Six stories - 13 February 2025

I'm writing mostly about security stories this week. But also Bitcoin. Because so many more readers show up when I say anything about crytocurrency.

Happy Thursday. I focus on US-LatAm relations on Mondays and then use the Thursday newsletter to highlight stories that aren’t directly about the US. Today, I’m making the first two stories free for everyone, and the other four are behind the paywall. If you work for an organization that benefits from this information and can afford it, please pay to subscribe.

In today’s newsletter

1. The implications of the Ojeda assassination in Chile

2. Colombia-Venezuela border tensions will rise

3. Ecuador’s Noboa claims fraud

4. Honduras’s election and narco corruption

5. The PCC dodges the FTO designation

6. Salvadoran Bitcoin is now less cool

Feel free to respond to this email with feedback, comments, and questions.

Chilean authorities are increasingly convinced that the Maduro regime ordered the assassination of Ronald Ojeda in Santiago in February 2024. Specifically, Diosdado Cabello paid a cell of the Tren de Aragua gang to commit the kidnapping and murder. IBI published a recent study on TdA in Chile that includes a detailed analysis of the assassination.

This incident will make it much harder for Maduro to re-enter regional alliances, even if Venezuela’s leader manages a detente with the Trump administration. Chile will continue to reject Venezuela after this year’s election (no credible candidate in that election will have a more tolerant policy than Gabriel Boric). Many of Chile’s neighbors will point to this incident as a reason to avoid strong relations. Even Brazil and Colombia, which have waivered on how they are treating diplomacy with Venezuela, are going to avoid a full alliance with Maduro given this crime.

Don’t doubt the impact of the crime. Historians still cite Letelier’s assassination in Washington, DC, as a pivotal moment that moved the US away from Pinochet. The Ojeda assassination has the potential to be on par with that event.

The Guardian and NYT cover the ELN’s presence in Venezuela and how the group is increasing violence along the border. This is one of those stories that has built for two decades but is now front and center of President Gustavo Petro’s security agenda given the ongoing violence.

The Colombian and Venezuelan governments are conducting joint operations against various criminal and insurgent groups along the border for the first time in many years. At the same time, many people wonder how much Colombia should trust Venezuela given that there are clear alliances between elements of the Venezuelan military and various Colombian criminal/terrorist/insurgent groups.

This situation has a strong potential to worsen following Colombia’s 2026 election. The next president is not going to be as tolerant as Petro for Venezuela’s mixed messages on these illegal armed groups. Two decades ago, there were moments in which Colombian President Uribe threatened cross-border raids to get FARC and ELN camps that were inside of Venezuela. A combination of regional diplomacy and the threat of a relatively strong Venezuelan military prevented him from doing it.

In the current environment, the region has lost patience with Maduro, Venezuela’s military is far weaker than it was under Chavez, and there is a US president who likes seeing expressions of symbolic toughness, no matter his current stance on diplomacy with Maduro. The same elements that walked Uribe back from the brink are no longer there. If security worsens in Colombia and that country’s citizens elect someone to fix the crisis, cross-border tensions will rise.

As I was writing my Tuesday newsletter about Ecuador’s election, I saw comments from President Noboa about alleged irregularities and posts on social media about gang influence. I ended up not having time to cover those, and I wasn’t immediately sure how important they were. They have become much more important over the past 48 hours.