Even before the signing of the 2016 peace agreement between the FARC and the Colombian government, it was clear that not all of the former guerillas would welcome and join…
In January 2019, heavily armed gunmen traveling in a truck and on a motorbike ambushed a small group of anti-narcotics agents in Sucumbíos, the Ecuadorean province that borders Colombia in…
For the Ecuadorean province of Esmeraldas on the Pacific side of the Colombia border, 2019 began with a warning that the horrors of the past year were no aberration.
Little attention is paid to Ecuador. The murder rate is low, and there are no drug cartels like those that have dominated the criminal landscape in Mexico and Colombia. Yet…
Venezuela's northern border state of Táchira saw a jump in kidnappings during the first six months of 2019 -- a likely consequence of armed groups roaming the Venezuela-Colombia border. …
On a December morning in 2018, Javier Erazo, known as “El Huita,” took to his hammock after a horseback ride at his farm in Ocotepeque, a town on the western…
The announcement in late August that three important former leaders of the demobilized FARC were returning to war did not only threaten the fragile Colombian peace agreement but raised questions…
Authorities in Mexico continue to make large seizures of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl, even as China, the world’s top producer of the drug, tightens regulations. …
Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández assumed the presidency as a so-called “crime fighter” that the United States could collaborate closely with to rid his Central American nation of corruption and…
In a video published on YouTube, a group of senior former FARC rebel leaders declared the intention to take up arms once again, reviving the FARC-EP and sounding the possible…
Violent tensions are flaring in Bolivia's capital between hostile factions of one of the country's coca growers’ unions, escalating a long-simmering conflict for control of legal coca production in the…
While Colombia is known for its vast coca fields, the hillsides of its Cauca region are covered in another illicit crop: highly potent marijuana.