This report from the CSIS Americas Program provides a detailed look at the challenges the Colombian government confronts as it moves from providing security to developing rural areas that were previously conflict zones. In particular, the report examines such issues as remaining security needs; land tenure; needed infrastructure improvements; and better governance. In addition, the report offers recommendations on how the Colombian government can move forward in consolidating gains in its countryside and how the United States can help."

Whether liked or despised, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was a transformative figure. During his fourteen years in power he changed Venezuela from a poor country with democratic institutions, a rule of law and freedom of the press to an even poorer country with a quasi-dictatorship. Chavez was able to use his country's vast oil wealth to spread his Bolivarian revolution--known as Chavismo--to other countries in Latin America by influencing their elections and building loyalty amongst segments of their populations. In the Center for Security Policy's book, Chavismo without Chavez, Members of Congress, journalists and Latin America experts debate the former strongman's legacy--as well as the implications for U.S. national security.

Argentina, strictly speaking, does not belong to the XXI century socialism. However, participates and displays the characteristics of the populist governments. But two elements separated Argentina from other countries enrolled in the flow, the socialism of the XXI century, which are the safeguard of the institutions in that society. The first, the attitude of the Supreme Court, which has put a limit to the power of Kirchner, either in terms of trying to silence critical voices and to introduce a reform the judiciary, for the sake of a supposed "democratization ." The second is that the recent election or pre-election acts, show that the current government can no longer claim to speak for the majority, as in Bolivia, Ecuador and, in a more debatable, Venezuela. It is no longer possible, even more closed to its apologists, to talk about populism, if there is no majority. Douglas Farah, in these two works presented, provides two key elements to understand the government of Cristina Kirchner. Back to the future, showing how, under government corruption, the country is on a road to ruin. The other, the description of La Campora, is an analysis of a group of young people trying to take over the Argentine government and the economy has collapsed and created a system of authoritarian rule.

The emergence of new hybrid (state and nonstate) transnational criminal/terrorist franchises in Latin America operating under broad state protection now pose a tier-one security threat for the United States. Similar hybrid franchise models are developing in other parts of the world, which makes the understanding of these new dynamics an important factor in a broader national security context. This threat goes well beyond the traditional nonstate theory of constraints activity, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking, into the potential for trafficking related to weapons of mass destruction by designated terrorist organizations and their sponsors. These activities are carried out with the support of regional and extra-regional state actors whose leadership is deeply enmeshed in criminal activity, which yields billions of dollars in illicit revenues every year. These same leaders have a publicly articulated, common doctrine of asymmetrical warfare against the United States and its allies that explicitly endorses as legitimate the use of weapons of mass destruction. The central binding element in this alliance is a hatred for the West, particularly the United States, and deep anti-Semitism, based on a shared view that the 1979 Iranian Revolution was a transformative historical event. For Islamists, it is evidence of divine favor; and for Bolivarians, a model of a successful asymmetrical strategy to defeat the "Empire." The primary architect of this theology/ideology that merges radical Islam and radical, anti-Western populism and revolutionary zeal is the convicted terrorist Ilich Sanchez Ramirez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal," whom Chavez has called a true visionary.