pablo escobar

Could dark tourism bring a light to Latin American issues?

By Rachel Rozak
December 20, 2018

While the concept of tourism in areas of historic tragedies is far from being a modern phenomenon, it was only recently that the term dark tourism was created and regarded by academics.  Dark tourism was first written about by two men, John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, in their 2000 book that investigated “tourist interest in recent death, disaster, and atrocity.”  In 2011, Dom Joly published what would become one of the first reflections of such travel in his book called The Dark Tourist (Gilbert 2018).

'Robin Hood' Criminal Groups: Providing for the Community when the Government Cannot

By Kristen Martinez-Gugerli
November 7, 2018
Jesus Malverde, the proclaimed patron saint of narcos, is praised in Mexico as a Robin Hood figure. His legacy of committing crimes to provide for the poor has inspired many criminal groups to follow suit, earning them a similar reputation among the people.

Conventional perceptions of Latin America’s organized criminal groups tend to emphasize the greed and violence produced by these groups when, in reality, their existence is much more nuanced than this. Although most associate the presence of criminal groups with heightened levels of violence or drug use, these groups usually do much more than this, often providing certain services and resources to local communities.

John Jairo Velásquez, Assassin for Pablo Escobar, is Released

By Asa Equels
October 13, 2016

Twenty-two years in a maximum-security prison was deemed sufficient punishment for the favored hitman of former drug kingpin of Colombia, Pablo Escobar, on Tuesday, August 26, 2014. John Jairo Velásquez, also known by his nickname, “Popeye,” was released early from a prison located 100 miles north of Bogotá, Colombia, a place where he had confessed to atrocities far more numerous than the one murder for which he had spent his time serving.

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