Security & Strategic Review - November 2020

For the first time in the 60-year history of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the institution is now led by a US citizen, breaking the unwritten rule that its president be from a Latin American country.... Read More

International NGO Global Witness reported in July that around the world, 212 environmental defenders – activists and community leaders fighting against environmental destruction and the human rights abuses that often go alongside – were killed in 2019.... Read More

Presidential corruption cases have become familiar fare in Peru, with four of the previous six incumbents having been charged and arrested after leaving office, and a fifth, Alan García (1985-1990; 2006-2011), committing suicide before the police could detain him in 2019.... Read More

More than 700 prominent Colombian civil society organisations and campaigners signed a statement on 14 October condemning the government’s “authoritarian onslaught” on the country’s judicial institutions.... Read More

In a sign that Brazil’s police may be adopting a new strategy against the country’s largest criminal organisation, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), recent raids have targeted the gang’s financial and money laundering operations.... Read More

The delivery by international post of parcels containing seeds of unknown origin to people across Brazil, who had not placed orders for these deliveries, has sparked biosecurity concerns in the country.... Read More

Developments in Paraguay regarding the regulation of marijuana production for medical use over the past year suggest that the country might be changing tack in its response to marijuana cultivation – but also show that the process remains a slow one.... Read More

Securing access to water resources has historically been a source of tension between communities and even countries.... Read More

Concerns that Mexico may soon be facing a syndemic - the aggregation of two or more concurrent epidemics that can interact with each other to worsen the public health scenario - have risen considerably following the confirmation of the first cases of patients infected with coronavirus (Covid-19) and other viral diseases.... Read More

Combating tax evasion is a declared priority for the Mexican government led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.... Read More

Back in September a Spanish court handed down a 133-year sentence to Inocente Orlando Montano, a Salvadorean army colonel and former deputy security minister.... Read More

Political opposition groups in Nicaragua such as Alianza Cívica por la Justicia y la Democracia (ACJD) are denouncing a fresh wave of repression by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government led by President Daniel Ortega ahead of the November 2021 general election.... Read More

A new report by the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) and UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) is warning that inadequate nutrition in Guatemala risks “turning back years of development gains”.... Read More

A report released in October jointly by SOAS University of London, Asian Development Bank Institute, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and Four Twenty Seven on Climate Change and Sovereign Risk highlights the particular vulnerability of the Caribbean to natural disasters, and by implication to heightened sovereign risk.... Read More