The governments of Panama and Peru signed two agreements to establish in Panamanian territory a subsidiary of state-owned Peruvian Services, Industriales de la Marina (SIMA), and promote bilateral maritime cooperation in the fight against organized crime. 

Brazil has sixteen of the 50 most violent cities in the world. 

The military has refused to answer dozens of letters from the Comissão Nacional da Verdade (the National Truth Commission) and federal prosecutors investigating crimes from the era of the dictatorship (1964-85). 

Thousands of Central Americans seeking asylum or refuge from their countries face threats from organized crime, said a representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR). 

A new app shows the locations of past massacres in Colombia. 

The consulting firm, FTI Consulting has published its 2014 Latin America Security Index, ranking Costa Rica as the safest country in Central America and one of the safest countries in Latin America. 

In The Tico Times of San José, Costa Rica, Corey Kane noted that while Latin America and the Caribbean have around 9% of the world’s population, the region accounts for more than 30% of global homicides. 

In the Buenos Aires Herald James Neilson argued that “nobody has a solution for the drug-trafficking problem.”  He noted Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman’s response to the U.S. State Department’s annual survey “of how things are going in the endless ‘war on drugs’,” which said that the drug trade is “making inroads in Argentina.  

The Buenos Aires Herald noted that in its annual Report on Human Rights the U.S. State Department has drawn attention to cases of “torture by provincial police, harsh prison conditions and gender violence,” as cause for concern in Argentina. 

In El Universal of Mexico City Karla Casillas and Valentina Pérez Botero spoke with Renato Sales Heredia, head of the National Anti-Kidnapping effort.  Sales said that the practice casts a “huge dark shadow” over Mexico.