Security & Strategic Review - November 2024

Ahead of the first round of Brazil’s municipal elections on 6 October, the president of the superior electoral court (TSE), Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, warned that criminal organisations were trying to “shape our laws”.... Read More

The Colombian military recaptured the small town of El Plateado on 12 October, ending a six-year period in which the town, in Argelia municipality, Cauca department, was not under the control of the state.... Read More

Peruvian transport workers ground the capital Lima to a halt for several days in September and October as they went on strike to demand urgent action against extortion by criminal gangs.... Read More

Ecuador’s national assembly voted on 1 October to approve new regulations that will govern the use and ownership of firearms.... Read More

General Ricardo Yáñez stepped down as director general of the Carabineros militarised police force on 27 September due to allegations of human rights abuses committed during the social unrest in 2019-2020 known as the ‘Estallido Social’.... Read More

Paraguay’s congress has approved a controversial bill which some local media outlets have dubbed the ‘ley anti-ONG’ (‘anti-NGO law’).... Read More

In one of his final acts as president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) promulgated into law a controversial constitutional reform initiative to place the national guard (GN) under military command.... Read More

The security cabinet of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government travelled to Sinaloa state on 8 October to coordinate operations with state officials.... Read More

Claudia Sheinbaum made history on 1 October, becoming the first woman to be sworn in as president of Mexico.... Read More

On 17 October President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the creation of a ministry of anti-corruption and good governance, which will be headed up by Raquel Buenrostro, the federal comptroller.... Read More

The recent election of Guatemala’s 13-member supreme court (CSJ) and 156 appellate court judges for five-year terms has failed to provide much optimism regarding the prospects for President Bernardo Arévalo, an anti-corruption reformer, in terms of delivering on his election-winning pledge to dismantle the so-called ‘pacto de corruptos’ network of institutional corruption.... Read More

Guatemala is not the only country to have recently picked new supreme court (CSJ) justices.... Read More

The murder in September of Juan López, a prominent environmentalist, has reignited familiar concerns regarding the plight of human rights defenders (HRDs) in Honduras.... Read More

On 4 October Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, confirmed that Spain had offered nationality to 135 Nicaraguan political prisoners taken from a prison in Managua the previous month and flown to Guatemala where they were welcomed by Guatemala’s President Bernardo Arévalo and Eric Jacobstein (a top US State Department Western Hemisphere Affairs diplomat).... Read More

At a joint press conference with Haiti’s Prime Minister Garry Conille in Nairobi on 11 October, Kenya’s President William Ruto said of the multinational security support (MSS) mission to Haiti, of which Kenyan police are the main component: “Already this mission is showing positive results, restoring hope and providing a glimpse of stability that lies ahead.” Few in Haiti would agree with this optimistic spin, not least as it came only a week after a gang-perpetrated massacre of up to 115 people in the town of Pont-Sondé following which the performance of the Haitian police and the MSS was severely criticised.... Read More

The 2nd European Union (EU)-Caribbean Global Gateway Conference on Sargassum was held from 1-2 October in St George’s, the capital of Grenada.... Read More