Behind the Scenes of 10 Years Investigating LatAm Organized Crime

How do you track down a “ghost” in Colombia without raising suspicions, or get close enough to the elites and criminal actors themselves to document the hidden relationship between them? Over the last 10 years, InSight Crime has managed to do this and more. On November 18 at 9 a.m. EST, join InSight Crime Co-directors Jeremy McDermott and Steven Dudley as they sit down with two of the organization’s biggest supporters and closest allies, going behind the scenes of some of the groundbreaking investigative work we’ve carried out in Latin America since 2010. Alongside La Silla Vacía Director Juanita León and the Igarapé Institute’s Robert Muggah, Dudley and McDermott will look back on how this hybrid organization — part media, part academic research institution and part think-tank — has managed to separate itself and pave the way for covering organized crime across the Americas.

While there’s no way to adequately sum up the sweat and tears that have gone into the last decade of InSight Crime’s work, the conversation will take a sometimes light, sometimes heavy, but all the time crime-nerdy look back on all we’ve accomplished. From tracking gun runners in Mexico to lifting the lid on the “invisibles” of Colombia’s underworld and documenting the nexus between municipal powers and organized crime in the Northern Triangle, InSight Crime has made a habit of stepping out of its comfort zone to report the on-the-ground realities of Latin America’s ever-changing criminal world. To help us celebrate our 10th anniversary on social media, don’t forget to use the hashtags #10YearsInSightCrime and #InSightCrime on Twitter, and to tag our accounts in both English and Spanish. For mentions on Facebook, you can also find our page in English and Spanish to tag us.