Latin America Daily Security Brief

ELN fighters launched drone-borne explosive attacks in the Catatumbo region of Norte de Santander today, killing at least one soldier — identified as a professional army member in Teorama — and triggering the forced displacement of 784 people across 293 families from communities along the El Tarra municipality, according to Colombia's Defensoría del Pueblo. Affected veredas include Km 84, Km 92, El Mirador, Cañahuate, La Torcoroma, El Salado, Llano Alto, and Brisas del Catatumbo.

A separate drone attack by FARC dissidents in Suárez, Cauca, left six children and one adult wounded and confined roughly 200 families to their homes as Colombian Army units and the Fuerza Aeroespacial Colombia conducted counter-operations in the area. Municipal authorities issued a formal call to armed groups to respect International Humanitarian Law.

Colombia's presidential runoff is sharpening into a clear ideological contest. Right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who has publicly thanked President Trump for his support and promised a 'partnership like Colombia has never had' with Washington, has pulled ahead in polling according to ABC News and the New York Times. His opponent favors continued peace negotiations with armed groups — the gap between the two visions is stark.

El Espectador reports that community leaders in Catatumbo are independently pushing a 'peace table' to broker local humanitarian agreements between the ELN and the FARC's Frente 33. The initiative reflects the vacuum left by the Petro government's stalled national peace talks and signals that local actors are not waiting for Bogotá.

The Colombian government this week delivered 1,254 hectares of productive land to more than 600 rural families in Montelíbano, Córdoba — the first land adjudication by the Agencia Nacional de Tierras in that municipality. It's a tangible output of the agrarian reform agenda, though it arrives in a security context that continues to deteriorate in parallel.

Interim President Delcy Rodríguez arrived in India today for a June 3–7 state visit, with energy security dominating the agenda. India has been ramping up Venezuelan crude imports — Venezuela's oil exports hit 1.25 million barrels per day in May, per shipping data cited by Reuters — as New Delhi scrambles to replace supply disrupted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz following U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Under the current U.S.-Caracas oil supply arrangement, proceeds from Venezuelan crude sales flow through Treasury-administered accounts. Rubio confirmed this week that Washington actively supports Indian purchases of Venezuelan oil as part of a broader effort to diversify away from Iranian supply.

Venezuela's National Assembly gave initial approval Tuesday to a reform opening the electricity sector to private investment, including joint ventures, ending nearly two decades of exclusive state control. The move is directly tied to a practical crisis: energy companies operating in Venezuela are now being told by the government to bring their own power generation to oil field projects, because the national grid's chronic blackouts make it impossible to rely on centralized electricity for production operations.

The FTI Consulting analysis published today captures the investor dilemma cleanly: the political signals out of Caracas are encouraging, but structural uncertainty — legal ambiguity, PDVSA's institutional decay, and Rodríguez's own history as a Maduro loyalist — keeps serious capital on the sidelines. The New York Times reported separately that while oilmen and crypto investors are circling Caracas, the country's industrial heartland, including the Lake Maracaibo basin, remains in visible decay.

Secretary Rubio testified this week that Venezuela no longer poses the same security threat to the U.S. that it did under Maduro, drawing a pointed contrast with Cuba — which he described as a 'growing security threat' with active Russian and Chinese intelligence ties.

Mexican and U.S. authorities jointly dismantled a 700-meter tunnel running from Tijuana to the Otay Mesa neighborhood of San Diego, seizing over one metric ton of cocaine — 851 packages valued at approximately $45 million — and charging four people. The operation, run by the FGR's Criminal Investigation Agency alongside Mexico's Security Cabinet and Homeland Security Investigations, targeted a warehouse front called 'Buy 4 Less' on the U.S. side. California Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed the state's Counter Drug Task Force assisted and said roughly 1,000 kilograms of cocaine were connected to the broader investigation.

Mexico's financial enforcement bodies moved simultaneously to freeze the assets of Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya and nine close allies facing U.S. drug charges. The governor's former security secretary, General Gerardo Mérida Sánchez, appeared in a New York federal court this week for his initial hearing on charges of accepting cartel bribes — the first defendant in the 'caso Rocha Moya' to appear. A second individual arrested in Michoacán for leaking information in the Carlos Manzo murder case was also a CJNG extortion cell leader, per the Security Cabinet.

Mexico's federal Security Cabinet reported joint operations from May 29–31 across 12 states — Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Colima, Durango, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tabasco, and Tamaulipas — resulting in detentions, weapons seizures, and drug confiscations.

The government separately confirmed the arrest of 'Gabito' (Gabriel N., also known as '80'), described by El País as a regional commander for Los Chapitos within the Sinaloa Cartel. The arrest continues a sustained federal campaign against that faction.

President Sheinbaum publicly rebuked U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson after he publicly stated the fight against cartels 'should unite, not divide' the two governments. Sheinbaum called it interventionism. The tension is notable given that the Los Angeles Times reports the U.S. is now investigating two additional Mexican governors for cartel ties — identities not yet publicly confirmed. El Universal flagged analyst concern that the Sheinbaum–Johnson friction risks complicating USMCA trade dynamics.

Bolivia's defense minister resigned this morning, two government sources confirmed to Reuters — the highest-ranking official to exit under President Rodrigo Paz since protests began five weeks ago. The demonstrations, which started over fuel subsidy cuts, have broadened to include unions, indigenous groups, and mining associations expressing wider economic and political grievances.

