Crime Archive

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Sept. 15, 2009, as part of the WPR feature “Illicit Flows and Transnational Threats.” It is made available here for free, as part of a promotion that ends Jan. 5. To experience more of WPR’s subscription service, sign up for a 30-day free trial. In January 2009, retired Gen. Mauro Tello Quiñones took command of a police unit charged with combating drug-related violence in the popular Mexican tourist destination of Cancún. The assignment lasted just one week. In early February, Tello and two aides were kidnapped and killed. Before murdering Tello, the […]

Get a .pdf version of this report. During the last five decades, Colombia’s foreign, defense and strategic priorities have been driven and determined by the country’s internal armed conflict, with the “War on Drugs” becoming the dominant paradigm from the 1980s onwards. This, in turn, has defined Colombia’s relations with Latin America — particularly, in recent years, with its Andean neighbors, Ecuador and Venezuela — as well as its relationship with the United States and Europe. Colombia’s struggle to stem cocaine production, its fight against the drug cartels that sprung up around the drug trade, and its war against the […]

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has talked tough since grisly details emerged last week of a massacre in the Muslim-majority province of Maguindanao, vowing that “no effort will be spared to bring justice to the victims and hold the perpetrators accountable to the full limit of the law.” Arroyo later declared martial law in the province, and on Monday, Nov. 30, her press secretary assured journalists that the government is doing everything to bring the guilty parties to justice at the earliest possible time. “Even as we speak now, soldiers and policemen are conducting house-to-house searches,” said Cerge Remonde in […]