Police drone 'catches' drug peddlers in Bogotá

Police arrested five suspected drug dealers after a drone caught them in the act of dealing on a street in southern Bogotá, the broadcaster Radio Santa Fe reported on 6 February. The drone, used as part of a wider operation in the area, led to policemen rushing to the spot, where they confiscated cash, 109 doses of marijuana and 149 doses of cocaine base or paste, all equivalent to 400 doses of drugs to be sold on the street. Earlier, neighbors or informants called police to report a jewelry heist in the district of Restrepo, leading to the arrest of five suspects who tried to escape running over adjacent roofs, Radio Santa Fe reported on 5 February.

Woman held in Bogotá trying to smuggle drugs into police station

A 61-year-old woman was arrested in Usme south of Bogotá, after she tried to smuggle marijuana hidden in eggs into the local police station, Bogotá's Radio Santa Fe reported on 31 January. The woman was visiting an inmate being held at the station, but guards inspecting food she had brought him noticed some of the eggs with her were not intact. Bogotá police colonel Norberto Caro said they were found to have "a substance with characteristics similar to marijuana." The woman was detained for questioning.

Colombian, U.S. presidents hold "surprisingly friendly" meeting

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro, a former Marxist, met with the Republican U.S. President Donald J. Trump in the White House on 3 February, in a cordial meeting that seemed to dissipate months of mutual animosity. CNN listed a history of spats and incidents in the first year of the second Trump presidency, including Trump calling Petro sick, a thug and a "bad guy," having his U.S. visa revoked and threatening to move against Colombia as the United States did with Venezuela in January. Colombia was for decades a key strategic ally of the United States, until Petro and Trump coincided as leaders. Trump has repeatedly accused Colombia - and Mexico - of making paltry efforts to fight drug trafficking into the United States. Drugs were one issue discussed at the private meeting, attended by senior officials of both countries, with Petro observing that key drug kingpins were not in Colombia but abroad, in places like Madrid or Dubai where they should be sought. Petro presented some highlights of what his country had done in this field between 2022 and 2026, Colombia's Blu Radio reported on 4 February. This included confiscating over 3,100 tonnes of cocaine in various forms to deprive the cartels of U.S. $92 billion's worth of revenues, destroying over 18,500 drug laboratories and numerous police and military operations against criminal targets. The cost to law enforcement included 360 Colombian agents being injured or killed in those years. Trump now said Petro was terrific.

Venezuelan hardliners seek tighter control at home amid U.S. threats..

The Miami Herald reported on 5 January on the Venezuelan interior minister's public defiance toward the United States following its recent capture of the country's former leader, Nicolás Maduro. Diosdado Cabello Rondón, himself a wanted figure in the United States for suspected involvement in large-scale drug trafficking, was cited as urging regime elements to patrol the streets and vowing revenge on those who aided the U.S. raid on 3 January. These faced possible arrest, CNN reported. "I'm in the street... let's go onto the streets, whatever we can (do)," Miami's El Nuevo Herald cited Cabello as saying in unspecified voice messages. He said of U.S. forces, "these rats attacked and will regret it the rest of their lives." It wasn't clear in that case if he would obstruct the acting president's bid to work with the Trump administration, which had threatened further punitive raids. Media reported on 6 January that the administration expected the interim presidency of Delcy Rodriguez to expel agents of Cuba and the Islamic Republic of Iran, stop selling oil to powers hostile to the United States and boost efforts to fight drug trafficking. Her government's relationship with U.S. officials picked to help run the country for at least a month, remained unclear.

Colombian president attends coca substitution event, deplores violence

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro Urrego declared on 19 December that 26,000 hectares (260 square kilometres) were "already" in a substitution process to replace coca plants with ordinary crops. Thousands of families had registered with the government's plans to peacefully mobilize communities to replace coca, used in drug production, with honest farming, the public broadcaster RTVC reported him as saying in the district of Roberto Payán. The Trump administration has accused Petro's government of doing little to curb if not conniving with, large-scale drug trafficking toward the United States. Petro said every time a peasant replaced a coca plant with a crop or a tree was a "historic moment" but that substitution must be done alongside local communities, "not against them." He also deplored a recent spike in deadly guerrilla violence. Members of the National Liberation Army (ELN) killed seven soldiers and injured dozens in a surprise attack on a base in Aguachica in northern Colombia on 18 December. On 17 December, other guerrillas termed FARC dissidents subjected the southwestern town of Buenos Aires to shelling for seven hours before being repelled. Petro said the army would immediately buy anti-drone systems as guerrillas were now using drones.

