Everything here is at least 2,500 words long, but worth your time.

Colombia

• Hector Silva Avalos, , “Narino, Colombia: Ground Zero of the Cocaine Trade” (InsightCrime, June 9, 2017).

Perhaps nowhere else in the country are the challenges of a post-conflict Colombia more evident, and perhaps no other part of the world is more indicative of how an economy can be fueled by the production and trafficking of cocaine

• “Dinamicas del Asesinato de Lideres Rurales: Las Covariables Municipales” (Observatorio de Restitución y Regulación de Derechos de Propiedad Agraria (Colombia), June 14, 2017).

El fenómeno SÍ es sistemático. Apabullantemente sistemático. Mirando desde tres perspectivas –semántica, jurídica y estadística– llegamos a la conclusión de que simplemente no es verosímil escamotearle su sistematicidad

• “Las Farc Inician Camino a la Politica Sin Armas” (Verdad Abierta (Colombia), June 28, 2017).

A partir de ese día, las zonas se convertirán en Espacios Territoriales de Capacitación y Reincorporación, donde los desde ahora exguerrilleros harán todas las actividades necesarias para reincorporase a la vida legal

Cuba

• Marc Caputo, “Inside Marco Rubio’s Campaign to Shape Trump’s Cuba Crackdown” (Politico, June 16, 2017).

Worried about bureaucratic pushback to preserve Obama’s normalization, the Florida senator went directly to the president with a plan in May

Mexico

• Ginger Thompson, “How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico” (ProPublica, June 13, 2017).

The DEA took a gamble. It shared the intelligence with a Mexican federal police unit that has long had problems with leaks — even though its members had been trained and vetted by the DEA. Almost immediately, the Treviños learned they’d been betrayed

• Azam Ahmed, Nicole Perlroth, “Using Texts as Lures, Government Spyware Targets Mexican Journalists and Their Families” (The New York Times, June 19, 2017).

The software has been used against some of the government’s most outspoken critics and their families, in what many view as an unprecedented effort to thwart the fight against the corruption infecting every limb of Mexican society

• Sandra Rodríguez Nieto, “Caso Javier Valdez | la “Justicia” Mexicana Cocina el Caldo Que Mejor Le Sale: El de la Impunidad” (SinEmbargo (Mexico), June 15, 2017).

Hoy, una vez, más los periodistas saldrán a las calles paran exigir justicia no sólo para el periodista sinaloense sino por todos sus colegas asesinados

• Rafael Carranza, Daniel Gonzalez, “Why Migrant Crossings Plummeted at U.S.-Mexico Border” (The Arizona Republic, June 13, 2017).

One perception among would-be border crossers is that under Trump the United States has gotten much tougher on migrants who are caught

• Michael Smith, Sabrina Valle, Blake Schmidt, “No One Has Ever Made a Corruption Machine Like This One” (Bloomberg, June 9, 2017).

Structured Operations doled out some $788 million in bribes in Brazil and 11 other countries, securing more than 100 contracts that generated $3.3 billion of profit