海角大神

Skip to footer
2023
May
16
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

May 16, 2023
Loading the player...
  • Follow us:
Whitney Eulich
Latin America Editor

In 2009 my career trajectory shifted dramatically when I was sent to a university town in the Venezuelan Andes on a Rotary fellowship. I lived with a local family, climbed the steep colonial streets to daily Spanish classes, and learned important lessons in humility (I was a 20-something who didn鈥檛 know much beyond 鈥�hola鈥� when I arrived).

Hugo Ch谩vez was president, and Venezuela was already struggling with food shortages and political repression, but it was a different universe compared with today. My host family鈥檚 six children are now building their careers across the Americas; only their octogenarian parents remain in Venezuela. Economic, political, and human rights crises have pushed more than 7 million people out of Venezuela since 2015.

I often think about Venezuela and the role it has played in my life 鈥� I even met my husband there. But, last month reporting along the U.S.鈥揗exico border was the first聽time聽I鈥檝e been so intimately reminded of the country and its people in almost 15 years. The Monitor was at the border reporting a collection of stories in the lead-up to the end of Title 42, a U.S. rule that essentially closed the U.S. border to migrants and asylum-seekers from around the world for the past three years. You can read the latest story from my colleague Christa Case Bryant today.

Nearly every migrant I met in Ciudad Ju谩rez, the Mexican city across from El Paso, Texas, was from Venezuela. When I spoke to the teen mother from Los Llanos who fled police harassment, I was struck by memories of fishing for piranhas just miles from her town. Then there was a group of friends who鈥檇 fled the utter lack of opportunity in聽M茅rida. They were standing on a street corner trying to connect to the CBP One app for asylum-seekers, and they generously chatted with me about the shop where I discovered the Venezuelan treasure of tizana (chopped fruit submerged in juice).

Something shifts in a conversation when both parties spot a connection. I wasn鈥檛 just the journalist asking about difficult journeys and dreams ahead. And these weren鈥檛 just another group of migrants, because whether I鈥檝e been to their hometown or not, each individual showing up at the border has left behind a favorite meal, a community, and roots, in hopes of security and a future.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.

Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Daniel Becerril/Reuters
Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. gather on the Matamoros-Brownsville international border bridge, in Matamoros, Mexico, May 12, 2023.

Border surge didn鈥檛 happen, but calls persist for overhaul

( 8 min. read )

Many were bracing for a ballooning of already record-high levels of illegal immigration last week, sparking renewed efforts to address border security and a broken immigration system.

By Christa Case Bryant , reporting from Brownsville, Texas; and Washington
Back to top
Press service of "Concord"/Reuters
Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, shown here standing before Wagner fighters in an undisclosed location, threatened to pull his troops back from Bakhmut by May 10. Though he ultimately did not, he continued to slam Russian military leadership.

Russia鈥檚 top mercenary lays into Kremlin. What鈥檚 behind rift?

( 6 min. read )

Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has been engaged in very public criticism of Russia鈥檚 war effort. Experts say that it鈥檚 not a challenge to Vladimir Putin, but positioning for the post-war order.

By Fred Weir , reporting from Moscow
Back to top
Lefteris Pitarakis/AP/File
A camp for internally displaced people in al-Bab, in northern Syria, in May 2018. Syria's civil war has left an estimated 6.8 million displaced internally, while more than 5 million fled to neighboring countries.

For Arab states and Syria, path to progress could be bumpy

( 6 min. read )

The season of diplomacy blooming in the Middle East is reforging Syria鈥檚 ties to the Arab world. Each has something the other wants. But is Damascus willing to play ball?

