Weekly InSight
This week, InSight Crime goes inside the battle among Colombia’s guerrilla groups in Venezuela and along the border, where scores of people were shot dead in recent weeks, most apparently in cold blood. Also we reveal how the often-overlooked and landlocked nation of Paraguay has emerged as one of the top container smuggling hubs feeding the European cocaine pipeline.

Other notable reports from the region include a grisly campaign of cartel violence in the Mexican state of Zacatecas; a surge in maritime cocaine seizures off El Salvador’s coast; and the head of a Mexico search group for missing loved ones pleading with cartel leaders in Sonora to spare their lives.

Featured

Ex-FARC Mafia vs. ELN: a Fight Too Far at Colombia-Venezuela Border?

The dissident 10th Front of the ex-FARC Mafia has been busy. After taking on multiple enemies on Venezuelan soil, the group now appears to be taking on a far larger criminal obstacle: the ELN.

On January 7, Colombia's Attorney General's Office issued a warning that the fight between dissident forces of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC) and the the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN) was expanding. In a statement, authorities warned that ex-FARC forces were moving from their stronghold in Norte de Santander to attack the ELN in Arauca, a Colombian department on the border with Venezuela.

Read the analysis >

NewsAnalysis

Landlocked Paraguay Becoming Major Cocaine Link to Europe


The son of a former Paraguayan congressman has been accused of overseeing large cocaine shipments to Europe, illustrating how corrupt... 

The Three Criminal Fronts Sparking Violence in Sonora, Mexico


Murders have spiked in Mexico's northern state of Sonora, thanks to the volatile mix of a veteran drug trafficker's alleged return...
Do El Salvador Seizures Signal Pacific Cocaine Surge?
The Horrors of Zacatecas Could Happen Anywhere in Mexico
Sun, Samba and Smuggled Soybeans in Brazil
How Brazil's Port of Santos Became Cocaine's World Trade Center

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

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Ex-FARC Mafia

The ex-FARC Mafia are a series of criminal structures that emerged during the peace negotiations between the...

ELN

The National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN) is one of the two main guerrilla armies with...

Media Mentions
JANUARY 8, 2022
EL PAÍS
"Besides, as the think tank InSight Crime confirms, [the ELN] is a criminal organization that fights over all the principal criminal economies in Colombia as well as in Venezuela."

Impact

InSight Crime’s Readership Trends Up 

 
InSight Crime is happy to report that our readership climbed 20 percent in 2021, reaching more than 3.3 million unique visitors. Each day, at least 11,000 people view our website, who spend longer and longer on the site exploring content that includes not only our daily coverage and in-depth investigations on the latest in organized crime, but country-specific digests and wide-ranging profiles of the region’s criminal actors and armed groups. InSight Crime has also shown healthy growth on social media, adding more than 12,000 new followers over the past year across various platforms. On Twitter, we added a popular feature called #CriminalThreads, which highlights quick-hit facts and past coverage on trending news. Videos accompanying some of our biggest stories of the year also were widely shared. 

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ELN
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InSight Crime · Medellin · Medellin 0000 · Colombia