#santiago-uribe

#santiago-uribe

The new Spanish language series Dear Killer Nannies manages to find a new and unexpected way into the life of an archetypal villain, focusing very little on the bloodshed that has made his life so ripe for movies and television.

Official data reveals a significant discrepancy: while intelligence reports identified 58,270 gang members and collaborators at large, authorities have arrested 91,628 people, meaning over 33,000 were not previously listed as gang members.

Cepeda emphasizes that he is not competing against other candidates like Abelardo de La Espriella or Paloma Valencia, but rather against former president Alvaro Uribe Velez.

For critics, the crest was another expression of Kast's professed affinity for the former hardline leader. But as Kast is sworn into office on Wednesday, analysts question whether his embrace of Pinochet is nostalgia for Latin America's past dictatorships or whether it is simply a sign of frustration with the status quo.

According to the annual ranking by the Mexican organization Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, which compiles a list of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world, six Ecuadorian cities will appear among the top 10 in 2025. Babahoyo appears on the list for the first time as the second most violent, with 166 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

These semi-submersible boats have been used for years by drug gangs to smuggle cocaine from South and Central America. In more recent months as the price of cocaine has plummeted, gangs have changed tactics: instead of letting the boats sink on delivery, they have started to reuse the vessels, setting up a refuelling platform at sea and sending the boats back so they can make as many journeys as possible.

The 1980s bring revolutionary wars, CIA-backed conflict and the violent birth of a new democratic era. Episode 2: Wars begins with Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution, which promised egalitarian transformation through literacy crusades. But civil war erupted as United States President Ronald Reagan's administration covertly backed the Contra rebels, plunging the nation into turmoil and suffering. Panama transitioned from Omar Torrijos's diplomatic triumphs over the Panama Canal to Manuel Noriega's sinister collaboration with both the CIA and drug cartels.

A meeting between two drug traffickers in the Amazon jungle region of Putumayo has become a new lever of pressure for Donald Trump on the governments of Colombia and Venezuela. A U.S. intelligence report reveals that Giovanny Andres Rojas aka Arana, the top leader of the Border Commandos and currently imprisoned in La Picota prison in Bogota, is making illegal deals with the Serbian kingpin Antun Mrdeza, who has been held in Venezuela since 2025.

Colombia's government has announced it will resume peace talks with the powerful Gulf Clan, also known as the Gaitanist Self-Defence Forces (ECG), after the criminal group expressed concern about a recent deal with the United States. Tuesday's announcement addresses a temporary suspension the Gulf Clan announced earlier this month, in the wake of a meeting between Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his US counterpart, Donald Trump.

At the Simon Bolivar International Bridge, which spans the Tachira River separating Colombia and Venezuela near the border city of Cucuta, vehicle and foot traffic flowed normally on Monday despite an increased military presence, which included three parked Colombian M1117 armoured security vehicles. But with United States President Donald Trump threatening more attacks if newly sworn-in interim leader Delcy Rodriguez does not behave, an uneasy calm has settled over the border region, and Colombia is preparing for the worst.

The two groups have been fighting for control of the Guaviare region of the Amazon, a region strategic for cocaine production and trafficking. At least 27 members of a leftist rebel group have been killed in clashes in central Colombia with a rival faction, according to military authorities, at a time of heightened tension in the region under the pall of United States military action in Venezuela and threats against Colombia.

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of cities across Colombia to decry Donald Trump's threats to expand his military campaign in South America into their territory, after last weekend's deadly attack on Venezuela. In Cucuta, a city on Colombia's eastern border with Venezuela, several hundred demonstrators marched towards its 19th century cathedral waving the country's yellow, blue and red flag and shouting: Fuera los yanquis! (Out with the Yanks!)

El Mezquital is neither a neighborhood nor a district. It started out as one, but now it's a motley patchwork of gray houses and corrugated metal roofs on the outskirts of Guatemala City. From here, the capital's buildings appear in the distance as tiny lights, as unattainable as green spaces, shopping malls, or health centers. Old yellow school buses burst noisily down the main street, belching smoke and carrying silent residents who travel with their cell phones hidden away.

Gustavo Petro's rise to power once again sparked hopes that the elusive goal of peace with the ELN, pursued by nearly every Colombian government this century, was finally attainable. The leftist president even signed an unprecedented six-month ceasefire with guerrilla commander Antonio Garcia in mid-2023, the first milestone in the now-weary policy of total peace.

Their attackers had tried to burn them to cover their tracks, but the double femicide left no doubt: it bore the mark of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization. In the wake of the crime, investigations and news reports about the Venezuelan gang followed. And arrests began. Although the Mexico City Security Secretariat tried to downplay its role, police operations proved that this criminal network, after spreading across the continent, was already operating in Mexico.

It accuses the captured Venezuelan leader of running a state-sponsored drug terror network for years. Maduro, it says, collaborated with the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which now operates throughout Latin America, as well as with the Colombian FARC guerrilla group and the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, to smuggle cocaine into the US and enrich himself personally. The indictment described Venezuela as being systematically developed into a hub for international cocaine trafficking, with state aircraft and even the presidential hangar being used to transport cocaine.