Security & Strategic Review - May 2023

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has not exactly built a reputation as an anti-corruption crusader.... Read More

Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso has grown increasingly hardline on security issues as his government fails to get a grip on a drug war that is rapidly spiralling out of control.... Read More

Peru’s government has announced plans to spend PEN4bn (US$1.05bn) on measures to improve the country’s climate resilience, after torrential rains and the arrival of Cyclone Yaku in March highlighted its vulnerability to extreme weather events.... Read More

Under the previous far-right presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), himself a former army captain, Brazil’s government publicly commemorated the 31 March anniversary of the coup which launched Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship.... Read More

As concerns with violence and public security issues continue to dominate public opinion in Chile, President Gabriel Boric has been obliged to adopt an ever-harder line against crime.... Read More

Amid an exodus of Russians fleeing their country since it invaded Ukraine last year, Argentina has emerged as a popular destination for pregnant mothers close to term.... Read More

Scrutiny on Mexico’s armed forces has been running high following renewed accusations that the defence ministry (Sedena) has been spying on citizens, particularly those investigating abuses by the military.... Read More

Segalmex, the Mexican government’s flagship food security body, is in the depths of a growing scandal.... Read More

In a bulletin released on 27 March, Mexico’s association of private security companies (AMESP), an industry association, announced that Mexico’s private security sector was the largest in Latin America.... Read More

Honduras’s defence ministry (Sedena) recently announced that in the first quarter of 2023 over 1.8m coca plants were seized in Honduras, spanning 147.8 hectares (ha), and seven drug processing laboratories had been destroyed.... Read More

At the end of March, the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte-IDH) held hearings on the case of a young woman known only as ‘Beatriz’, who was denied an abortion in 2013 by El Salvador despite her high-risk pregnancy.... Read More

The dubious exclusion from the 25 June general elections of Thelma Cabrera, an indigenous presidential candidate for the Movimiento para la Liberación de los Pueblos (MLP), who enjoyed the backing of leading indigenous group Comité de Desarrollo Campesino (Codeca), underlines the marginalisation of Guatemala’s indigenous sector which accounts for nearly 44% of the country’s population – the highest proportion in Central America.... Read More

In its April Fiscal Monitor, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suggested that general gross debt in emerging markets and middle-income economies in the Caribbean region would decrease by around 1.1% in 2023, however it warned that pressures could build up again by 2024.... Read More

*** PLEDGES ON CRIME.... Read More