Trump pardons jailed former Honduran leader

U.S. President Donald J. Trump issued a "full and complete pardon" on 1 December for the jailed former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving time in the United States following a drug trafficking conviction. Hernández, a "tough on crime" conservative who was president from 2014 to 2022, was extradited that year by the Democratic Biden administration and convicted in 2024 of conniving in large-scale drug trafficking toward the United States. Trump wrote online on 28 November that he had been treated "very harshly and unfairly." Observers including media outlets and some U.S. lawmakers immediately derided the pardon as contradicting Trump's current war on drugs and specifically, pressures being exerted on Venezuela's socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, precisely for aiding drug trafficking into the United States. Colombia's President Gustavo Petro wrote on X (Twitter) that it was "demoralizing" to all those risking their lives to fight trafficking to see a "drug trafficker pardoned." Another critic was the Liberal Party presidential candidate in Honduras, Salvador Nasralla, who was awaiting a recount of votes cast in the general election of 30 November. He said Hernández could expect to be tried in Honduras should he return. Hernández and his wife thanked Trump for the pardon but were not planning an immediate return home due to security concerns, according to the Agence France-Presse.

Mexican drug cartel accuses militia of conniving with crime

The drug cartel Caballeros Templarios, which is active in western Mexico, accused a recently-founded anti-crime militia of collaborating with rival gangs in the western state of Guerrero and advised authorities to stay out of its imminent bid to destroy these groups, the review Proceso reported on 23 June. Self-defence groups have emerged in several parts of Mexico in response to violent crime and official corruption, and more so in smaller and rural districts where residents have accused local police and authorities of cowering before the powerful cartels. In this case the Templarios hung sheets in the districts of Atoyac de Álvarez and Coyuca de Benítez accusing the group led by activist Leopoldo Soberanis Hernández of being a front for the gang dubbed Los Granados and the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel. The gang was described as an offshoot of the dismantled Beltrán Leyva cartel. These, the sheets read, were kidnapping "teachers, tourists, the elderly and making social activists and environmentalists disappear," which the Templars said they would not permit. The cartel told the Mexican state not to "meddle" as it proceeded to eliminate "these stains." According to Proceso the civilian militia's formation was announced during a protest on 20 June by residents of four districts of the Costa Grande sector of Guerrero. "More than 1,000" residents of Coyuca de Benítez, Atoyac de Álvarez, Benito Juárez and Tecpan de Galeana announced they would form the Citizens' Self-Defence Group (Grupo de Autodefensa Ciudadana) as they blocked the motorway linking Guerrero to the neighbouring state of Michoacán. Proceso cited the activist Leopoldo Soberanis as telling a telephone interview that the militia was the fruit of locals' disgust with state "indolence" toward violent crime and to alleged ties between local authorities and troops based in the district of Petatlán with the Caballeros Templarios. He said he wanted his group recognised by the state government and would seek to expand its activities to three more districts in Guerrero including Petatlán. The review observed that the militia's first protest coincided with an incipient tour by the Guerrero governor to promote the state as a tourist destination; Guerrero includes the resort of Acapulco.

Armed residents warn will shoot criminals in Tabasco

The self-styled United People Against Crime (Pueblo Unido Contra la Delincuencia), one of several "self-defence" militias people have formed around Mexico to confront crime, reportedly claimed responsibility for shooting dead five suspected drug dealers on 21 March, and vowed to continue to "cleanse" districts in the east-coast state of Tabasco of street dealers, kidnappers and rapists. The group issued written warnings to the "poisoners of society" on large sheets hung in public - a practice favoured by drug cartels - in the districts of Villahermosa and Cárdenas, specifying it would continue to execute suspects if drug dealing continued on the streets and police allegedly continued to back the Zetas, one of Mexico's most violent cartels, Proceso reported. "We are not playing with you," one of the sheets reportedly read, "this beautiful state belongs to the people and is for the people not for criminals and corrupt policemen who work in league with this scum." According to Proceso, the chief prosecutor of Tabasco Fernando Valenzuela recognized the group's existence in Tabasco on 20 February. In a separate incident on 23 March locals in the district of Texcoco outside the capital almost lynched a suspected thief and fought police trying to free him, damaging a police car, La Crónica de Hoy reported. Residents of the locality of Tequesquinahuac gave the 20-year-old suspect a beating before police could take him away.

