• Colombia’s Semana investigates how Mexican drug trafficking organizations are altering both the country’s drug trade and its armed conflict. The analysis is spread across five articles published April 9 and 10: an overview; reports from the conflictive Bajo Cauca, Catatumbo, and coastal Nariño regions; and an analysis of the changing coca trade by Daniel Rico.
• At the Christian Science Monitor, Sara Miller Llana writes about the state of democracy in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. As is happening elsewhere in the world, she finds, democracy is threatened by rising authoritarianism and polarization, but resistance remains robust as the hardline President’s poll numbers drop.
• At Nueva Sociedad, four noted South American analysts take stock of the “South American Geopolitics of Coronavirus,” with updates from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
• A team of researchers at Bogotá’s Ideas for Peace Foundation does something similar, but more detailed, for Colombia, exploring what COVID-19 might mean for the balance between armed and criminal groups; the humanitarian situation; migration and borders; social protest; the security forces; and implementation of the 2016 peace accord.
• The OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission published its annual report on the state of human rights in the hemisphere. It’s a bit of a slog to read through—very long, and nobody would call the Commission’s writing style “direct” or “hard-hitting”—but it is deeply thorough and very well researched.