(I say “organized crime-related” to distinguish this kind of corruption from its slimy, tawdry, but usually less-deadly cousin, “graft.”)

Colombia

• Ariel Ávila, “La Sinverguenceria de la Bandola Uribista” (Semana (Colombia), March 31, 2017).

In his latest column, the security analyst goes over some of the historical ties between opposition leader and former president Álvaro Uribe’s supporters and organized crime, and notes that even today Uribe’s party has introduced legislation that would help criminals keep land that they have massively stolen.

Honduras

• Steven Dudley, “Another Day, Another Damning Testimony of Elites by Honduras Trafficker” (InsightCrime, March 22, 2017).

Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, an extradited leader of Honduras’s Cachiros drug-trafficking organization, has been implicating many Honduran politicians while testifying to a New York court. These include the brother of President Juan Orlando Hernández and the son of the previous president, Porfirio Lobo.

Mexico

• Dudley Althaus, Juan Montes, “U.S. Arrests a Mexican State Attorney General on Drug-Trafficking Charges” (The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2017).

U.S. agents acting on a federal indictment arrested Edgar Veytia, alias “Diablo,” the chief prosecutor of Nayarit state and member of the governing PRI party, for trafficking heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. Nayarit is featured as the home state of the “Xalisco boys” heroin-trafficking ring in Sam Quiñones’s excellent 2015 book Dreamland.

• “Infiltrados por el Narco, Municipios Serranos y del Noroeste de Chihuahua, Acepta Gobierno Estatal” (Proceso (Mexico), March 28, 2017).

Officials from the recently elected government of the U.S. border state of Chihuahua recognized that, during the previous governor’s term, many municipalities’ police forces and local officials passed into the complete control of organized crime and narcotrafficking. This is especially so in the state’s northeast (a dangerous zone near the Texas border east of Ciudad Juárez) and in the Sierra Tarahumara mountains. The ex-governor, Javier Corral, fled to Texas last week in a questionable attempt to evade corruption allegations.

• Karen Meza, “Corrupcion, Ambicion y Pobreza Unen a Civiles, Narcos y Politicos de Puebla en el Saqueo de Pemex” (Periodico Central (Mexico), SinEmbargo (Mexico), March 28, 2017).

This investigation looks at collusion between government officials and organized crime in the state of Puebla, east of Mexico City, where the practice of stealing gasoline from the national oil company’s pipelines is widespread.

Venezuela

• “Corrupción, bandas organizadas y tráfico de drogas” (Observatorio del Delito Organizado, March 10, 2017).

A series of monographs detailing links between the state and organized crime in Venezuela. Found via a March 22 English overview by InsightCrime, which summarizes a January monograph by Mildred Camero, a former Venezuelan judge and “drug czar.” Camero argues that 2005 and 2010 reforms giving the armed forces a greater role in investigating and combating drug trafficking ended up corrupting them to the extent that they now control most large-scale smuggling.