Security & Strategic Review - July 2020

Suriname and Guyana, two countries on the verge of possibly great oil wealth, have both held general elections this year: Guyana on 2 March and Suriname and 25 May.... Read More

The arrival of 45 US soldiers in Colombia in early June – the Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB), tasked with supporting the country’s military in its fight against drug trafficking - was not without precedent.... Read More

The pandemic co-operation agreement signed on 1 June between representatives of Nicolás Maduro’s government and Juan Guaidó’s opposition was hailed in some quarters as a breakthrough in the path towards a peaceful solution to Venezuela’s long-running political crisis.... Read More

Almost a year on from the elections of October 2019, annulled over allegations of electoral fraud, Bolivia may finally get another chance to go to the polls on 6 September.... Read More

The protests against police violence and systemic racism that erupted in the US in late May - after George Floyd, a black man, was killed by a white policeman - immediately resonated in Brazil, where racial prejudice underpins the socio-economic order, and police forces kill around six times more people per year than those in the US.... Read More

‘Fake news’ and the deliberate spreading of misinformation are not the preserve of the far-right – however, there is no doubt that they are an important tool for the radical ‘bolsonarista’ movement that supports President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.... Read More

“Some people think that the fight against drugs is a losing battle, and are prepared to give in.... Read More

The cold-blooded murder of three marines on 31 May shocked Uruguay.... Read More

The presence of a brigade of Cuban doctors in Mexico, ostensibly to help combat the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, has sparked controversy both at home and in the US.... Read More

Mexico’s outdated national radiocommunication network (RNR) has been identified as another factor undermining efforts by the security forces to combat criminality.... Read More

José Rodrigo ‘Chino Antrax’ Aréchiga Gamboa was a Mexican drug trafficker who managed to escape house arrest in the US, where he had been convicted, only to be killed days later in Mexico.... Read More

When the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic first reached Latin America, the horrifying prospect of its proliferation through the region’s often grossly overcrowded, understaffed, unsanitary and aging prisons was described by various human rights organisations as a “ticking time bomb”.... Read More

The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has piled further strain on the Panama Canal, whose future in recent months had already been called into question over water shortage concerns.... Read More

At the end of May Honduras’s President Juan Orlando Hernández promulgated a new air sovereignty law and inaugurated a combined interagency operations centre (CCOI), both aimed at cracking down on drug trafficking.... Read More