State-sponsored disappearance plays into the most primal of human fears – to vanish without a trace. The modern era started with Chile’s US-backed coup on September 11 1973
The American public should understand that the United States has played a critical role in creating and fuelling violence in Latin America via its unsuccessful war on drugs.
A researcher who fled crime-beset Mexico returns to interview the drug cartels behind so much of the violence, asking 33 ‘narcos’ everything about their lives, from birth to their latest murder.
A series of brazen, highly visible attacks by Mexican drug cartels have killed at least 50 people in the past month, terrorizing citizens and making the government look weak on crime.
President López Obrador campaigned on some outside-the-box ideas to ‘pacify’ Mexico after 12 years of extreme violence. But so far his government has emphasized traditional law-and-order policies.
Mexico’s presidential front-runner wants to end violence in Mexico by pardoning drug traffickers and corrupt officials. Some 235,000 people have died in the country’s 11-year cartel war.
Los Pollos Hermanos is a chicken shop run by a drug lord in the TV series Better Call Saul. A pop-up version opens in Sydney today - and both ignore the savage reality of Mexico’s drug wars.
Brass Blacker Associate Professor of Demography at LSHTM and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford