Security & Strategic Review - August 2023

The brother of Hipólito Mora, the former leader of Mexico’s ‘self-defence’ movement who was killed in Michoacán state on 29 June, has sworn that he and other citizens will once again take up arms if justice is not served to his brother’s killers.... Read More

Concerns over the integrity of Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election have in recent months been pushed into the background as the main opposition coalition Plataforma Unitaria Democrática (PUD) deliberated over the process of selecting a sole candidate to take on President Nicolás Maduro.... Read More

Peru’s health minister Rosa Gutiérrez resigned on 15 June as authorities struggled to contain the largest recorded outbreak of dengue fever in the country’s history.... Read More

Deforestation in Colombia reached its lowest level in nine years in 2022, according to new figures released by the environment ministry, with a particular fall in deforestation in some of the areas that have been worst affected by Colombia’s internal conflict.... Read More

The decades-old maritime border dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua moved closer to resolution on 13 July, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague dismissed a Nicaraguan appeal for the boundaries of the country’s continental shelf to be extended into Colombian waters.... Read More

Deforestation in the Amazon biome decreased by 33.6% in the first half of 2023 compared with the same period in 2022, according to data from Brazil’s national space research institute (Inpe) released on 6 July.... Read More

Amid the country’s most severe drought in the last four decades, Uruguay’s government led by President Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou declared a state of emergency in the capital Montevideo on 19 June.... Read More

Santiago Peña takes over as president of Paraguay on 15 August.... Read More

Speaking from the southern state of Chiapas on 23 June, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated it was a “calm, peaceful and very beautiful state” in which there was a strong social fabric and community life.... Read More

Temperatures soared across Mexico from 1 June, as the seasonal rains that typically usher in cooler weather in the middle of the month failed to arrive.... Read More

The shock performance of anti-graft candidate, Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala’s 25 June presidential elections has shone a new light on public anger with the so-called ‘pacto de corruptos’ - an allusion to entrenched corruption in Guatemala’s political institutions which has flourished under the conservative Vamos government led by President Alejandro Giammattei.... Read More

In early July Nicaragua’s 92-member unicameral legislature, which like all of the country’s institutions is controlled by President Daniel Ortega’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), approved changes to Nicaragua’s constitution and organic law regulating the police (PNN).... Read More

Marches took place across Central America in June to mark Pride Month for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community, including well-attended events in Costa Rica and El Salvador.... Read More

The Caribbean Community (Caricom) celebrated its 50th anniversary at a gathering of heads of government in Trinidad & Tobago from 3-5 July.... Read More