Venezuela 2019 - A Cautionary Tale
Venezuela is basically what it always has been—only worse under Nicolas Maduro. As a consequence, Venezuela has moved into a downward spiral from an aspiring New Socialist state to failing state status.
El Centro
Third Generation Gangs Strategic Note No. 14: MS-13 Subway Shooting Kills 18th Street Rival
This incident highlights the traditional rivalry between the two LA-born gangs and demonstrates that this rivalry and violent competition continues among their NYC affiliates. Gang graffiti related to both gangs has been reported in neighborhoods near the subway shooting incident. Such graffiti has been targeted by the local NYPD precincts (110th PCT and 115th PCT) in neighborhood graffiti removal project.
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What El Chapo’s Trial Revealed: The Inner Workings of a $14 Billion Drug Empire
What El Chapo’s Trial Revealed: The Inner Workings of a $14 Billion Drug Empire by Nicole Hong – Wall Street Journal
The trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, and his conviction Tuesday on drug-smuggling charges, brought to an end the decadeslong career of the notorious “El Chapo.” It also revealed in remarkable detail the inner workings of the criminal empire he built, one that rivaled governments and multinational companies in its power and sophistication.
After a three-month trial, the 61-year-old, who escaped twice from maximum-security prisons, was found guilty on 10 criminal counts by a federal jury in Brooklyn, N.Y. He is expected to spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison.
Trial testimony laid bare the secrets of the Sinaloa cartel’s organizational structure, including how cocaine and marijuana rumbled across the U.S. border in the walls of freight trains, how in-house tech experts built encrypted communications networks and how the cartel moved money around using debit cards, suitcases of cash and private planes. It even built its own rail spurs to unload shipments…
SWJ Book Review: "Mexico’s Illicit Drug Networks and the State Reaction"
What makes illicit networks resilient and why do states choose to attack some more aggressively over others? These are the questions the author—Nathan P. Jones—investigates and attempts to answer in "Mexico’s Illicit Drug Networks and the State Reaction". Dr. Jones is a non-resident scholar in drug policy and Mexico studies at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Texas and an Assistant Professor in Security Studies, Sam Houston State University.
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Guerrilla-Trained ‘Colectivo’ Threatens Humanitarian Aid to Venezuela
Guerrilla-Trained ‘Colectivo’ Threatens Humanitarian Aid to Venezuela - Venezuela Investigative Unit - Insight Crime
A new pro-government Venezuelan militia or “colectivo” allegedly trained by Colombian rebels may have posted itself alongside security forces on the Venezuela-Colombia border.
The colectivo’s appearance came at the same time as an announcement that humanitarian aid would be arriving to the region after requests by the country’s political opposition and self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaidó. Venezuela currently faces devastating shortages of both medicine and food.
Since February 3, Freddy Bernal — whom President Nicolás Maduro appointed as the “protector” of the border state of Táchira in 2017 — has led the deployment of Venezuelan security forces in the country’s border towns. The forces are made up of both the police and the military, namely the Special Action Forces (Fuerzas de Acciones Especiales – FAES) of the national police and the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana — FANB).
The decision to shore up government forces along the Venezuela-Colombia border came amid Guaidó’s announcement that the opposition was stocking warehouses with food stuffs and other aid at a collection site in the Colombian city of Cúcuta.
In videos posted on his Twitter account, Bernal echoed instructions handed down to him from Maduro himself.
“To guarantee Peace we are implementing a perfect plan with our men and women from #Táchira, trusting in the #FANB and in our Patriotic Love,” he wrote in a message accompanying one of the videos he tweeted.
Venezuelan soldiers have already started to block the aid deliveries…
The Violence in Colombia Has Not Stopped
The Violence in Colombia Has Not Stopped by Alexander Fattal - The Conversation / RealClearWorld
A deadly car bomb at a Bogotá police academy claimed by Colombia’s National Liberation Army, or ELN, is the latest sign that Colombia’s civil war is not over. President Ivan Duque called the January attack, which killed 21 military personnel and wounded 68, a “crazy terrorist act.”
The leftist ELN became Colombia’s largest guerrilla group after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, disbanded following a peace agreement with the government in September 2016.
As I write in my new book on the counter-insurgency efforts leading up to the peace deal, there were already clear signs that neutralizing the FARC would not end Colombia’s 52-year armed conflict.
What Colombians call “el conflicto” – the conflict – was never a simple two-way fight of everyone versus the FARC. It was, and remains, a set of overlapping and interrelated conflicts involving the government, Marxist rebels, right-wing militias and drug cartels, staggered across the decades from 1964 to today…
CFR Backgrounder: Mexico’s Drug War
CFR Backgrounder: Mexico’s Drug War by Brianna Lee, Danielle Renwick, and Rocio Cara Labrador - Council on Foreign Relations
Mexican authorities have been waging a war against drug trafficking organizations for more than a decade, but with limited success. Thousands of Mexicans, including politicians, students, and journalists, continue to die in the conflict every year. In 2018, homicides hit a new high at more than twenty-eight thousand; many were linked to drug cartels.
Successive U.S. administrations have partnered closely with Mexico in this fight, providing billions of dollars for Mexico to modernize its security forces, reform its judicial system, and make other investments. Washington has also sought to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the United States by bolstering security on its southern border, although a debate has flared over the utility of expanding the physical barrier there…
Third Generation Gangs Strategic Note No. 13: Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) Command and Control (C2) Geographic Variations
What the four operational level perspectives in Southern California (emanating from Los Angeles), El Salvador, Massachusetts/Long Island, and Zetas plazas (within certain regions of Mexico) have shown is that, within each specific geographic area, the MS-13 cliques adapt their configuration to optimize operations vis-à-vis their host environments.
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Third Generation Gangs Strategic Note No. 12: Brazilian Prison Gangs Attack Civil Infrastructure in Fortaleza and Other Cities in Ceará State
Since 2 January, 205 criminal attacks have occurred in 46 cities in Ceará and about 360 individuals have been arrested. Ceara’s security forces have been reinforced with the assistance of the Polícia Rodoviária Federal (PRF or Federal Highway Police). The attacks have included bombings and arson directed against vehicles (including buses and school transportation), police stations, public buildings, bridges, businesses, and banks.
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Tamaulipas: Between the State, Crime and the Border
All criminal organizations in the world share similarities, but, at the same time exhibit particularities related to the places, times and cultures that gives rise to and surround them. Consequentially, organized crime in Mexico has a sui generis composition—the result of historical factors that have allowed the formation of criminal structures linked to high levels of violence, a cultural acceptance of criminal life and links with high political figures, causing the collapse of governability in certain territories, some of them near the northern border.