Research desk
The Latin America (LATAM) & Caribbean Research Desk provides in-depth political risk analysis and strategic insights across a region marked by dynamic political shifts, socio-economic transformations, and evolving security landscapes. The desk has reported on Venezuela’s grey-zone campaign in the Essequibo region, trust in the Colombian state, risk for UK investors in Guyana’s energy sector, the US-El Salvador alliance, foreign intervention in Haiti and the prospects for Cuba-US relations.
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LATAM & Caribbean
20 January 2026
On 3 January 2026, the United States conducted Operation Absolute Resolve, an overnight operation in Venezuela which ended with the surprise capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and co-conspirator, Cilia Flores. Both were brought to New York charged with drug and weapons trafficking.
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LATAM & Caribbean
10 December 2025
Venezuela’s Multidimensional Grey-Zone Campaign in the Essequibo Region
Venezuela has put into place a multidimensional grey-zone campaign in the Essequibo Region-based on grey-zone strategies and a five-step “hybrid kit”, meaning a coordinated package of legal, informational, military...
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LATAM & Caribbean
14 November 2025
Trust in the Colombian State: Persistence Amid Governance Gaps in Conflict-Affected Areas
Across centuries of political thought, the idea of the social contract has shaped how citizens understand their relationship with authority, a reciprocal exchange of freedoms for protection and order. Yet in many contexts, this reciprocity has faltered. States with weak capacity often fail to deliver basic services or even become agents of violence. Despite this, citizens’ trust and identification with such states frequently endure.
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LATAM & Caribbean
23 September 2025
In 2015, ExxonMobil struck oil in the waters of a nation whose entire GDP was barely a quarter of its own annual profits. Guyana, home to just over 800,000 people, skyrocketed to the centre of global economic and geopolitical attention almost overnight.
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LATAM & Caribbean
19 June 2025
The government of Nayib Bukele has garnered significant media attention in recent years. Bukele, who once branded himself the ‘world’s coolest dictator’, has enacted various mass incarceration programmes that have drastically reduced violent crime in El Salvador, a country that had the highest homicide rate in the world as recently as 2015. The re-election of U.S. President Donald J. Trump has profoundly destabilised the post-Cold War international order. Symptoms of this destabilisation include the evolving alignment of the U.S. and Russia, the increasingly fractious relationship between the U.S.
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LATAM & Caribbean
7 May 2025
A Geopolitical Catch-22? The Future of Foreign Intervention in Haiti
Chaos reigns in the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The former president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021, a gang coalition called Viv Ansanm controls approximately 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and violence and...
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LATAM & Caribbean
13 April 2025
The American economic embargo against Cuba has become an ostensibly permanent feature of international relations. Since 1960 the US government has applied some form of economic sanctions against Cuba.
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LATAM & Caribbean
21 January 2025
Biden’s last-minute Cuba deal: What is in store for Havana under a Trump presidency?
In a shock promulgation just a few days before the end of his administration, Biden has removed Cuba off of its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The deal, negotiated by the Catholic Church, releases 553 political prisoners, many of whom were arrested at Cuba’s 2021 protests. But with Trump being sworn in in a matter of days, what is the likelihood that this is all for nothing? The USA put an embargo on Cuba in 1960 as a result of Fidel Castro’s overthrow of US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and the subsequent expelling of US corporations for the construction of his socialist Cuba.
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LATAM & Caribbean
20 January 2025
From commodity trading, to consumer goods, to electricity, and now direct investment in infrastructure projects, China’s activities have been expanding in Latin America. Western media primarily focuses on the threat or problem this poses, given China’s perceived aggressive expansion of its spheres of influence – its growing lead over the US in other, non-economic areas (ambassadorial, journalistic, academic) contributes to these fears.
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