Drug War

  • A first-of-its-kind study from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) says that high crime rates in Latin America and the Caribbean have taken a “significant” socioeconomic toll on the region and “constitute a severe threat to economic development.” Additionally, the organization notes that the costs of crime “tend to be concentrated on the most vulnerable population…

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  • Giuliani in Rio

    During his time as New York City major, Rudy Giuliani was known above all as a fierce partisan of “law and order.” Since he left office in 2001, he has leveraged that reputation into a lucrative private-sector consulting career and now heads Giuliani Partners…But many question the extension of Giuliani’s “zero-tolerance” approach to public safety in Latin America.…

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  • Adding to mounting public criticism of the “war on drugs,” a scathing new report from a coalition of human rights groups alleges that countries in the Americas have carried out the fight against the drug trade “in contradiction to their human rights obligations.” Read this piece in its entirety at LobeLog.

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  • Looking at the timeline of arrests, extraditions and deals in recent months, it looks like the United States was moving to make the case against El Chapo completely airtight, allowing Mexico to detain him until U.S. officials were completely ready to make the official extradition request… This piece was co-authored with Sarah Kinosian. Read it in…

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  • One of the world’s most powerful and notorious drug lords, Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, better known as “El Chapo” (“Shorty”), has escaped from a Mexican prison. Again. El Chapo was first arrested in 1993 on drug trafficking and murder charges in Chiapas, Mexico. He was sentenced to 20 years at a maximum security facility in…

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