Weekly InSight
This week, InSight Crime went deep into Venezuela’s Amazon to tell the story of how Colombian guerrillas are encroaching on Indigenous territories, preying on vulnerable youth, setting up drug trafficking routes and illegal mining operations, thus threatening the very survival of these communities.

Elsewhere, in Mexico, police are on strike as dozens of their peers are killed and the Jalisco Cartel faces dogged opposition in Michoacán, while Costa Rica’s president-elect faces an unenviable security panorama and TikTok provides revealing insights into untold facets of the criminal lifestyle.  

Featured

A Cultural Occupation: The Guerrillas and the Indigenous in Venezuela's Amazon

Colombian guerrilla groups have advanced into indigenous territory in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas not with violence, but by co-opting, corrupting, and conning its people. Their presence has torn communities apart, fueled an illegal gold rush that is savaging the natural environment, and now it threatens the survival of ancient cultures that have for generations acted as custodians of one of the world’s most precious eco-systems: the Amazon rainforest.

It was 2019 when the Colombian guerrillas first arrived to the Cataniapo river basin, known as Ähuiyäru De’iyu Ręję to the region’s Indigenous Huottoja people. The Huottoja had been expecting them, having watched nervously as the guerrillas spread through Indigenous lands across the Venezuelan state of Amazonas.

Read the analysis >

NewsAnalysis

Police Killings Spike Amid Soaring Violence in Zacatecas, Mexico


Sixteen police officers have been killed in Zacatecas in the first quarter of 2022, another grim reminder of the soaring violence in Mexico's... 

David vs. Goliath - The Family Clan Defying CJNG in Michoacán, Mexico


The deaths of 20 people at a clandestine fight in Mexico’s state of Michoacán has revealed how...
4 Security Challenges in Store for Costa Rica's Next President
How TikTok Shows Untold Truths of Communities Linked to Drug Trafficking
Panama Struggles to Fight Timber Trafficking in Forests and Ports
Costa Rican Copper Bust Underscores Regional Uptick in Theft and Smuggling

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...

The Chapitos 

The now-jailed former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo,” reportedly had many children...

Media Mentions

APRIL 2, 2022
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"It seems a lot of theatre. In Latin America it tends to be much more primitive. It’s done anywhere and with whatever the tools are at hand. We’ve never come across anything as theatrical as this, and I have never come across the need for a torture infrastructure."

Co-director Jeremy McDermott on the “torture chamber” found in the Netherlands.

Impact

Widespread Coverage of InSight Crime MS13 Investigation

 
In a joint investigation with La Prensa Gráfica, InSight Crime recently revealed that four of the MS13’s foremost leaders had been quietly released from prison in El Salvador, all while facing extradition requests from the United States. 

Amid growing accusations of human rights abuses and the arrests of 6,000 gang members, InSight Crime’s coverage had significant reverberations throughout El Salvador and Central America. Over a dozen national media outlets used InSight Crime’s investigation to discuss the changing relations between President Nayib Bukele’s administration and the gangs.

This continued InSight Crime’s investigations on the MS13 this year, after our four-part series, MS13 & Co., charting the gang’s takeover of licit and illicit business sectors in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. Further stories on the MS13’s control of sex trafficking between Central America and the United States will be published soon. 

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InSight Crime · Medellin · Medellin 0000 · Colombia