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Tag Archives: security
Why Guatemala’s Pérez Molina Is Considering Legalizing Drugs
Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina has been acting strange lately. Just one month after his inauguration, he is already ruffling U.S. feathers, and making waves in the politics of the region in unexpected ways.
Pérez Molina’s military past and hard-line “mano dura” security policy made many worry that he would backtrack on justice reforms led by [...]
Posted in El Salvador, Guatemala Also tagged Cartels, drug violence, drug war, legalization, marijuana, Mauricio Funes, Otto Perez Molina Leave a comment
Overstating Cartels’ Relevance to the American Electorate
The lead article in last week’s Proceso talks about the political importance of capturing El Chapo for both the Calderon and Obama administrations. The article is worth a read in its entirety, but the focus of this post is on a quote from the informed and esteemed analyst/lawyer/economist Edgardo Buscaglia:
“For Obama, El Chapo is Osama [...]
Latin America’s Security Dilemma Continued
Sam Novacich and I have a piece at ISN in which we take a closer look at one of Rio’s Pacifying Police Units (UPP) in the Cantagalo/Pavão-Pavãozinho communities and document some of the challenges the community members and UPP are facing with the new game in town.
In addition to looking into some of the lesser-reported impacts [...]
The Skeletons in Brazil’s Closet
In the last year, you’d be hard-pressed to have heard or read anything negative about Brazil (with the exception of President Lula’s pesky affinity for Iran). The South American giant emerged virtually unscathed from the financial crisis and is now the media darling of the Financial Times and the Economist. Democracy has generally been very [...]
Selective Impunity
El Chiguire Bipolar has a good take on the concept of selective impunity.
In the Onion-like fashion for which the blog is known, it tells the story of Maria Angelica Guerrero, a two-time victim of lightning kidnappings and exasperation at the police’s ineffectiveness. Thinking creatively, she attempts to get her kidnapper to speak negatively about Hugo [...]
Posted in Mexico Also tagged border issues, Cartels, ciudad juarez, drug war, United States Leave a comment
Merida 2.0: A New Phase in U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation
Responding to a growing sense that an exclusive focus on a military-led fight against drug trafficking organizations is failing to curb violence on the other side of our southern border, the United States and Mexico formally announced a shift in their counternarcotics strategy that had been in the works since the fall of 2009. The “new stage” in bilateral cooperation will aim to strengthen civilian law enforcement institutions and rebuild communities crippled by poverty and crime.
Posted in Mexico Also tagged border issues, corruption, democracy, Diplomacy, drug war, United States, war on drugs Leave a comment
Anti-drug bases in Panama and the Drug War in 2010
One of the biggest stories emerging from the Americas in 2009 was Colombia’s decision to let the United States access military installations throughout Colombia in efforts to combat narcotrafficking. The move exacerbated already tenuous relations between Colombia and Venezuela, with the latter claiming that US presence in Colombia was a direct threat to sovereignty, another [...]
The International Reach of Organized Crime
Earlier this year, LatAmThought wrote a commentary about the international reach or criminal organizations in the Americas. Last week, we published an article on the International Relations and Security Network about the indirect presence of Mexican Cartels in the Andes.
The amount of drug seizures in Bolivia have increased in 2009. Additionally, raids on drug-processing labs [...]

The FARC’s announcement to halt kidnapping: why?