Nowhere to GoNovember/December 2019 125dominates business, politics, and society. Since the summer o 2018,
all three countries have experienced severe drought. Crop failure rates
have reached higher than 80 percent; as a result, food insecurity has
become a major cause o outmigration. On the opposite side o the
Caribbean, Venezuela has crumbled under its president and would-be
strongman, Nicolás Maduro. Over four million people have Áed the
country, the majority bound for Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru, making
this the second-largest displacement crisis in the world.
The Americas are also witnessing a human tragedy as dramatic as
the one that engulfed Europe in 2015, when more than 3,700 people
drowned while crossing the Mediterranean. The number o those dy-
ing at the U.S.-Mexican border is considerably smaller—around 400
in the Ärst eight months o this year—but the Ägure is still signiÄcant.
What is more, that statistic does not account for the thousands o
people who have been subjected to inhumane conditions or have suf-
fered injuries on the journey north. Meanwhile, the fact that the rich-
est country in the world has resorted to indeÄnitely detaining migrant
children signals a lapse in the application o human rights standards
similar to what Europe witnessed in 2015.
Europe’s initial response to the crisis was characterized by unilater-
alism rather than international cooperation. In 2015, the 28 ¤ states
struggled to agree on a common response. Merkel’s plea for open bor-
ders fell on dea ears, as Austria and Hungary quickly shut their doors.
A major source o frustration for northern European states was the
sense that southern European states were largely indierent to the
problem, simply waving migrants through in the hope that they would
move northward. The Mexican government also stood by when mi-
grant caravans originating in Central America crossed Mexico en route
to the United States in late 2018. And just as richer northern European
countries were unable to force their southern neighbors to take more
responsibility for the problem, Washington’s unilateral eorts to bully
or bribe Mexico to respond more energetically have come to naught.
Although South American countries have been far more receptive to
Venezuelan migrants than their northern neighbors have been to those
Áeeing Central America, they have similarly struggled to develop stan-
dardized responses or mechanisms for regional collaboration. The dis-
tribution o migrants across the region is highly uneven: by the end o
2018, there were around 1.3 million in Colombia, 768,000 in Peru,
288,000 in Chile, 263,000 in Ecuador, 168,000 in Brazil, and 130,000