David Mares

David Mares is Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he also holds the Institute of the Americas Endowed Chair for Inter-American Affairs. He is also Non-Resident Scholar for Latin American Energy Studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry: Economic, political, and social challenges

Venezuela is not simply an oil economy, an export enclave of oil disconnected from the rest of the country (a country of almost 30 million people, with approximately the territorial size of France and Germany combined). Since 1943, when…

Why the US-Latin America immigration challenge is certain to worsen

The US has had a difficult yet fruitful historical relationship with immigration. Of course, the Europeans were immigrants themselves into the Americas and had few qualms in treating Native Americans as subhuman and violently seizing their…

The Sheinbaum moment and Mexico’s opportunity

Claudia Sheinbaum won a historic victory, becoming not only the first female president of Mexico but also one whose party, MORENA, now controls both houses of Congress and the majority of governorships and state legislatures. She will…

Mexico: a President’s legacy

Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was elected President in a landslide in 2018 as Mexicans were drawn to his vision of a dramatic overhaul of Mexico’s politics and economics (the so-called Fourth Transformation). A review of politics, the…

Biden’s immigration challenge: Seeking the humane in a difficult political context

The United States’ identity and its economy were built on immigration, but the country has a complicated history with immigration policy, influenced by domestic and international factors. Joe Biden’s presidency inherited not only…

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