Security & Strategic Review - December 2024

The election of Donald Trump to another term as US president will have a major impact on the US-Mexico security relationship.... Read More

A Peruvian court has ordered the dissolution of the Movimiento por la Amnistía y Derechos Fundamentales (Movadef), the political wing of the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (SL).... Read More

The death of two political prisoners in Venezuela in October and November triggered renewed outcry over the mass arrests of activists and demonstrators following the disputed 28 July presidential election, which is widely regarded as having been lost by President Nicolás Maduro.... Read More

With the clock ticking towards the 9 February first round of Ecuador’s presidential elections, President Daniel Noboa’s government is emphasising what it believes to be its biggest success – a significant reduction in homicides, which according to Interior Minister Mónica Palencia have fallen by 17.6% this year.... Read More

It has now been two years since peace talks were formally launched in November 2022 between President Gustavo Petro’s government and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerrilla group.... Read More

During the leaders’ summit of the Brics group of developing economies, Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira was questioned by journalists about the concerns that the group might be becoming an ‘anti-Western’ bloc.... Read More

The killers who murdered Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco in 2018, one of the most notorious political assassinations in Brazil in recent years, have been convicted.... Read More

Last month President Javier Milei fired his foreign minister, Diana Mondino, replacing her with Argentina’s ambassador to the US, Gerardo Werthein.... Read More

The Chilean branch of international environmental NGO Greenpeace has accused salmon-farming companies of being responsible for the deaths of two humpback whales in October.... Read More

Mexico’s municipal mayors are coming under attack.... Read More

Mexico’s government led by President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced a new plan to tackle childhood obesity.... Read More

In late October El Salvador’s 60-member unicameral legislature, which is controlled by President Nayib Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas (NI), approved the creation of a nuclear energy law, which would seek to regulate all activities related to nuclear energy.... Read More

Guatemala’s interior minister, Francisco Jiménez, has hailed the recent transfer of 131 prisoners to the newly renovated maximum-security prison nicknamed ‘El Infiernito’, in Escuintla department, as “one of the most far-reaching actions in the history of the prison system”.... Read More

In mid-October Gonzalo Carrió, a member of Nicaraguan human rights NGO Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca Más (CDHNN+), warned of a new phase of illegal property seizures by the government led by authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.... Read More

At the end of October Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino energetically rejected the Netherlands’ continued inclusion of Panama on its blacklist of tax havens.... Read More

At least six Caribbean countries are going to the polls in 2025, including newly oil rich Guyana; soon to be oil rich (it is hoped) Suriname; and the former and now fading leading Caribbean energy producer Trinidad & Tobago.... Read More