Latin American Security & Strategic Review

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”.

Strained relations between Honduras and Washington further deteriorated at the end of August, when President Xiomara Castro ordered the cancellation of a longstanding extradition treaty with the US.

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro seems to have secured himself a further six years in power following the disputed 28 July presidential election, but he has done so at the expense of all democratic legitimacy.

On 4 July Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum announced that Omar García Harfuch would head up the public security ministry (SSPC) when she takes office on 1 October.

With crime often perceived by the public as a top concern in Brazil, legislators who back hardline security measures have made significant advances in congress.

José Raúl Mulino, who served as Panama’s interior and security minister under right-wing former president Ricardo Martinelli (Cambio Democrático, CD, 2009-2014), won the 5 May presidential elections for Martinelli’s new outfit Realizando Metas (RM).

The militarisation of Ecuadorean security policy which was ordered on an emergency basis in January is now set to be made permanent.

The official campaigning period for Mexico’s 2 June presidential elections began on 1 March.

The deputy director of Brazil’s national intelligence agency (Abin), Alessandro Moretti, was dismissed on 30 January for allegedly having maintained contact with the agency’s former director Alexandre Ramagem (2019-2022), whose properties were raided five days earlier.

Against all odds, anti-corruption reformer Bernardo Arévalo, who won a resounding victory in Guatemala’s 20 August election on the pledge to tackle the ‘pacto de corruptos’ network of institutional corruption [SSR-23-08], was finally sworn in as president last month.

There were initial fears that an historic dispute between Venezuela and Guyana could escalate into military conflict following a 3 December Venezuelan referendum in which voters expressed support for the annexation of the oil-rich Essequibo region, which is claimed by Venezuela but lies within Guyana’s internationally recognised borders.