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

Brazil

• Jonathan Watts, “Wild Amazon Faces Destruction as Brazil’s Farmers and Loggers Target National Park” (The Guardian (Uk), May 29, 2017).

The forces lined up against conservation have deep roots. The post-colonial history of Brazil is, to a large extent, the history of deforestation

Colombia

• Ricardo L. Cruz, “La Amenaza ‘Gaitanista’, un Reto para la Seguridad Ciudadana” (Verdad Abierta (Colombia), May 26, 2017).

Para doblegar a los ‘gaitanistas’ se requiere entender mejor esta amenaza. Aspecto en el que, por el momento, hay más sombras que luces

• “Desarrollo Economico y Crimen Organizado: Las Dos Caras de Uraba” (Verdad Abierta (Colombia), May 15, 2017).

De un lado se está convirtiendo en uno de los polos de desarrollo mercantiles, financieros e inmobiliarios más importante del país; y de otro, el crimen organizado se consolida y le muestra sus colmillos a la institucionalidad

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras

• Alex Yablon, “American Guns Are Fueling the Immigration Crisis That Trump Wants to Fix With a Wall” (The Trace, May 26, 2017).

Tens of thousands of firearms smuggled from the United States help to fuel extreme rates of violence

Mexico

• Patrick Timmons, “Life Imitating News: The Murder of Mexican Journalist Javier Valdez” (NACLA, May 31, 2017).

“Yes, I do have information from the grassroots about the bosses, but my work has been more about people who have had to suffer the narco”

• Kristina Davis, “72 Hours of Crime on the San Diego-Tijuana Border” (The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 15, 2017).

Here, 38,000 vehicles and 18,900 pedestrians on average enter the U.S. daily as part of a constant ebb and flow of people

• Paulina Villegas, “Las Madres Mexicanas Que Excavan la Tierra para Buscar a Sus Hijos” (The New York Times, May 11, 2017).

Desde agosto de 2016 hasta hoy, las mujeres que forman el Colectivo Solecito han encontrado y ayudado a exhumar 263 cuerpos en la que hoy se conoce como la fosa más grande de México

• Jeremy Raff, “The Border Patrol’s Corruption Problem” (The Atlantic, May 5, 2017).

More than 140 Customs and Border Protection agents were arrested or convicted of corruption in recent years—and President Trump’s promise to hire 5,500 new agents could make the problem worse

• Manny Fernandez, “A Path to America, Marked by More and More Bodies” (The New York Times, May 5, 2017).

More than 200 other migrants just like him died, their names unknown. Their bodies are part of a border-crossers’ morgue at a university lab