Adam Isacson

Western Hemisphere Regional

• David Luhnow, “Latin America Is the Murder Capital of the World” (The Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2018).
  

  The violence in Acapulco has created a dystopia where social norms have broken down

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras

• Abby Cordova, Diana M. Orces, Jonathan T. Hiskey, Mary Fran Malone, “Leaving the Devil You Know: Crime Victimization, Us Deterrence Policy, and the Emigration Decision in Central America” (Latin American Research Review, September 28, 2018).
  

  Though a vast majority of these respondents were aware of the stricter US immigration policy regime, this awareness had no effect on their consideration of emigration as a viable strategy

Guatemala

• Roberto Valencia, “Ver, Oir y Linchar en Chichicastenango” (El Faro (El Salvador), September 24, 2018).
  

  Hoy, Chichi (170 000 habitantes) es una de las ciudades menos homicidas en la región más homicida del mundo –el Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica–, con una tasa de asesinatos inferior a la de Chile, Bélgica o Canadá. ¿Quiere saber por qué?

Mexico

• Michael J. Mooney, “How a Cartel-Linked Murder Rocked a Wealthy Dallas Suburb” (Texas Monthly, September 28, 2018).
  

  How prosecutors tied a brazen murder in an upscale Dallas suburb to one of Mexico’s most violent criminal organizations

• Elias Camhaji, “Matar y Morir en Ciudad de Mexico” (El Pais (Spain), September 24, 2018).
  

  La inseguridad, la erosión del tejido social y la impunidad han creado una espiral de violencia que ha hundido a la capital mexicana en el momento más sangriento de su historia

• Ioan Grillo, “He Dedicated His Career to Exposing the Cartels. Then He Was Gunned Down in the Street.” (Esquire, September 20, 2018).
  

  Corruption at the state level has been partly responsible for a lack of progress in prosecuting such deaths

(I leave for Colombia in the morning, so I’m churning out a bunch of end-of-month posts tonight. It’s more fun than packing.)

Todd Wiseman photo at The Texas Tribune. Caption: “A raft loaded with undocumented immigrants navigates the Mexican side of the Rio Grande across from Ruperto Escobar’s ranch in April 2016. The ranch sits along the Rio Grande, the international boundary between the U.S. and Mexico, in Starr County in South Texas. For generations smugglers have used the ranch to move people and product across the border, and Escobar doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.”

U.S.-Mexico Border

• Adolfo Flores, “Why Did the Border Patrol Shoot Claudia Gomez?” (BuzzFeed, August 29, 2018).

The Border Patrol shooting of a young Guatemalan immigrant remains a mystery three months later. A phone video provides the only clue about what happened

• Ron Nixon, “High Profits and Misery Meet at Door of Smugglers’ Stash Houses” (The New York Times, August 27, 2018).

“You can be in a neighborhood where kids are playing in the streets, and there could be a stash house next door”

• Rafael Carranza, “Trump’s Border Wall Prototypes Fail Design Requirements and Are Riddled With Deficiencies” (The Arizona Republic, August 22, 2018).

The conclusions listed in the report point to serious challenges in building some, if not all, of the prototypes as they were erected in San Diego, because of structural issues in their design or with construction

• David Yaffe-Bellany, Jay Root, Juan Luis Garcia Hernandez, “Asylum-Seekers Say They Cross the Border Illegally Because They Don’t Think They Have Other Options” (The Texas Tribune, August 17, 2018).

Crossing the Rio Grande has had certain procedural advantages. Immigrants who enter the country illegally are generally eligible to be released on bond, while those who present themselves at the bridges stay in detention

• Ari Shapiro, “Photos: What It’s Like on Both Sides of the U.S.-Mexico Border’s Busiest Crossing” (National Public Radio, August 8, 2018).

NPR recently spent time on both sides of the border, where immigration is part of everyday life

• Southwest Border Security: CBP Is Evaluating Designs and Locations for Border Barriers but Is Proceeding Without Key Information (Washington: U.S. Government Accountability Office, August 6, 2018).

Bolivia

• Caroline Stauffer, “Native Peoples Sour on Morales, Bolivia’s First Indigenous President” (Reuters **, August 24, 2018).

After clashes with native groups over development, and controversial maneuvers to stay in office, indigenous voters are now turning against him

Colombia

• Rafael Croda, “Viaje al Corazon de la Oficina, la Heredera del Cartel de Medellin” (Proceso (Mexico), El Tiempo (Colombia), August 28, 2018).

