2026
2026
In March 2026, the Trump administration launched the Shield of the Americas, a geopolitical alliance made up of twelve leaders from the region aligned with the MAGA movement, aimed at “combating narco-terrorism through increased information sharing, resources, and military support.”
The initiative revives a familiar logic: militarized responses, driven from Washington, to confront organized crime and violence in Latin America. At the same time, it has reinforced political and media narratives that criminalize migration, justify states of exception, and promote punitive approaches as regional solutions.
This conversation series creates a space to examine how these narratives are constructed, what we mean by criminal governance, and the social, political, and human implications of these strategies for communities across Latin America and the diaspora.
Wednesday, May 20
3:00 pm CT | 2:00 pm Mexico - Central America | 1:00 pm PT | 4:00 pm ET
How is fear constructed? Who gets to name the enemy?
This conversation examines how governments and media outlets produce and normalize narratives that criminalize migration, justify extraordinary measures, and reinforce punitive logics across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Speaker: Amparo Marroquín Parducci, Vice President for Social Outreach and researcher at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA) in El Salvador. Her work focuses on media narratives about migration, violence, and memory in Central America, with particular attention to how media constructs identities and shapes political common sense.
Moderator: José Luis Sanz
Wednesday, June 10
3:00 pm CT | 2:00 pm Mexico - Central America | 1:00 pm PT | 4:00 pm ET
More than 77 million people in Latin America live under forms of parallel order in which criminal organizations impose rules on daily life, replace state functions, and often operate with the complicity of government officials and political actors.
Speaker: Andreas Feldmann, Professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program and the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). His research focuses on forced migration, criminal politics, terrorism, human rights, and foreign policy in Latin America.
Moderator: José Luis Sanz
Register: https://bit.ly/4eHugNh
Colombia has just experienced the closest presidential election in its recent history. But, as Omar Rincón points out, understanding what happened requires looking beyond the numbers: it is a contest over the styles, tones, and narratives that shape public discourse.
Rincón describes this phenomenon as “yopitalism”: a politics of the self, of entertainment, and of emotional capitalism, in which the ability to provoke, entertain, and evoke emotions can carry more weight than ideologies, government policies, or even the facts themselves.
This discussion aims to reflect on how these political narratives are constructed, why they manage to connect with broad sectors of the public, and what challenges they pose for democracy and civil society in Latin America. The conversation will also explore what tools social movements and civic organizations have to respond without resorting to either a defensive reaction or the imitation of the very logic they seek to challenge.
Speaker: Omar Rincón is a professor at the Universidad de los Andes, a researcher, essayist, and Colombian critic specializing in entertainment culture, communication, and politics. His work analyzes the intersection of popular culture, the media, and power, with a particular focus on how contemporary political leadership is constructed through narrative, emotion, and digital platforms.
Moderator: José Luis Sanz, journalist.
Register here: https://bit.ly/3TwUHfY
For more information about sponsorship opportunities, contact Dulce Dominguez at ddominguez@alianzaamericas.org
