Security & Strategic Review - October 2024

Strained relations between Honduras and Washington further deteriorated at the end of August, when President Xiomara Castro ordered the cancellation of a longstanding extradition treaty with the US.... Read More

Securing the negotiated demobilisation of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), has been the central focus of President Gustavo Petro’s flagship ‘total peace’ initiative since he took office in August 2022.... Read More

Ecuador’s Attorney General Diana Salazar is spearheading a massive effort to purge the judiciary of corruption, amid fears that organised crime groups have thoroughly infiltrated the country’s justice system.... Read More

South America is on course for its worst ever wildfire season.... Read More

A high-profile corruption case known as the ‘Caso Audios’ has shaken Chile’s top judicial and political circles.... Read More

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and several cabinet ministers have hailed the conclusion of negotiations which began last year to settle a decades-long land dispute in Maranhão state between local quilombola communities and the Brazilian air force (FAB).... Read More

Brazilian authorities as well as public security experts have expressed concern over the connections between organised crime and gun owners with CAC licences (a certification for hunters, sport shooters, and gun collectors).... Read More

“In Paraguay we are no longer improvising with security, we are no longer reactive, but proactive,” President Santiago Peña said on 19 September, at an event in which the government gave the national police (PN) new vehicles and equipment.... Read More

Andrés Manuel López Obrador finished his term as Mexico’s president on 30 September.... Read More

In the months running up to President Claudia Sheinbaum taking office on 1 October, she developed a methodical, formulaic approach to announcing the members of her incoming cabinet.... Read More

Lime producers and packers went on strike in Buenavista municipality, in Mexico’s main lime-producing state of Michoacán, on 12 September following the killing of a local industry figure, José Luis Aguiñaga.... Read More

In late August Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino hailed the first of a series of US-funded repatriation flights to deport illegal migrants who had entered the country via the Darién Gap – the lawless jungle border with Colombia, which is a key migration corridor to the US.... Read More

Andean countries (mainly Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia) have long held a global monopoly over coca cultivation.... Read More

The Dominican Republic’s President Luis Abinader was sworn in for a second term on 16 August following a thumping election victory, and has promised to use his mandate to push through significant reforms – not least proposed changes to the country’s constitution.... Read More

At the beginning of August, Trinidad & Tobago’s Prime Minister Keith Rowley, leader of the People’s National Movement (PNM) government, received the report of the National Advisory Committee on Constitutional Reform, and a couple of weeks later the report was released to the public.... Read More