En entrevista, habla un vocero autorizado de la organización delictiva más poderosa de Colombia

• Juanita León, “Ivan Duque Inaugura su Uribismo 2.0” (La Silla Vacia (Colombia), August 8, 2018).

El discurso del nuevo presidente terminó con una invitación a todos los colombianos a hacer un Pacto por el futuro de Colombia. Y la pregunta del millón, es cómo se hará ese pacto y con quiénes y si eso incluye a Macías y a los que piensan como él

Guatemala

• Hector Silva Avalos, Steven Dudley, “President Jimmy Morales’ (and Guatemala’s) ‘Original Sin’” (InsightCrime, August 24, 2018).

The circle is nearly closed. Jimmy Morales, who won power precisely because of his predecessor’s corruption, is now facing down accusations that he committed some of the same transgressions. It was a biblical lesson he apparently missed

Haiti

• Jacqueline Charles, Jay Weaver, “How the Dea Let One of Haiti’s Biggest Drug Busts Slip Through Its Fingers” (The Miami Herald, August 17, 2018).

The bungling of the investigation in Haiti didn’t even come to light until two veteran DEA agents filed whistleblower complaints that have triggered a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the effectiveness of the DEA’s drug-fighting efforts

Mexico

• Marcela Turati, “El “No al Perdon” se Extiende en los Foros por la Paz” (Proceso (Mexico), August 16, 2018).

Las madres agraviadas manifiestan su desconcierto sobre el tema de la amnistía y el perdón a los criminales. Así lo expresaron en los dos primeros foros realizados la semana pasada

• James Fredrick, “Mexico’s New President Has a Radical Plan to End the Drug War” (Vox, August 15, 2018).

AMLO and his advisers have proposed sending drug war-fighting soldiers back to their barracks, pardoning nonviolent drug offenders, and boosting social programs

Nicaragua

• Gioconda Belli, “How Daniel Ortega Became a Tyrant” (Foreign Affairs, August 29, 2018).

In April, their fiction of a prosperous and politically stable Nicaragua collapsed like a house of cards

• Jon Lee Anderson, ““Fake News” and Unrest in Nicaragua” (The New Yorker, August 27, 2018).

A senior U.S. official whom I spoke to feared that Ortega was using death squads to silence his opposition. “We’ve moved from a climate of fear to one of terror”

• “Nicaragua Sitiada por Ortega y por Que la Izquierda Teme Criticar a la Izquierda” (Plaza Publica (Guatemala), August 14, 2018).

Cuatro estudiantes nicaragüenses que la semana pasada estuvieron en Guatemala participando de una actividad académica, explican desde sus posiciones en resistencia, los orígenes de la crisis política que vive Nicaragua desde abril pasado

• Kirk Semple, “‘There’s No Law’: Political Crisis Sends Nicaraguans Fleeing” (The New York Times, August 7, 2018).

There is already a sense that order is fragile, and that an anarchic slide has already begun

Peru

• Ricardo León, “Vraem: La Guerra en Circulos” (El Comercio (Peru), August 21, 2018).

La reciente muerte de un suboficial de la FAP en el Vraem revela la intensa disputa territorial entre las Fuerzas Armadas y Sendero Luminoso. Cabecilla terrorista ‘Antonio’ busca posicionarse en zonas de producción de droga

Corruption scandals, organized crime, democratic weakening, and an unhelpful new administration in Washington made this a tough year for Latin America. Through it all, journalists and non-governmental organizations were on top of their game.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, and there’s a bias towards coverage of things I didn’t know before. But here are just 17 articles and reports that really stuck with me this year.

