A Deep Dive Into El Salvador´s Criminal Dynamics and Its Borders

In El Salvador, sophisticated freight networks specialize in moving illicit drugs and contraband across Central American borders.

Join us next Tuesday, March 23, for a discussion in which InSight Crime project coordinator Ángela Olaya Castro — as well as investigators Alicia Flórez and Victoria Dittmar -- delve into El Salvador’s cross-border criminal dynamics. Moderated by InSight Crime Co-director Steven Dudley, the event is part of a series of country-by-country presentations titled  “Border  Crime:  The  Northern  Triangle  and  the  Tri-Border  Area,” in which InSight Crime presents findings of investigative work carried out during the last two years in these border regions.

Date

23 Mar 2021

Time

3:00 pm

Where

Live Broadcast in  Spanish  on YouTube and English  on Facebook

Speakers

Ángela Olaya Castro is a political scientist from the Andes University, Bogotá, with vast experience researching the relationship between armed conflict and organized crime. She is a senior researcher and project manager at InSight Crime, where she has coordinated the project “Border Crime: The Northern Triangle and the Tri-Border Area.” Previously, she led InSight Crime’s Colombian Organized Crime Observatory and was part of the investigative team that exposed the identity of invisible drug lord, “Memo Fantasma.”

Alicia Flórez is an economist from the EAFIT University, Medellín, where she is currently completing a master’s degree. She is a researcher at InSight Crime working on transnational organized crime in Colombia, the Northern Triangle, and the Tri-Border Area, and has conducted extensive fieldwork in these areas. She contributed to InSight Crime’s latest investigation: The Rise of PCC: Expansion in Brazil and Beyond.

Victoria Dittmar is a researcher for InSight Crime based in Mexico City. She joined InSight Crime five years ago, and has participated in various investigations on organized crime in Colombia, Honduras and Mexico. She has also collaborated with the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS). Dittmar has a degree in International Relations from the University of Sussex and a Masters in Sociology from the University of Oxford.

Steven Dudley is co-director and co-founder of InSight Crime. Dudley is a senior fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington, DC. He is the former Bureau Chief of The Miami Herald in the Andean Region, and the author of two books: “Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia” (Routledge 2004) and “MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang” (Harper Collins 2020).