Weekly InSight

This week, InSight Crime exposes corruption within the administration of Omar Prieto, the controversial former governor in the Venezuelan state of Zulia. Prieto rose from a petty gangster to the highest political post in the state, pushing the limits of permissiveness during President Nicolás Maduro’s crisis years, when much of the state itself became a criminal enterprise.

Elsewhere in Venezuela, we examine security forces’ invasion of the notorious Tocorón Prison, which is a homebase for Tren de Aragua, the country’s most powerful criminal gang.

Make sure to check in with us next week for a deep dive into what this means for the country’s criminal landscape, the prison gang system, and for Venezuela’s largest transnational crime group.

We also report from the field on Mexico’s rapidly shifting fentanyl landscape, ignited by the arrest of a high-ranking Chapitos leader in January. We examine what his recent extradition to the United States means for US-Mexico cooperation and analyze the ripple effect on groups dedicated to fentanyl production throughout the country.

Finally, we will soon launch a new website that will provide an improved user experience, in addition to highlighting our hybrid journalistic-academic nature and improving the presentation of our news analysis, investigations, and fieldwork.

Latest Investigation

The Gangster Governor of Zulia: The Rise and Fall of Venezuela’s Omar Prieto

The blood streamed down Eduardo Labrador’s face and splattered across his shirt. “Film me! Film me!” he shouted at the journalist who had come to check on him. As he addressed the camera, he was defiant, angry even. Today, he said, they had come out to defend democracy in Venezuela. And this was the result.

Read the full investigation here >  

Featured

An Extradition (and a Fentanyl Prohibition) as Mexico Tries a Counterdrug Reset

Mexico’s fast-tracked extradition of a top fentanyl trafficker to the United States and a months-long, underworld-enforced prohibition of fentanyl production suggest Mexico’s government and some of its most-targeted criminal actors may be trying to reset US-Mexico counternarcotics relations.

Read the article here >

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The event accompanies InSight Crime’s latest investigation, “Escobar’s Former Hitman Takes the Road to Total Peace in Medellín, Colombia.”

InSight Crime senior investigator, Victoria Dittmar, contributed to a forum hosted by the Wilson Center, exploring how the US and Mexico can cooperate to confront the fentanyl and opioid crisis.

Co-director Jeremy McDermott joined a virtual panel of experts to discuss the vulnerabilities of the Caribbean as a transshipment hub for cocaine en route to Europe. The event was held at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).

This Week's Criminal Profile: The Chapitos

The now-jailed former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo,” reportedly had many children, but only a select few of them, known collectively as the Chapitos, are at the center of an ongoing internal feud for control of the group’s operations against the last remaining member of the so-called “old guard,” Ismael Zambada García, alias “El Mayo.”

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