Gang warfare in Haiti's Port-au-Prince has reached new peaks of intensity and brutality. Experts say the scale and duration of gang clashes, the power criminals wield and the amount of territory they control has reached levels not seen before, reports the Associated Press. The UN said that between April 24 and May 16, at least 92 people unaffiliated with gangs, and some 96 alleged gang members, were reportedly killed during coordinated armed attacks in the sprawling Haitian capital. Another 113 were injured, 12 reported missing, and 49 kidnapped for ransom, according to figures corrobo ..read more

The U.S. Biden administration announced a partial lifting of sanctions on Cuba yesterday. Changes will include restoring flights to Cuban cities other than Havana and reestablishing a family reunification program suspended for years. The changes also include relaxing the ban on remittances. A ban on non-family remittances will be eased to allow payment to independent Cuban entrepreneurs, and the Treasury Department has issued at least one license to allow direct equity investment in a private Cuban firm. The Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, which has not taken new cases since 20 ..read more

El Salvador authorities claim to have made over 30,000 arrests since roundups began March 27, the day El Salvador’s legislature approved emergency powers that loosened rules on arrests and curtailed civil liberties. The mass arrests are likely to strain El Salvador’s overstretched prisons and affect gang dynamics, though exactly how is difficult to discern from past crackdowns, reports InSight Crime. El Salvador's homicide rate in 2022 is on track to be the lowest on record. But "state violence has clearly replaced traditional crime," notes the Latin America Risk Report. Over th ..read more

News Briefs Regional El País has a deep-dive on hunger in Latin America: of 660 million people in the region, more than 60 million suffer hunger. Another 220 million don't know if they'll eat tomorrow. Indian investment in Latin America is tiny compared to China's, but has particular benefits for the region. India has an edge over China in value-added sectors in Latin America, specifically in manufacturing, healthcare, information technology (IT) and services. Its impact is felt through employment generation and the diversification of the economy to value-added sectors, particularly ..read more

Some countries in the region that condemn nondemocratic regimes in Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba still feel the Summit of the Americas invite-list kerfuffle is "yet another reminder of what they see as U.S. hubris when it comes to the hemisphere," reports the Washington Post. (See yesterday's post.) Cuba, particularly, is a flashpoint for governments nettled by U.S. gatekeeping: "CARICOM countries take the view that the Summit of the Americas is not a United States summit, which it isn’t. It is a summit of all the countries of the Americas, of which the United States is only on ..read more

The International Crisis Group (ICG) recently published a report addressing the failures of the “kingpin strategy” in the effort to combat Mexico’s illegal drug trade. The strategy, intended to remove those at the helm of cartels, has instead resulted in an increase in the number of armed groups, as lower-level leaders and other organizations seek to fill the power vacuum left by the capture of the drug lord(s).  Since 2008, Mexico and the US have cooperated on security issues aimed at tackling transnational organized crime (TOC) and drug trafficking through the Mérida Initiative. Begun ..read more

The Indigenous Huancuire and Fuerabamba communities have been evicted from the Chinese-owned Las Bambas copper mine for a second day, following evictions that began on Wednesday, reports Reuters. The communities, claiming the corporation MMG had not fulfilled its previous agreements under its 2011 sale of the land and demanding just compensation for environmental and social impacts, were expelled from the property under the Peruvian law allowing property owners to forcibly remove trespassers.  Tensions between the two have been high in recent months, with violent attempts to evict indige ..read more

A Colombian military general and 10 others acknowledged that they had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. They spoke yesterday before families of victims in the country’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a long-awaited testimony in the "false positives" scandal. The general, nine other military officials and a civilian admitted to orchestrating the killings of at least 120 civilians and trying to pass them off as rebel combatants, part of a military policy aimed at inflating combat kills.  The "false positives," which were used to bolster the country’s argument that it ..read more

In addition to extending El Salvador's state of emergency on Sunday, lawmakers also seized the moment to temporarily exempt security spending from legal oversight, reports El Faro English. (See Monday's briefs.) And, despite widespread flak from human rights groups as evidence accumulates of police abuses and arbitrary detentions, President Nayib Bukele’s party passed legislation to allow for government land expropriation to build more prisons.  While the original excuse for the state of emergency was a surge in gang violence, the trend dramatically reversed after a few days, notes ..read more

​Cuban officials accused the U.S. of excluding the island's government from the upcoming Summit of the Americas, which will be held in Los Angeles in June. Cuban foreign affairs minister Bruno Rodríguez said the U.S. Biden administration is also putting pressure on countries in the hemisphere who oppose excluding Cuba from the largest regional gathering of hemispheric leaders, reports the Miami Herald. Rodríguez said US officials were already leaving Cuba out of pre-summit conversations on such issues as a regional health strategy and migration, both of vital interest to the island ..read more