In the News, 2019: NORTH AMERICA

For six decades, Cuba was ruled by either Fidel Castro or his brother Raúl. But Fidel died in 2016, and Raúl gave up power two years later. In April 2018, Miguel Díaz-Canel became Cuba’s new president. Cuba remains a repressive Communist regime, but there’s some hope that the new president will begin to make Cuba more open and free. Díaz-Canel faces two major challenges: a struggling economy and an increasingly rocky relationship with the U.S., as President Trump has taken a more hardline approach to Cuba than President Obama, who had taken steps to normalize relations.

Relations between the U.S. and Mexico, its southern neighbor, remain tense. President Trump, who campaigned on promises to crack down on illegal immigration, continues to call for the construction of a wall along the entire border and to demand that Mexico pay for it—something Mexico refuses to do. Trump is also moving to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants, many of whom are from Mexico.

Ongoing violence in the Central American countries of Nicaragua and El Salvador continues to cause huge numbers of people to flee north to the U.S. The Trump administration’s efforts to fight illegal immigration have resulted in many migrants being separated from their children at the U.S. border, and those already here have faced a growing threat of deportation. The U.S. is also making it harder to claim asylum. Advocates for the migrants have criticized the policies as too harsh and counter to American values.