Dozens reported killed around Mexico

The webpage Valor por Tamaulipas, run by anonymous users and which monitors violent crime in Mexico's north-eastern Tamaulipas state, claimed that 50 people - most of whom may have been gangsters - were killed in gun battles between "armed civilians" in the city of Reynosa on 10 March and later. With these, some 60 were reported to have died in presumed criminal incidents or were found dead around Mexico on 10-12 March. Valor por Tamaulipas rejected the authorities' count of two deaths in the shootout and observed they omitted to count "dozens" of bodies thrown into one or more ditches in the district, Proceso reported on 12 March. The review reported continuing "movements" by armed groups that day. The shootout was attributed to rivalry between factions of the Gulf Cartel in Reynosa. Authorities separately found on 12 March seven bodies - of possible victims of drug cartels - left in clandestine graves in the northern and north-western states of Chihuahua and Sonora, Proceso reported. A spokesman for the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office said police believe the four found buried outside the district of  Rosales in Chihuahua may have been killed by gunmen linked to the Sinaloa Cartel headed by Joaquín Guzmán Loera. He said more bodies may be found. The grave was located after police questioned 11 suspected drug dealers and gunmen, detained in the state at an unspecified date. On 10 March the army arrested four police officers and a traffic policeman of Rosales, these being suspected of having ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, Proceso reported. Also, the police chief of the district of Tarímbaro in the western state of Michoacán was kidnapped on 10 or 11 March, then beaten and shot to death; his body was found elsewhere in Michoacán, Proceso cited the mayor of Tarímbaro as saying. Four people were in turn shot dead in the western resort of Acapulco on 11 March: three in a parked minibus, and another in an Internet café he owned, Proceso reported.

Colombian authorities report guerrilla, drug strikes

The Defence Ministry reported on 8 February the deaths and arrests of eight members of Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN) and of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in separate incidents. Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón declared while touring the departments of Antioquia and Huila that three ELN fighters including a local chief dubbed Dubernillo, were killed on 7 February in the district of Cáceres in the northern department of Antioquia, the ministry website stated. He said troops also foiled an attempt to sabotage power infrastructures in that area and confiscated arms. Speaking separately in the district of Neiva in the south-central department of Huila he said police and the army caught five suspected members of Front 13 of the FARC, dressed as civilians and "with the intention of launching bomb attacks" on civilian targets. On 10 February the army was reported to have killed three FARC fighters and destroyed two camps said designed for over 70 guerrillas, in the southern department of Caquetá. Three rebels were injured and arms and ammunition confiscated in the operation in the district of San Vicente del Caguán, Caracol television reported. Two of these were said to be children or teenagers and handed over to child welfare authorities. Juan Manuel Santos separately thanked Panama on 10 February for catching a suspected drug trafficker identified by his pseudonym Pichi. Writing on the website Twitter, Santos thanked President Ricardo Martinelli and Panamanian authorities for helping catch a man identified as a member of gang Oficina de Envigado, Colombian public radio reported, citing EFE. Police stated in a communiqué that Pichi was thought linked to the killings of two policemen in Medellín in 2012 and the massacre of nine or 10 members of his own gang outside Medellín last New Year's Eve; he was also blamed for the current bout of violence in Medellín, Radio Nacional de Colombia reported.

Seven shot dead around Mexico, gang suspects held

Police in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila shot dead three gunmen on 10 February, reportedly in response to an ambush on a police convoy driving to the frontier city of Acuña. A shootout began after the gunmen fired on the convoy that had stopped on a highway over a puncture, Proceso reported. On 9 February in the northern district of Piedras Negras in Coahuila gunmen fired on a bullet-proof car carrying policemen and bodyguards of the state Public Security or police chief Gerardo Villarreal Ríos. This prompted gunfire and a car chase around the city, with the participation of soldiers and marines, Proceso reported. Four men were separately reported shot dead early on 10 February in and outside the west-coast resort of Acapulco, Milenio reported. In Culiacán in the north-western state of Sinaola, a man identified separately as head of security for one of two prominent drug traffickers was reported arrested alongside four associates. Jonhatan Sales Avilés - El Fantasma - was identified by sources as either the security chief of Mexico's leading trafficker Joaquín Guzmán Loera or of another trafficker Ismael Zambada; he was surprised and detained on the night of 9-10 February at a safe house earlier located by the army, CNNMéxico reported. The broadcaster observed that state authorities had earlier thought and hoped, that the army killed Sales in a shootout near Culiacán on 4 March 2012.

