Mexico
Mexico: pressure mounts for drug legalization
Mexican think-tanks say that state measures for cannabis legalization in the US will undercut cartel profits, and note that personal users bear the brunt of enforcement.
Tag: narco wars
Southern Cone
Brazil: crime wars rock Sao Paulo
Brazilian police launched "Operation Saturation" to crush the Sao Paolo criminal network known as the First Capital Command (PCC), flooding the favelas with paramilitary troops.
Afghanistan
Treasury Department sanctions Taliban ‘kingpin’
The US Treasury Department sanctioned a senior Taliban official for his alleged role in the Afghan opium trade, saying the traffic is used to finance violence.
Mexico
Mexico: 14 police charged in attack on CIA agents
Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s Office confirmed that it was finally charging 14 federal police agents for an attack on a US embassy van more than two months earlier.
Mexico
Mexico: torture and abuse cases continue to increase
Complaints of torture and other abuse by the police and the military have tripled since 2008, as the government steps up its militarized “war on drugs.”
Central America
Criminal gangs threaten Maya Biosphere Reserve
Mexican drug cartels that use cattle ranching to launder narco-profits as well as Chinese-backed illegal timber gangs are eating into Guatemala's vast Maya Biosphere Reserve.
FARC factionalizing amid peace talks?
With peace talks underway in Oslo, Colombian politicians warn that the FARC’s Southern Bloc is continuing to recruit with an eye towards continuing the insurgency.
Mexico
Indigenous communities rise up in Michoacán
For the second time in less than two years, an indigenous community in the Mexican state of Michoacán has erected barricades and seized control of security matters.
The Andes
Peru: narco-mineral integration
The US Justice Department has frozen the assets of mineral companies owned by Peru’s Sánchez-Paredes family, finding that they are fronts for cocaine trafficking.
The Amazon
Colombia apologizes for Amazon genocide
Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos on Día de La Raza issued an official apology to indigenous communities in the Amazon for devastation caused by the rubber boom.
Central America
Guatemala claims arrest of local Zetas boss
Guatemalan authorities arrested the presumed leader of a Zetas cell in the region along the Mexican border, where the group's incursion has forced the displacement of local residents.
North America
MS-13 gang makes US ‘criminal organization’ list
Mara Salvatrucha, the Salvadoran street gang that got its start in Los Angeles' Koreatown, has been officially designated by US authorities as an "transnational criminal organization."