Recent content by Beau Geste

Recent reports suggest illegal gold mining and the associated trafficking of mercury are increasing in Costa Rica, providing evidence that organized crime groups in the country may be diversifying their revenue streams as they increase in sophistication. Illegal Gold Mining in Costa Rica...

'Narco-deforestation': cocaine trade destroying swaths of Central America Drug trade’s efforts to launder profits by creating agricultural land results in loss of millions of acres...

A news organization in Guatemala discovered a clandestine drug trafficking airstrip located in the vicinity of a military post and property owned by a transnational company, raising questions about ties between organized crime and elites in the area and the difficulty of preventing the illegal...

A small Caribbean island nation has become one of the biggest recruitment hubs for ISIS in the West — here's why Trinidad and Tobago has become a recruitment hub for ISIS

When Mexican drug cartels threatened the country’s $1.5bn avocado export industry with extortion and murder, farmers in Tancitaro decided to fight back https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/18/avocado-police-tancitaro-mexico-law-drug-cartels

Centre d'entraînement au combat d'Arta Plage - CECAP The Combat Training Center at Arta Beach was established in 1978 as an amphibious warfare training center. However in 1982 CECAP became the Commando Center reflecting a slight change from its original purpose; by 2003 CECAP's had...

Security officials in Costa Rica say they are incapable of stopping transnational drug traffickers from using the country's pristine beaches as stopover points for cocaine shipments headed to the United States, a development that's likely linked to the surge in Colombia's cocaine production...

The Honduran government said on Tuesday it had moved 773 gang members to a maximum security prison, completing the relocation of some 2,000 highly dangerous inmates in a bid to prevent penitentiaries serving as command centers for criminal activity...

Nearly two hundred people have fled their homes in the last month from one neighbourhood alone in Honduras' second city of San Pedro Sula in fear for their lives as gang violence intensifies, the Norwegian Refugee Council said on Monday. With one of the world's highest murder rates, Honduras...

A shootout involving two cars, two dead men, two at-large suspects, and two aids on motorcycles outside a private school in Guachipelin. Escazu, a district west of San José, Costa Rica, has caused a tragic and upsetting start to the week for many in the country’s densely populated Central...

Drug-related violence is as much a fact of life in Central America’s Northern Triangle as it is in some parts of the urban U.S. But its impact in these small Central American countries is huge, with up to 10 percent of the population of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador having fled violence...

Guatemala has declared a state of emergency in a border area where two local communities employed by rival Mexican cartels are fighting over poppy cultivation, a local conflict that is just one battle in a regional war for the heroin market. Guatemala Communities Clash Over Opium Crops...

Spanish Police Recover $3.5 Million in Stolen Art MADRID – Spanish police recovered art works valued 2.7 million euros ($3.5 million) that were stolen last month from a warehouse near Madrid, authorities said Monday. The 28 individual pieces were recovered last Saturday, but no arrests have...

Bombs Explode Outside Bank, Police Facility in Chile SANTIAGO – Two small bombs exploded early Monday outside a Banco Santander branch and a police funeral home in Santiago, causing damage but no injuries, Chilean police said. The first explosion occurred at 1:15 a.m. at the Banco Santander...

Police Find 700 Kilos of Cocaine in Argentina BUENOS AIRES – Police found nearly 700 kilos of cocaine in Formosa, an Argentine province on the border with Paraguay, on a clandestine landing strip where a small plane from Bolivia had landed, officials said. The cocaine was discovered Saturday...