A judge in El Salvador sentenced seven accused members of the country's feared "mara" gang networks to 390 years in prison each for a massacre at the town of San Juan Opico.
Edgar Veytia, the get-tough attorney general of Mexico's Nayarit state, was ordered jailed by a US federal judge in Brooklyn, facing charges of trafficking cocaine, heroin and meth.
A Colombian cartel operative who established Central America's remote and lawless Miskito Coast as a major cocaine transfer point was arrested by Nicaraguan authorities.
Even as the FARC guerillas begin the disarmament process under Colombia's peace plan, the ongoing wave of deadly violence against social leaders remains unrelenting.
The Trump administration seriously turned up the heat on Venezuela, slapping sanctions on the country's vice president Tareck Zaidan El Aissami as a drug "kingpin."
Guy Philippe, a former paramilitary boss and coup leader recently elected to Haiti’s senate, was arrested by the DEA days before he would have been sworn into office. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Map Library)
Amid moves toward peace in Colombia, the goad of the war—the country's lucrative cocaine trade—clearly remains robust, as record-breaking hauls are reported.
Security forces in Honduras carried out raids on suspected narco-gang safe-houses at various locations, bringing out helicopters and heavy weaponry.
Gerson Adair Gálvez Calle AKA "Caracol" (The Snail), Peru's most wanted fugitive drug lord, was arrested by Colombian National Police at a shopping center in Medellín.
Colombia's Defense Ministry announced that it will resume use of glyphosate to eradicate coca crops—less than a year after suspending the program on cancer concerns.
Rights groups see an urgent threat that criminal gangs and paramilitary groups will fill the power vacuum in remote areas of Colombia as the FARC is demobilized.
At their White House meeting, Obama and Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos proposed a "Marshall Plan" for the post-conflict era, to be dubbed "Peace Colombia."