By Taylor Luck , reporting from AMMAN, Jordan
Back to top

On solar energy, top-down push meets bottom-up doubts

( 5 min. read )

Solar power is a growth industry and a national priority. But that doesn鈥檛 mean solar projects are easily built. One problem may be a lack of dialogue and cooperation between investors and local communities.聽

By Xander Peters , reporting from Vacherie, La.
Back to top

Books
Karen Norris/Staff

Julia Child, Jane Austen, and sleuths of a certain age

( 5 min. read )

Our picks for spring mysteries include four clever 鈥� and transporting 鈥� reads starring Austen scions, Julia Child鈥檚 chef knife, and a loving, if meddlesome, Chinatown teahouse owner.

By Yvonne Zipp
Back to top

The Monitor's View
AP
Retired Gen. Paulino Coronado, the Colombian commander of soldiers who committed extrajudicial executions, hugs Blanca Nubia Monroy, the mother of one victim of those killings, during a reconciliation event in Soacha, Colombia, May 10, 2022.

Life, not death, as the standard of justice

( 2 min. read )

In December, the African nation of Zambia simultaneously enacted one new law abolishing the death penalty and another decriminalizing defamation of the president. That unusual combination of legal reforms 鈥� in some countries, dissent is still a capital offense 鈥� uniquely captured a shift in global norms. Zambia embraced a type of justice that views individuals as capable of innocence and goodness.

The shift in norms is clear from a new global survey on the death penalty by Amnesty International. While known executions rose 53% in 2022 鈥� mainly in a small club of outliers including China, North Korea, and Iran 鈥� the real trend is in the other direction. Six countries ended the death penalty altogether. Several more adopted or extended moratoriums. 鈥淣otwithstanding the drawbacks ... the world continued to move away from the death penalty,鈥� the report stated.

In one measure of that progress, 125 nations 鈥� nearly two-thirds of all U.N. members 鈥� have signed a United Nations moratorium on use of the death penalty. Governments aren鈥檛 the only actors making the shift. In Colombia, for example, the end of a long civil war in 2016 was marked by reconciliation between the combatants 鈥� leftist guerrillas and the military 鈥� and families of their victims.

For a handful of states, execution is seen as a necessary tool of intimidation to quell dissent. Yet many countries abolishing capital punishment argue that stable and democratic societies are predicated on a recognition that life is a universal right and redemption after a crime is inseparable from innate dignity.

Those convictions share roots across religious traditions.

In 2022, for example, when Papua New Guinea abolished the death penalty, Prime Minister James Marape said, 鈥淔or us as a 海角大神 nation, the notion of 鈥楾hou shalt not kill,鈥� still prevails.鈥� In Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called abolition a step 鈥渢o fulfill a fundamental right to life and human dignity.鈥� In Zambia, President Hakainde Hichilema justified the end of the death penalty by saying, 鈥淲e believe in showing strength through compassion.鈥�

Although the heavy-handed tactics of authoritarian states rightly stir international alarm, particularly when used to stamp out the democratic aspirations of their peoples, their deadly tactics are running out of room. 鈥淭he taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another 鈥� even when backed by legal process,鈥� argued former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a decade ago. As the Amnesty report shows, humanity is moving irreversibly toward justice defined by compassion and redemption rather than condemnation and annihilation.

By the Monitor's Editorial Board
Back to top

A 海角大神 Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication 鈥� in its various forms 鈥� is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church 鈥� The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston 鈥� whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Self-conscious? Commune with God!

( 3 min. read )

Instead of focusing on how others perceive us, we can find comfort and healing by getting to know ourselves the way God does.

By Barbara Vining
Back to top

Viewfinder

Nadja Wohlleben/Reuters
Cattle graze outside the Reichstag building in Berlin during a protest by Greenpeace and animal rights activists on May 16, 2023. The issue: how much time the animals should get in pastures and outside barns.
Back to top
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Please come back tomorrow, when we鈥檒l profile a difference-maker who shows school communities how to combat bullying with kindness.

Back to top

More issues

2023
May
16
Tuesday

Give us your feedback

We want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? Should we come back to this topic? Or just give us a rating for this story. We want to hear from you.