More than 100 people have been detained and at least one protester — a 24-year-old — has died in the unrest. President Paz called for 'democratic maturity' and a national truce in Cochabamba on Monday, acknowledging that some protest sectors have legitimate grievances. He has pledged that relief for the most-affected cities is coming 'in the coming days,' a commitment that will be tested quickly.

The defense minister's departure creates an immediate question about civil-military cohesion at exactly the moment Paz most needs it. His government has relied on security forces to manage road blockades, and a leadership vacuum at the Defense Ministry complicates that calculus.

The U.S. State Department's designation of the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) and Red Command (Comando Vermelho) as Foreign Terrorist Organizations is generating sustained institutional pushback from Brasília. Brazilian officials argue the FTO label conflicts with domestic legal definitions and, per reporting from InSight Crime, could create legal grounds for U.S. financial sanctions, intelligence operations, or even military intervention — anxieties that have sharpened considerably since Washington seized Maduro.

InSight Crime's analysis, published this week, identifies the real economic collateral damage: FTO designation doesn't just squeeze the PCC's money-laundering channels, it creates compliance risks for legitimate Brazilian businesses, banks, and exporters doing transactions that could theoretically touch PCC-infiltrated sectors. Brazil is the world's tenth-largest economy. The downstream effects on trade finance are not hypothetical.

Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia were all notably absent from Trump's 'Shield of the Americas' summit in Miami in March — a 12-country security coalition. Rubio confirmed this week that the coalition is now active and coordinating with Washington. The three largest organized-crime hosts in the hemisphere are all outside it.

President José Antonio Kast delivered his first State of the Nation address Tuesday in Valparaíso, announcing spending cuts, police reinforcement, tighter immigration enforcement, and a plan to strip social benefits from individuals with criminal convictions. Protesters clashed with police outside Congress during the speech.

Chile hosted a five-nation summit in Santiago this week, bringing together Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia to coordinate against organized crime. The collective framing — 'We are tired,' per DigitalShield — reflects growing regional frustration with the pace of transnational crime responses and Chile's bid to lead on the issue under Kast.

Chile's Interior Ministry reported nearly 500 raids under the new Microtráfico Law in May alone, with officials crediting sustained street-level intelligence work for the uptick.

Peru is heading into a presidential runoff under a cloud of accelerating criminal violence. AP News reports that extortion and targeted killings — particularly the murders of bus drivers — have triggered transportation strikes and protests in multiple cities. Experts attribute the surge partly to illegal gold mining revenues, which have funded a new generation of organized crime groups with territorial reach.

The security deterioration is becoming a direct electoral issue. Candidates are being forced to address organized crime as a top-tier concern rather than a peripheral policy topic, and the atmosphere of fear AP describes is shaping voter behavior in ways that are difficult to poll accurately.

Secretary of State Rubio testified before Congress this week calling Cuba a 'growing security threat' to the United States, citing active Russian and Chinese intelligence ties on the island. He also stated that Raúl Castro's recent federal indictment on terrorism charges leaves open the possibility of military action, though Rubio said he prefers a diplomatic resolution.

The top U.S. military commander for Latin America, SOUTHCOM, held a brief exchange with Cuban military leaders near the U.S. base at Guantánamo on operational security matters — the first confirmed direct military-to-military contact in years, per AP.

Cuba's economic situation is described by economists quoted in Spanish-language press as comparable to Haiti — marked by an inability to generate savings and a collapse across all productive sectors. The Soufan Center published an analysis arguing that even without U.S. military intervention, the island's internal spiral could produce a migrant crisis that Washington is not prepared to manage.

Guatemala's Congress approved a comprehensive anti-money laundering law Tuesday, passing with 147 votes in favor, one against, and 12 absent. President Bernardo Arévalo called it a direct blow to narcotrafficking, corruption, and organized crime. The law strengthens cooperation between security and justice institutions and increases sanctions against those who collaborate with criminal structures — including potentially stripping lawyers convicted of organized-crime involvement of their professional licenses.

Costa Rica's Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) issued a public warning about a surge in virtual kidnapping scams, with typical ransom demands running 15 to 20 million colones ($30,000–$40,000). Investigators note that most calls originate from South America and payments are routed through bank transfers.

Costa Rica and Panama remain locked in a bilateral trade dispute that San José's foreign minister this week described as a 'systemic protectionism' campaign by Panama against Costa Rican agricultural exports, ongoing since 2019. The dispute has escalated to the WTO — which ruled in Costa Rica's favor — but Panama's appeal leaves the resolution in limbo. President-level pressure is now driving diplomatic escalation.

An investigation published by Infobae documented ten Nicaraguan nationals killed in Honduras and Costa Rica between 2019 and 2025 in what the author describes as a transnational repression network — five opposition peasants killed in Honduras, five dissidents in Costa Rica. The pattern attributed to a network with ties to the Ortega government raises serious questions about state-linked targeting of exiles in neighboring countries.

A new report analyzed by InSight Crime finds that confrontations between security forces and criminal groups across Latin America have risen sharply since Trump took office in January 2025. Authorities in Guatemala, Trinidad & Tobago, and Jamaica — all Shield of the Americas signatories — clashed with armed groups nearly twice as often in 2025, with deaths in those clashes spiking commensurately.

The report identifies a structural pattern: U.S. pressure is driving more aggressive security postures at the national level, but criminal organizations are adapting faster than states can respond — fragmenting into semi-autonomous cells, diversifying into extortion, fuel theft, illegal mining, and smuggling to reduce dependence on any single revenue stream. Mexico's cartel evolution post-El Mencho is the clearest example, but the dynamic is visible across the hemisphere.