Human Rights

Beginning in 1998, Latin America began taking a sharp turn to the political left with the election of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Argentina’s Néstor Carlos Kirchner, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Chile’s Ricardo Lagos, among others. Following Chavez’s death, a reassessment of the region’s recent social and economic past — and future prospects — has commenced among scholars and media members.

The issue: Your smartphone or desktop computer is not built from scratch by Apple or Dell. It includes parts made by subcontractors. But one sole subcontractor does not make every chip inside; that task is handled by yet another subcontractor, who may buy the needed tantalum from still another supplier who may have purchased the tantalum ore from a militia leader who forces children to work in dangerous mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The story of the child migrant crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico has come to national attention rather suddenly, but the underlying trends and issues have a much deeper history. Among close observers of immigration patterns, these are part of a long narrative that has been building for years.