Forrest Hylton

Following a prolonged drought, smoke from wildfires in the Amazon basin is choking people over an enormous swath of territory in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru and Bolivia.

Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada García, the senior leader of the organisation known as the Sinaloa cartel, was arrested on 25 July, together with his godson Joaquín Guzmán López – one of ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s sons. The best Mexican coverage was informed by long experience, scepticism and sober realism. It was hard to believe the authorities had finally captured the man who never left the Sierra Madre. Across the border in the US, where the arrest took place, more than a few journalists appear to have cut their sociological teeth on the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico.

Bolivia is known for having experienced frequent coups throughout most of its history, and some have been brief and/or bizarre, but last month’s may have set a new record. On Wednesday, 26 June, General Juan José Zúñiga, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Bolivian Army, drove up to Plaza Murillo in La Paz with six tanks. He smashed his way into the Palacio Quemado (the former seat of government) through a metal door, made phone calls to the political opposition and the military, and demanded the release of Jeanine Áñez and Luis Fernando Camacho, both currently imprisoned for plotting the coup of 2019.

Argentina’s interannual inflation rate is 250 per cent – only Zimbabwe’s is higher – while subway fares have risen sevenfold since January, and the public hospitals administered by the University of Buenos Aires are in danger of closing because the university can’t pay its electricity bill. The UBA, which is consistently ranked among the best universities in Latin America, could shut down in May. With the budget frozen at 2023 levels, in real terms universities are broke.

The situation is contradictory, even paradoxical: on the one hand, the machinery of justice is moving, however slowly, to prosecute Bolsonaro and members of his entourage, including army generals, for the events of 8 January, as well as the killers of Marielle Franco and those who organised and paid for her murder. Yet on the other, without an organised left proposing alternative public security policies, and convincing people of their viability and desirability, mafias and drug gangs are rapidly expanding their reach.