PANORAMA ESTRATÉGICO

Abstract

This paper analyzes changes in the Latin American strategic environment and the response of security forces in the region to those changes. It begins with global drivers in change including the evolution of digital connectivity and associated technologies, climate issues, and the dynamic between the growing power of the PRC, and a disparate group of illiberal regimes collaborating with it for mutual benefit. In Latin America, such trends and idiosyncratic factors have fueled the evolution of organized crime with both greater fragmentation and proxy wars among groups, evolution of the cocaine economy, the rise of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl, synergies between illegal mining, drugs, human trafficking and other forms of crime, and an enhanced role for China, and actors from Europe in those crime trends.