Afghanistan
Afghan opium production hits new record high
The UN’s latest Afghanistan Opium Survey finds that the country produced record levels of poppy in 2013—despite $7 billion in US eradication efforts.
Tag: narco wars
The Andes
Colombia: threatened indigenous group leader slain
Two gunmen assassinated Juan Álvaro Pai, traditional governor of the endangered Awá indigenous people, in an incursion into their reserve in Colombia’s Nariño department.
Mexico
Citizens challenge media silence on Matamoros war
Local activists and bloggers risk their lives to get out the word on the ongoing urban warfare in Tamaulipas, with Mexico's establishment press terrorized into silence.
Mexico
Michoacán mayor murdered by Knights Templar?
Mexico is shocked by the murder of Mayor Ygnacio López Mendoza of Santa Ana Maya, Michoacán, who was found dead after a public hunger strike to protest cartel extortion.
The Andes
Peru: ‘narco-terrorist’ busted; narco-politician exposed
Peru's National Police said they apprehended an accused Shining Path commander—as a campaign contributor to Keiko Fujimori was blacklisted by the US as a narco-trafficker.
The Andes
Sendero Luminoso in Bolivia?
Peru’s jungle border with Bolivia is militarized after Bolivian authorities said a coca-eradication was team was ambushed by a Sendero Luminoso cell in the Yungas region.
Mexico
Narco-terrorism in Michoacán
Nearly half a million were left without electricity after 18 substations were blown up in a wave of coordinated attacks across Mexico’s west-central state of Michoacán.
Mexico
Mexico narco networks inside and outside prisons
A new riot between rival gangs at a dangerously overcrowded priso in Tamaulipas left seven inmates dead—as an ex-state police commander was sentenced to prison in the US.
Mexico
Mexico: US documents blast Calderón’s ‘drug war’
Mexican drug cartels operate “with near total impunity” despite the country’s massive US-funded war on drugs, which in turn has brought about a “spike” in violence.
Central America
Nicaragua: CIA-contra drug charges resurface
The grisly 1985 murder of a US drug agent is back in the news—and so are allegations of drug running by the CIA and Nicaragua’s US-backed contras.
Mexico
Mexico: narcos abduct migrants —again
Tamaulipas state police resuced 73 abducted migrants outside Reynosa after following their apparent captors to a house and hearing frantic calls for help.
Southern Cone
Brazil: deadly prison riot sets off angry protests
At least 13 inmates were killed and some 30 injured in a clash between rival gangs at Pedrinhas prison in São Luis, in Brazil’s northeastern state of Maranhão.