Audio | InSight Crime

Organized crime groups across Latin America are weaponizing commercial drones, pairing them with IEDs to attack rivals, security forces, and civilians. From CJNG's drone unit in Mexico to gang warfare in Rio's favelas and ELN surveillance drones in Colombia, InSight Crime co-director Jeremy McDermott joins Deborah Bonello to ask whether governments can actually keep pace with the threat.

Colombia just became the 19th member of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition — better known as Shield of the Americas — days after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew to Panama to declare its new motto: "We do bad things to bad people." On this week's InSight Take, Managing Editor Deborah Bonello and co-director Jeremy McDermott unpack what this fast-growing coalition actually commits its members to, five months after its founding and still without an approved operational plan. With lethal strikes on Caribbean and Pacific boats having killed over 200 people — and no evidence the US drug flow has slowed — they ask whether Shield of the Americas can actually disrupt organized crime.

Colombia's new president faces one of the most complicated criminal landscapes in the world. In thisweek's InSight Take, Co-Director Jeremy McDermott and Senior Colombia Analyst Sara Garcia unpack what Abelardo de la Espriella inherits: powerful armed groups like the Gaitanistas and the ELN, record cocaine production, and booming illegal gold mining. They weigh Washington's likely support, whether de la Espriella can match the Uribe-era security gains, and the human rights risks of a harder military push.

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The capture of Ecuadorian crime boss Wilmer Chavarría, alias “Pipo,” was a major victory for President Daniel Noboa’s strategy of targeting high-value criminal leaders. But it also raises a larger question: Do arrests of top criminal leaders weaken organized crime, or simply make it more fragmented and violent? In this week's InSight Take, InSight Crime Co-director Steven Dudley and Investigator James Bargent examine what Pipo’s case reveals about Ecuador’s kingpin strategy.

From the halls of presidential power to a 45-year prison sentence—and then a shocking return to freedom—this week, we take a look at the story of the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). InSight Crime’s Managing Editor Deborah Bonello speaks to Co-director Steven Dudley about JOH’s twisting tale, from indictment to pardon.