In mid-August 2020, Colombia was rocked by a series of massacres in the departments of Nariño and Valle del Cauca. They point to ongoing problems in the years since the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the FARC, and the heavy burden created by over seventy years of guerrilla warfare. The situation is complicated

On August 13, 2020, after three postponements and months of recurring violent protests, with cities blockaded by labor unions, the Bolivian political class and security forces finally prevailed on acting President Jeanine Áñez to agree on a firm date for the new presidential election, October 18, 2020. Supporters of exiled former President Evo Morales had

In early August 2020, the Mexican government’s struggles with and infiltration by drug cartels and violent criminal organizations were highlighted by a series of dramatic events. On August 2, 2020, José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, aka “El Marro” (“the Sledgehammer”) was captured in Guanajuato. Also, new evidence emerged about narco influence during the administration of former

On August 4, 2020, Colombia’s Corte Suprema de Justicia (CJS) ordered house arrest for current Senator and former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez. The former two-term head of state was arrested for alleged procedural fraud and bribery of witnesses. He is the first former president of Colombia to ever be arrested. The Court’s statement justifying the

In early July 2020, almost six years after 43 normal school students from Ayotzinapa (known as normalistas) disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, the federal government of Mexico announced that the remains of one of them had been identified. This finding points to the collapse of the original, official account offered by the administration of former President

The Secretario de Seguridad Ciudadana of Mexico City, Omar García Harfuch, was wounded on June 26, 2020, when a group of heavily armed men attacked him and his bodyguards as he left his elite neighborhood in his armored Suburban. García Harfuch quickly blamed one of Mexico’s most powerful drug gangs, the Jalisco Nueva Generación. Commentators

A federal judge, Uriel Villegas Ortiz, and his wife, Verónica Barajas, were murdered in their Colima city home on Tuesday, June 16, 2020, in front of their two daughters, aged 3 and 7, and a domestic employee. The judge handled drug trafficking and other organized crime cases, and before moving to Colima from Jalisco in

On Sunday June 7, 2020, thousands of Brazilians came out to protest against the policies of President Jair Bolsonaro. They took to the streets in various cities to demonstrate against the right-wing president and his management of the coronavirus crisis. They outnumbered pro-government demonstrators. As his poll numbers cratered and he lashed out at protesters

On May 31, 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro egged on supporters who protested against Congress and the Supreme Court, and brawled in the street with anti-government activists in many cities. Concerns about institutional breakdown increased as Brazil achieved the dubious record of having the world’s second-highest number of coronavirus cases after the United States. Bolsonaro

Jeanine Áñez, who assumed the position of “transitional” Interim President of Bolivia in November 2019 after the resignation by (or coup against) Evo Morales, suspended the election scheduled for May 3, 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, without a specific replacement date. In late May 2020, she found herself in an escalating crisis because of