1. Ginger Thompson at ProPublica and National Geographic: “How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,” June 12, 2017.
   A Mexican police unit working closely with the DEA leaked sensitive information to the Zetas in 2011. The Zetas used it to massacre dozens, possibly hundreds, in a town near the U.S. border. The DEA did nothing. With photos and recordings from many witnesses—including ex-Zetas and U.S. officials—Thompson reconstructs the horror and what U.S. drug warriors must learn from it. And today, she just published another account of a DEA-linked Zetas massacre, in Monterrey in 2010.
2. Azam Ahmed and Nicole Perlroth at The New York Times: “Using Texts as Lures, Government Spyware Targets Mexican Journalists and Their Families,” June 19, 2017.
   The Times broke the story of the Peña Nieto government’s misuse of spyware to hack the mobile phones of human rights defenders and journalists, including the OAS team of international experts who were investigating the 2014 Ayotzinapa massacre.
3. Bryan Avelar and Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson at Revista Factum: “En la Intimidad del Escuadrón de la Muerte de la Policía,” August 22, 2017.
   Given a presidential green light to use all means to combat gangs, some of El Salvador’s police have been acting like death squads, carrying out extrajudicial executions of people they believe are gang members. The investigation reveals pages of WhatsApp conversations between cops celebrating their killings.
4. Sarah Chayes at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “When Corruption Is the Operating System: The Case of Honduras,” May 30, 2017.
   Chayes puts Honduras’s kleptocratic networks under a microscope, showing how they penetrate all corners of political and economic power. Reading this makes the feeble U.S. response to its “ally” all the more maddening.
5. Maye Primera at El Faro and Univisión: “El Salvador, a country sown with death,” October 29, 2017.
   Fourth in a remarkable four-part series about the migrant trail from Central America’s Northern Triangle to Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica. Should dispel any doubt that a large portion of Central American migrants arriving in the United States right now are fleeing for their lives.
6. Emma Graham-Harrison at The Guardian: “Downward Spiral: How Venezuela’s Symbol of Progress Became Political Prisoners’ Hell,” September 15, 2017.
   Caracas’s “Helicoide” building was a symbol of Venezuela’s 1950s optimism and modernism. It later became a torture center for political prisoners, and remains a prison today—as well as the decaying headquarters of the intelligence services. What a metaphor.
7. Eduardo Álvarez Vanegas, María Victoria Llorente, Andrés Cajiao, and Juan Carlos Garzón V. at Fundación Ideas para la Paz: “Crimen organizado y saboteadores armados en tiempos de transición: radiografía necesaria,” July 15, 2017.
   The most thorough exploration of Colombia’s post-conflict security challenges throughout the territory. The FIP packed this report with graphics, maps, and recent information based on field research.
8. Ximena Suárez-Enríquez and Maureen Meyer at WOLA: “Overlooking Justice – Human Rights Violations Committed by Mexican Soldiers against Civilians are Met with Impunity,” November 7, 2017.
   As Mexico approves a law cementing in place the military’s role in internal policing, WOLA documents an ominous fact: according to judicial records, Mexican soldiers who violate human rights are almost never punished.
9. Misha Glenny at The Intercept: “One of Rio de Janeiro’s Safest Favelas Descends Into Violence, the Latest Sign of a City in Chaos,” September 25, 2017.
   Rocinha, a giant favela looming over some of Rio’s wealthiest beachfront neighborhoods, is getting very violent again. Glenny, who wrote a book last year about Rocinha and its organized-crime boss Nem, documents the sad deterioration of Rio’s “favela pacification” program.
10. Kimberly Heinle, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, and David A. Shirk at Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego: “Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2016,” March 2017.
    The geography, the principal actors, and chronological trends in Mexico’s organized-crime violence. A detailed, graphical overview from people who’ve been following this for years.
11. Juan José Martínez D’Aubuisson and Steven Dudley at InsightCrime: “Reign of the Kaibil: Guatemala’s Prisons Under Byron Lima,” January 26, 2017.
    A compelling story and an inside look at the late Guatemalan Army Captain, the corrupt, murderous military faction he represented, and how he used his ties to state power and the criminal underworld to thrive while serving a prison term for helping to murder a bishop.
12. Meridith Kohut and Isayen Herrera at The New York Times: “As Venezuela Collapses, Children Are Dying of Hunger,” December 17, 2017.
    A difficult read—and even harder photos to view—illustrating the savage result of the Venezuelan government’s ineptitude, dictatorial misrule, and epic corruption.
13. Alex Yablon at The Trace: “American Guns Drive the Migrant Crisis That Trump Wants to Fix With a Wall,” May 25, 2017.
    Thousands of guns sold legally in the United States are pouring into Central America, arming the criminal groups who, in turn, are forcing thousands of Central Americans to flee to the United States.
14. Michael Smith, Sabrina Valle, and Blake Schmidt at Bloomberg Businessweek: “No One Has Ever Made a Corruption Machine Like This One,” June 8, 2017.
    “Follow the money” stories are often hard to read because they’re so complicated. Shell companies, offshore banking, and similar mechanisms are hard to understand. This one isn’t hard to read: it’s a well-told walkthrough of Brazil’s massive Odebrecht scandal.
15. Héctor Silva Ávalos at InsightCrime: “Nariño, Colombia: Ground Zero of the Cocaine Trade,” June 7, 2017.
    The coca and cocaine heartland of Colombia’s Pacific coast in the aftermath of the FARC peace accord, as seen through the sharp eyes of a highly regarded Salvadoran journalist .
16. Alexis Okeowo at The New Yorker: “A Mexican Town Wages Its Own War on Drugs,” November 27, 2017.
    The story of Nestora Santiago, who organized a civilian “self-defense” force in a small town in the opium-poppy heartland of Guerrero, Mexico. Some residents defend her for making the town safer when corrupt police couldn’t. Others denounce her very real abuses of power, and of human rights.
17. Lee Fang at The Intercept: “Sphere of Influence: How American Libertarians are Remaking Latin American Politics,” August 9, 2017.
    The Atlas Network has a lot of resources, and it’s been backing a growing network of small-government, free-market-fundamentalist think-tanks around Latin America, a region that already has the world’s most lopsided concentration of wealth.

