GameChangers 2025: Top Criminal Newsmakers This Year
In a year that saw a dramatic reset to the fight against the drug trade and organized crime in the…
How Organized Crime Threatens the Amazon’s Uncontacted Tribes
Organized crime has become an existential threat to the uncontacted Indigenous peoples of the Amazon as illegal gold miners, drug…
Cocaine Corridor: Drugs Drive ELN’s Venezuela Expansion
The commander-in-chief of the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN), Eliécer Erlinto Chamorro, alias “Antonio García,” appeared…
Mirror of Control: How the ELN Dominates Both Arauca and Apure
“Every organism in the territory. Every cell there is. They want to control it absolutely.” That is how a human…
Guerrilla Governance: The ELN’s Social Control in Táchira
On July 25, 2025, bursts of gunfire disrupted the usual calm in La Fría, a town in the Venezuelan state…
The Future of the ELN
The future of the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) is now intimately connected to Venezuela. As…
Border Wars: The ELN and the Takeover of Catatumbo
On the morning of January 16, 2025, hundreds of Colombian rebels, some who invaded from Venezuela, launched an offensive to…
On the Radar: US Targets and Negotiates with Traffickers
This week, we analyze the US’s anti-drug strategy in South America, a Sinaloa Cartel boss’s guilty plea, and the pardoning…
How Industrial-Scale Crypto Laundering Sustains Mexico’s Synthetic Drug Trade
On a hazy afternoon in May 2021, Daniel Gonzalez, alias “Rafael Arocho,” sped through Pasadena in a white Lexus packed…
On the Radar: Rebel Leader Iván Mordisco Threatens Violence After Colombia Military Strikes
This week in On the Radar, we analyze the arrest in Spain of one of Ecuador’s most powerful criminal leaders,…