Weekly Report - 05 July 2018 (WR-18-26)

US Vice President Mike Pence last week paid a visit to Guatemala. He had announced the stopover mid-June in the wake of the 3 June eruption of the Volcán de Fuego [WR-18-13], to offer “support to the people of Guatemala as they recover and rebuild”. Yet the focus ended up being on migration, and a meeting which took place between Pence, Guatemala’s President Jimmy Morales, and his Honduran and Salvadorean peers, Juan Orlando Hernández, and Salvador Sánchez Cerén respectively. The encounter once again exposed the policy differences between the current US administration led by President Donald Trump and its predecessor (led by Barack Obama [2009-2017]) with regard to addressing the migrant crisis.