About the Program
The Central America/Mexico Policy Initiative (CAMPI) aims to address the gap in policy-relevant scholarship on Central America and Mexico's migration and security challenges. CAMPI aspires to create educational opportunities, research activity, and community engagement that will spur sophisticated inquiry into the causes, dimensions, and consequences of violence and migration in these regions, as well as the adequacy of past, present, and potential policy responses at both the national and international levels.
The Mexico Security Initiative (MSI) will remain a component of CAMPI. Writings and events on these themes will be led by MSI’s post-doctoral fellow Jake Dizard.
MILITARIZATION IN LATIN AMERICA: SECURITY MISSIONS AND DEMOCRATIC OVERSIGHT
CAMPI's post-doctoral fellow Jake Dizard led a Policy Research Project (PRP) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs during the 2019-20 academic year focused on the Militarization in Latin America: Security Missions and Democratic Oversight. The research project is intended to provide context to students, researchers, journalists, and practitioners seeking to understand the increasingly frequent appearance of armed forces members in situations ranging from anticrime operations to street protests to inter-institutional political battles in Latin America.
Students used open sources, complemented by interviews with practitioners and academics in the U.S. and Latin American countries, to gather the quantitative and qualitative data presented on this site.
Featured ITEMS
Top CAMPI issues
- Transit migration through Mexico, particularly related to Central American violence and insecurity.
- Policy responses to asylum seekers and human smuggling at the U.S.-Mexico border.
- Rule of law, human rights, and violence in Mexico and Central America.
- Civilian oversight of the military in Mexico and across Latin America.
Publications
The CAMPI program publishes research briefs, reports, and codebooks intended for use by researchers, policymakers, and the public.
Events
Mexico’s Political Earthquake
On Friday, September 28, the Strauss Center co-sponsored a conference on “Mexico’s Political Earthquake: The 2018 Elections, Democracy, and Binational Relations” and assessing the results and implications of the 2018 presidential election in Mexico in…
The Future of Mexico’s Security Strategy
On April 9, 2018, the Robert Strauss Center’s Mexico Security Initiative (MSI), in partnership with Mexico’s National Security Commission (Comission Nacional de Seguridad, CNS), hosted a conference at the University of Texas at Austin to…
Children, Youth, and the U.S.-Mexico Border Migrant Smuggling Market
On Monday, April 2, 2018, the Robert Strauss Center welcomed Dr. Gabriella Sanchez, Research Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, for a talk on U.S.-Mexico border security…