Colombian ministry reports drug arrests, equipment found

The Colombian Defence Ministry reported on 28 January arrests and confiscation of equipment it said were significant blows against regional drug trafficking. Three leading members of a trafficking ring active in the San Andrés Archipelago and thought to have sent drugs to Central America, Mexico and the United States were held on or after 20 January, the Ministry stated. They were believed to have ties with one of the country's big gangs, the Rastrojos, and faced possible trafficking and murder charges. The navy also found and confiscated at an unspecified date, communication equipment thought to belong to another gang, the Urabeños, in two sites in the western department of Chocó. These included radios, GPS equipment and related items used to direct boats on the high seas, as well as guns and bullets, found under houses in Charambirá and Togoromá in the Litoral de San Juan district, the Defence Ministry stated on 28 January.

Seventeen reported killed around Colombia

Four were reported shot dead on a road in the northern department of Antioquia on 27 January, while 10 people were reported killed in brawls or criminal incidents in Bogotá on 26-27 January. Police were investigating to find out if the four, found shot outside El Bagre in the district of Zaragoza, had been killed by criminals or guerrillas, RCN La Radio reported. Coroners in Bogotá separately reported 10 violent deaths in the capital on the night of 26-27 January, which apparently belied the city's declining trend in violent crime. Seven of these were killed by gunfire and three with knives or similar implements, RCN radio reported. The mayor of Bogotá Gustavo Petro said on 25 January that homicides decreased in January 2013 compared to January 2012 - from 16 to 12 per 100,000 inhabitants. Bogotá would become a "peaceful space" he said if the trend continues, Caracol radio reported. In the northern district of Sincelejo, three were shot dead at a family gathering on 26 or 27 January, when gunmen entered a house and began to "shoot indiscriminately," Caracol television reported. Police were separately reported to have detained dozens of suspected criminals in northern Colombia; the national police chief José Roberto León Riaño declared that 27 suspected drug traffickers were detained in Riohacha and Cartagena de Indias on the Caribbean coast, Caracol radio reported on 26 January. This followed the recent discovery in Cartagena of just under four tonnes of cocaine hidden in a container. León separately announced the arrests of 22 suspected extortionists in Cartagena; the suspects presented themselves to local businesses as members of major criminal gangs - presumably to frighten their victims - Caracol reported on 26 January.

Police find tonnes of US-bound Colombian cocaine

Colombian police found at an unspecified date just under four tonnes of cocaine hidden in one or more containers in the Caribbean port of Cartagena and described as ultimately bound for the United States, the Defence Ministry and El Espectador reported on 22 January. The daily cited Colombia's police chief as saying that port inspectors became suspicious of one or more containers after noting discrepancies in their documentation, which prompted a close inspection. The containers were described as carrying a liquid pharmaceutical product inside "flexitanks" - large, resistant bags - which scrutiny and scanning revealed as containing also 3,826 packets of cocaine chlorhydrate, a refined substance. The Defence Ministry stated that investigations indicated these were being shipped by the Colombian gang Los Urabeños and destined for the Mexican cartel The Zetas; it observed the Urabeños likely lost some USD 95 million with the confiscation while the load would have become 10 million doses sold by street dealers in the United States.

Salvadorean president sees "unprecedented" crime fall

President Mauricio Funes Cartagena said in San Salvador on 5 December that his country was living an "unprecedented process" of decline in criminality even as crime rates were rising elsewhere in Latin America, and this partly for the truce that began last March between the main gangs, the Salvadorean daily El Mundo reported. He said at a graduation ceremony for 65 army and airforce officers that El Salvador "faces a unique opportunity to advance on the path to becoming a country with real democracy and peace." This "pacification process" he added was not just for the gang truce arranged by mediators, but also for the efforts of the army and police. The country's Justice and Public Security Minister David Munguía Payés spoke last October of a steady decline in crime in 2012, asserting that it fell more sharply after the start of the gang truce on 8 March and unspecified police operations, El Mundo reported at the time. Munguía cited a 38.4 per cent fall in crime in 2012 compared to 2011 - without specifying dates for the January-October period - and a comparative fall in crimes of 68 per cent for the period after 8 March. Separately El Salvador and Russia signed a security agreement in Moscow on 6 December focused on fighting drug trafficking, El Mundo reported. The agreement was signed by Munguía and the head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov. Its provisions included exchange of information, "technological investigation" and training programmes.