Weekly InSight
This week, El Salvador news outlet El Faro published photos of President Nayib Bukele’s top prisons official allegedly ushering masked gang members and government representatives into a maximum-security facility for secret talks. InSight Crime looks at how evidence of government-directed negotiations with the country’s three largest street gangs is likely to impact Bukele, who has staked his presidency on restoring security to El Salvador’s streets. We also provide an overview of high-octane marijuana products being produced and smuggled in five countries in the region. Other notable reports include a wave of revenge killings in Ecuador after a record cocaine seizure; Brazil’s deadly criminal gangs leaving a trail of bloodshed in Uruguay; and ten members of Mexico’s Yaqui Indigenous community missing in a northern border state known to be a hotspot for organized crime-related disappearances. 

Featured

Evidence of Gang Negotiations Belie El Salvador President’s Claims

A scrapped investigation by El Salvador’s former Attorney General has revealed a massive trove of evidence that the administration of President Nayib Bukele secretly negotiated with three of the country’s deadly street gangs.

The online news outlet El Faro obtained the unfinished investigation, then published pieces of it, which included transcriptions of intercepted phone calls, audio files, text messages, surveillance photographs, and other material that illustrated how administration officials conducted these secret negotiations with the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13), the Barrio 18 Revolucionarios (Revolutionaries) and the Barrio 18 Sureños.

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NewsAnalysis

Hashish, Wax, THC Oil: Latin America’s Marijuana Markets Diversify


A series of seizures and drug raids across Latin America have revealed how previously niche high-strength marijuana products are... 

Indigenous Latest to Suffer Plague of Disappearances in Sonora, Mexico


The ongoing search for members of Mexico’s Yaqui Indigenous community, missing for well over...
Homicides Pile Up in Ecuador in Revenge for Key Drug Seizure
Mexico Cartels Find Recruitment Target - Drug Rehab Centers
Chile Loggers Try New Rules to Crack Down on Illegal Timber
New Guerrilla Boss, Same as Old Guerrilla Boss in Colombia
Killings Pile Up in Uruguay Due to Brazil Gang War
Mass Deforestation in Paraguay Destroys National Parks

Criminal Actors
Profiles of some of the notable criminal personalities and groups that have marked this week.

Browse by country >

MS13

The Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, is perhaps the most notorious street gang in the Western Hemisphere. While it has its...

Barrio 18

The 18th Street Gang, also known as “Barrio 18,” is one of the largest youth gangs in the Western Hemisphere...

Media Mentions
AUGUST 19, 2021
VICE
"It's not surprising at all that this amount of drugs is being moved through Guayaquil, said James Bargent, an analyst who studies Ecuador for InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime and drug trafficking in Latin America. What's new and what's surprised me is that it's been seized."
 

Impact

Tracking Environmental Crime in the Amazon

 
Next week, InSight Crime launches an investigation – conducted with Brazilian think-tank the Igarapé Institute – on the sophisticated organized crime structures and armed groups that are intersecting in Colombia to find new opportunities in environmental crime, and driving deforestation and habitat loss in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions. The first chapter – set to be published Wednesday, September 1 – dissects the criminal economies propelling the country’s Amazon forests to be razed at a record rate. It also maps the networks involved in deforestation: from the locals clearing trees, to the armed groups that control critical territory, to the financiers and corrupt officials who facilitate the laundering of illegal timber or the use of denuded lands to raise cattle and sow large-scale agricultural projects. Additional chapters in the six-part series will be published every Wednesday over the next several weeks.

The investigation is part of a larger project by InSight Crime and Igarapé to build a comprehensive picture of environmental crimes – including illegal logging, mining, wildlife trafficking, coca cultivation and land grabbing – that propel the destruction of the Amazon. This project includes a dashboard that draws on data to flag threats to the Amazon in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The dashboard will be regularly updated, and new investigations from the joint project will appear over the next year. 

Our Trending Topics 
EL KOKI
US/MEXICO BORDER
EL SALVADOR
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InSight Crime · Medellin · Medellin 0000 · Colombia