Written by Elisa Garbil – 31.10.2025 The Amazon is not simply a forest. It is a vast, transnational market in which criminal networks monetise land, timber, minerals, cattle, and people, and launder those proceeds into mainstream supply chains. This convergence of environmental crime, organised crime, and corporate procurement creates a composite risk that is far bigger than…
Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil In this episode, Dominic Bowen is joined by César Muñoz Acebes to examine the deepening crisis in the Amazon. They unpack the role of organized crime in environmental destruction, the links to drug trafficking and illegal economies, and the devastating consequences for local communities and global stability. A critical look at how crime, politics,…
César Muñoz Acebes is the Brazil director at Human Rights Watch, where he supervises research, advocates for foreign and domestic policies that promote human rights, and leads fundraising efforts in Brazil. Before his current role, he served as America’s senior researcher and later associate director. In those capacities, he researched and wrote reports and articles, produced…
Ellen Van Damme, PhD, is a criminologist specialising in ethnographic research on women, gangs, and migration. From 2016 to 2020, she was a PhD fellow of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) at the Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC), KU Leuven. Her doctoral research focused on the role of women in and around gangs in Honduras. In…
Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil This week Dominic is joined by Ellen van Damme. They dive into the multifaceted complexities of gang violence in Honduras. Hear Ellen discuss her PhD research on gangs, violence and women, as well as her thoughts on how women and girls fall into gangs. They discuss the difference between narcos…
Written by Elisa Garbil – 17.02.2025 History Honduras is situated between Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Most of the population tends to live in the mountains, which is generally quite isolated. It is a developing nation, with significant economic and social challenges, as well as climate challenges as it tends to have occasional violent tropical…
Juan David Rojas is a Columnist at Compact and a Consultant. He is a subject matter expert on Latin America, where he provides advice and analysis on political, economic, foreign policy, energy and security topics. Juan is a columnist at Compact Magazine and has his work featured in American Affairs, Americas Quarterly the Journal of…
Written by Elisa Garbil – 20.01.2025 On the 1st of June 2019, Nayib Bukele was nominated President of El Salvador. Before that he was an adman, which explains how he has been so successful in branding himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”. Bukele has remade El Salvador, in the sense that he has incarcerated over 81.000…
Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil This week Dominic has Juan David Rojas on the podcast. They discuss Bukele’s crime mitigation in El Salvador. They dive into authoritarianism, Bukele’s popularity, gangs and violence, how international gangs are, amongst others. Tune in now to hear everything about El Salvador and its current crime management! Juan David Rojas is…
Damián Gariglio is a political scientist and researcher from Buenos Aires. He majored in International Relations and holds a Master’s Degree in Internaitional Studies from Torcuato Di Tella University – during which he spent six months in Colombia on a student exchange program. He is a member of the netwrok of experts of the Global…
