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On the night of May 28, 2017, an El Salvador Navy vessel was on routine patrol when its crew tracked down a fishing boat just over 200 nautical miles south of Acajutla, a seaport city on the country’s Pacific coast. The fishing boat tried to flee the patrol and began off-loading cargo into the ocean. After a short chase, the Navy caught the ship and boarded the vessel. In all, they found 840 kilograms of cocaine on the ship and in the water.

Worth $21 million in the retail drug market, according to estimates made by Salvadoran authorities, the operation made headlines in El Salvador as the Navy’s biggest cocaine seizure. The news then spread to neighboring Guatemala, where local press noted that among those arrested by El Salvador authorities was the brother of Carlos Roberto Marroquín Fuentes, the mayor of Moyuta, a municipality in the southeastern Jutiapa province, just over an hour’s drive from Acajutla.

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On Tuesday, February 16, InSight Crime will hold its next seminar on cross-border criminal dynamics in Central America’s Northern Triangle and the Southern Cone’s Tri-Border Area. This time we focus on Honduras, mapping criminal actors and illicit economies through our interactive dashboard to show how cocaine trafficking has evolved in the country’s border departments with El Salvador and Guatemala. InSight Crime will also present its new investigation into how organized crime has infiltrated the highest levels of Honduras’s ruling National Party. The discussion kicks off at 3 p.m. Honduras Time. And if you missed this week’s discussion on Guatemala, you can view a recording in English or Spanish.

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