Guatemalan Gangs Are Now Crafting Remote-Detonated Bombs (click on above title link to be re-directed to source page) With Trans-National Gangs like MS-13 routinely traversing Americas porous Southern Border, these types of terrorist tactics will definitely rear their ugly head in the U.S. in due time. I highly urge all CO’s to keep tabs on…
Category: Central/South America
Cartel Corner #92: Columbia’s Elites and Organized Crime
Colombia Elites and Organized Crime (click link above to be re-directed to Host Site) InSight Crime has done an OUTSTANDING job on producing a 3 part series on understanding the current narco-business culture in Columbia which revolves around a connection between the Countries Elite Families and Personalities and the the Country’s most Notorious Drug Lords….
Modern Crime: Kidnapping Still A Booming Business in South America
Criminals in Brazil are reportedly asking one of the most powerful men in sport for $36.5 million in exchange for the safe return of his mother-in-law. Aparecida Schunck, 67, was kidnapped in Brazil on the night of July 22 in the city of Sao Paulo. She’s the mother of Formula 1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone’s wife…
Security News: Private Security Companies Flourish South of the Border
This article originally appeared at InSight Crime. The growing number of private security firms in Guatemala speaks to the state’s inability to provide protection for its citizens, but this booming industry is vulnerable to criminal co-option and could generate security concerns of its own. Guatemala now has over 200 private security firms and 150,000 security…
Cartel Corner History: The Man Who Tried To Run Forever
Twenty-four years ago today, Pablo Escobar walked out of prison, setting off a massive 18-month manhunt. In season two of Narcos, the hunt is on. Watch the new trailer, and don’t miss new episodes of Narcos, streaming on Netflix September 2. It was humiliating. He practically walked out of jail and disappeared into thin air….
Cartel Corner #90: Armed Vigilante Groups Wage Urban Warfare Against the Cartels in Mexico’s Second Largest City
Vigilante Urban Warfare in Guadalajara, Mexico Jesús Morones, the owner of a candy shop in El Salto, a rugged industrial area on the southeastern fringe of the Guadalajara metropolitan area, says he’s been robbed at gunpoint eight times. “Last time they beat me and locked me and my family in here for 10 minutes while…
Cartel Corner #89: Homemade Narco Tanks (Yeah I said TANKS)
As drug-trafficking-related violence in Mexico raged, the cartels came up with a radical solution for improving their capabilities in face-offs with other criminal groups and Mexican security services. Narco tanks are homemade armored vehicles, also known in Spanish as “monstruo” for their hulking size. They reached peak popularity in 2011 as the Mexican military seized…
Cold War Files: Codename – Chilbom
Shortly after 9:30 on the morning of September 21, 1976, a light blue Chevy Chevelle carrying three passengers moved along Washington, D.C.’s Embassy Row, merging into the flow of commuter traffic around Sheridan Circle. The man in the driver’s seat was Orlando Letelier, an economist and fellow at a left-leaning think tank, the Institute of…
Cartel Corner #88: Cartels Near Texas Border Armed with RPG’s
The Mexican Los Zetas cartel controls portions of the Texas-Mexico border and has proven to possess Russian rocket-propelled grenade launchers and the grenades (RPGs). This is significant in that the Mexican transnational group has shown a willingness to fire upon U.S. aircraft, such as they did on June 5, 2015 in the Laredo Sector along…
Cartel Corner #87: The Lime Grower Vs. The Cartel
How A Lime Grower Led An Uprising Against One of Mexico’s Bloodiest Cartels IT WAS WINTER in the pocket of Mexico known as Tierra Caliente, the Hot Land. The sky was cloudless and the sun’s rays were casting flickering reflections off the convoy coming into focus: two behemoth SUVs, one black, one silver, passengers invisible…