authorities 'don’t think of migration from Central America as necessarily bad,” said Eric L. Olson, associate director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center. “A million and a half Central Americans are crossing that border every year, the vast majority of them not to go to the United States but to go to work in Mexico.”

“The southern border has been the forgotten border for decades,” added the Wilson Center’s Olson. “The fact that Mexico is thinking about how it wants to build security there, how it wants to work with Guatemalans and other Central Americans, is an important step forward.

“But it’s absurd to think that we in the United States can impose our view on a border that’s not even ours,” Olson added. “To think we can seal that border is a grand fallacy.”'

To read the full article, please click here

About the Author

Eric L. Olson

Eric L. Olson

Global Fellow;
Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives, Seattle International Foundation
Read More

Latin America Program

The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action.  Read more

Mexico Institute

The Mexico Institute seeks to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship. A binational Advisory Board, chaired by Luis Téllez and Earl Anthony Wayne, oversees the work of the Mexico Institute.   Read more