Welcome to InSight Crime’s Criminal GameChangers 2021, where we highlight the most important trends in organized crime in the Americas over the course of the year.
Organized crime had to tighten its belt in 2020, and pickings remain lean as world economies contract and movement is restricted. Yet this crisis is likely to be a temporary…
Venezuela has long been known as a strategic rearguard for Colombia guerrilla groups. Yet 2020 saw the acceleration of a newer dynamic: Venezuelan gangs now rival their Colombian counterparts in…
As COVID-19 threatened the well-being of the populations they depend on for criminal income, it was largely in the interest of criminal groups to try and keep the pandemic under…
A rush of drug plane traffic from South America, coupled with traffickers smuggling large cocaine shipments after coronavirus border restrictions eased, led to a surge in narcotics transiting Central America…
In a region where 50 percent of the population already makes its living in the informal market, it was perhaps of little surprise that black markets exploded in 2020 amidst…
President-elect Joe Biden wants to reset US-Latin American relations, but the Trump administration’s approach may leave scars.
Welcome to InSight Crime’s Criminal GameChangers 2020, where we highlight the most important trends in organized crime in the Americas over the course of the year. …
The year was one of political tumult, fed in no small part by organized crime and its favored weapon: corruption.
Colombia’s last rebel army is now the most powerful criminal syndicate in Latin America, as it expands across Colombia and far into Venezuela, deepening its involvement in the drug trade.
The criminal, economic and political dynamics behind illegal gold rushes this past year in Venezuela and Ecuador were very different. But both countries illustrate the same trend: that illegal mining…
Venezuela remained mired in crisis throughout 2019, yet Nicolás Maduro actually consolidated his regime. How did he do it?…