Latin America: Freedom from Transnational Crime

By: Hugo Marcelo Balderrama - 06/07/2025

Guest columnist.
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On June 7, 2025, in the Bogotá town of Fontibón, during a political event to determine his party's presidential candidate, Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot twice in the head and once in the leg. To this day, Uribe is still fighting for his life in an intensive care unit.

On August 9, 2023, while leaving a political rally north of Quito, Fernando Villavicencio was killed with three gunshot wounds to the head. A week earlier, Villavicencio had reported a series of threats against him from criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking.

Aside from the multiple headshots, a technique used by drug hitmen very well explained by John Jairo Velásquez, Popeye, what unites Fernando Villavicencio and Miguel Uribe Turbay?

The two politicians clashed fiercely with the Castro-Chavista bosses usurping the governments of their countries, Ecuador and Colombia, respectively. Both attacks inevitably remind us of the stabbing of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, or the gunshot that grazed Donald Trump's ear in 2024.

In Bolivia, Evo Morales and his gang of coca growers have been tormenting the country since the 1980s, although with increasing intensity since the late 1990s. Their methods include the murder of police officers and soldiers, the destruction of roads, sniper attacks, the judicialization of politics, and the physical elimination of opponents, as in the case of the Hotel Las Américas in 2009.

The examples cited above should make it clear that the militants of 21st Century Socialism use corruption, terrorism, infiltration, and contract killings. In other words, violence against opponents, politicians, businesspeople, journalists, and citizen activists is the method used to shape the political system to serve the interests of criminal networks. The message can be summed up as follows: whoever has the courage to confront them has their fate sealed.

Likewise, common criminal groups are operational arms of dictatorships and, like drug cartels, have been transnationalized. These include the Tren de Aragua, the Maras, the MS13 or Mara Salvatrucha, the Sinaloa, Jalisco, Zetas, Gulf, and Reyes Latinos cartels, all of whom Rafael Correa treated like innocent Boy Scouts.

Geopolitically, the situation is even more delicate, as the strengthening of these transnational criminal groups has allowed them to establish connections with terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah, and mafias in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Simply put, Latin America is experiencing a perverse convergence of crime, terrorism, dictatorships, and gang members like Evo Morales, Nicolás Maduro, Gustavo Petro, and Rafael Correa disguised as politicians. Regarding this, Leonardo Coutinho, in his article "Politics Under the Sights of Organized Crime," states:

The key point is that organized crime no longer operates only on the margins of the political system. It inhabits it, influences it, and sometimes determines it. When it chooses to silence candidates with gunfire or co-opt parties with dirty money, it is voting and, often, deciding more effectively than the average citizen. The "crime vote" is heavier than that of any citizen.

In closing, continuing to treat these groups as political parties or social organizations gives them a validation they don't deserve, since here we should ask ourselves: do we citizens elect our leaders with our votes, or do bandits elect them with their spilled blood?

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».