Audio | InSight Crime

Following the death of CJNG leader "El Mencho" in a February 2026 military operation, US authorities have named his stepson, Juan Carlos Valencia González, alias "El 03," as the group's new leader. But El 03 is one of several senior CJNG figures with a claim to power, and the group may avoid naming a single visible boss at all. InSight Crime's Managing Editor Deborah Bonello speaks to Co-director Steven Dudley and Mexico investigators Victoria Dittmar and Parker Asmann about the CJNG's messy succession.

The United States has designated Ecuador's Chone Killers a terrorist organization, but the group has splintered and has no single command structure. InSight Crime's Gavin Voss, Steve Dudley and Deborah Bonello discuss how the label may not map cleanly onto a fragmented reality, echoing a broader pattern where decapitating gang leadership tends to atomize groups rather than dismantle them.

El Salvador’s mass trials of alleged gang members are the latest phase in President Nayib Bukele’s hardline security model, aimed at locking in the dismantling of MS13 and Barrio 18 while processing a massive backlog of cases. InSight Crime's Managing Editor Deborah Bonello and Central America Investigator Alex Papadovassilakis discuss how the trials, which group hundreds of defendants and thousands of crimes into single proceedings, raise troubling questions about whether collective punishment is replacing individual justice.

The winner of Colombia's presidential elections Abelardo de la Espriella promised to stop negotiating with guerrilla armies and unleash the country's experienced security forces against criminal groups there. But will the Trump-aligned president-elect keep his promises when he takes office in August? And will his plan help, or hinder, the country's organized crime panorama?

InSight Crime's Co-Director Steven Dudley and Managing Editor Deborah Bonello separate fact from fiction around the real security risks in Mexico for tourists coming to the World Cup, and look back at the connection between organized crime and soccer.