Photo from InsightCrime. Caption: “ELN flag in Roberto Payán, Nariño”

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

Semana archive photo from Verdad Abierta (Colombia). Caption: “Los ataques contra miembros de la Policía se han concentrado particularmente en Antioquia, Chocó, Córdoba, Sucre y Norte de Santander.”

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

Photo credit “Tomas Munita/The New York Times/Redux” from the Bloomberg piece listed below. Caption: “An illegal mine in Peru. The primary tools in this type of mining are fire hoses and mercury.”

Everything here is at least 3,000 words long, but worth your time.

March 31, 2017

Cuba

• Jose De Cordoba, “The Buried Train and the French Teacher’s Daughter: A Cuban Exile’s Search for Home” (The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2017).

Traveling back through his family’s history, a reporter struggles with whether to return to the land of his birth, now that the Communist government wants to reclaim those who left

Mexico

• Kimberly Heinle, Octavio Rodriguez Ferreira, David A. Shirk, “Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2016” (Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, March 31, 2017).

Tensions between the two countries could undermine the close law enforcement and security cooperation achieved under the administrations of presidents George W. Bush (2000-2008) and Barack Obama (2008-2016)

March 30, 2017

Mexico

• Leon Krauze, “Los Porkys: The Sexual-Assault Case That’s Shaking Mexico” (The New Yorker, March 30, 2017).

Mexico has a deeply flawed judicial system, and its flaws become most apparent when cases are brought against the powerful and the wealthy

March 20, 2017

Colombia

• Maria Clara Calle, “Coca: Un Negocio Familiar Que Marca a la Mujer” (Verdad Abierta (Colombia), March 20, 2017).

Plantaciones extensivas de esta mata, la guerra y la violencia sexual han pasado por Putumayo con más que sangre para las organizaciones femeninas

Guatemala

• Francisco Goldman, “The Story Behind the Fire That Killed Forty Teen-Age Girls in a Guatemalan Children’s Home” (The New Yorker, March 20, 2017).

In the wake of the fire, the revelation that the Secretariat for Social Welfare had failed to respond to these orders led to widespread criticism of the department, and of Guatemala’s President

March 15, 2017

Colombia

• Irina Cuesta, Andres Cajiao, Eduardo Alvarez Vanegas, “Siete Regiones Sin las Farc, ¿Siete Problemas Mas?” (Fundacion Ideas por la Paz (Colombia), March 15, 2017).

Chocó, Tumaco, Cauca, Buenaventura, el Bajo Cauca antioqueño, el eje Llanos Orientales-Orinoquia y Catatumbo se enfrentan a diversos tipos de violencias tras la salida de las FARC

Venezuela

• Secretary General Luis Almagro, “Secretary General Presents Updated Report on Venezuela to the Permanent Council” (Organization of American States, March 15, 2017).

The facts have become clear. Venezuela is in violation of every article in the Inter-American Democratic Charter

March 10, 2017

Mexico

• Jeremy Schwartz, “Living in No Man’s Land” (The Austin American-Statesman, March 10, 2017).

Unlike many parts of Arizona, New Mexico and California, where the border is an unseen straight line on the desert floor, the natural barrier of the Rio Grande made wall-building a frustrating experience

Chile, Western Hemisphere Regional

• Michael Smith, Jonathan Franklin, “How to Become an International Gold Smuggler” (Bloomberg, March 10, 2017).

*Harold Vilches, a 23-year-old Chilean, exported $80 million in contraband gold. It all started with a Google search
*

March 3, 2017

Brazil

• Brian Winter, “Revisiting Brazil’s 2013 Protests: What Did They Really Mean?” (Americas Quarterly, March 3, 2017).

The so-called “Tropical Spring” erupted, grabbed the attention of the world – and then disappeared (Or did it?). An in-depth look, nearly four years on

March 1, 2017

Mexico

• William Atkins, “Life and Death on the Mexican Border” (The Guardian (Uk), March 1, 2017).

Most of those who attempt to climb the wall into the US will be arrested and sent back. If they survive, they will keep trying