Drug addiction in 1920s Chicago

In 2008, the Zetas entered Guatemala, which triggered the U.S. Marines getting involved in 2010

Meanwhile, the Zetas (and some ex-Kaibiles) explored ways in which urban gangs could be useful

William Finnegan and Jonathan Blitzer at The New Yorker do excellent work

The U.S. origins of MS-13 and Barrio 18

The opioid crisis by Sam Quinones (remember him?)

Legalization and decriminalization of drugs in Portugal, from Time magazine

Background paper on counternarcotics approaches globally from the Brookings Institute in 2008, and more recently

InsightCrime focuses on organized crime in Latin America

In Brazil, São Paulo was halted by coordinated prison gangs in 2007 and the favela City of God prepared for the Olympics with neighborhood policing in 2010 ...

And a Brazilian coda

But it was the middle classes that protested spending on the Olympics and then the FIFA World Cup  in 2014.

By the 2018 election, Brazilians from all walks of life had had it with the Worker's Party  

The new president, Jair Bolsonaro, spoke nostalgically of the military dictatorship of the 1970s and opened the Amazon back up to development.  He lost the presidency to Lula da Silva and the Worker's Party in 2022 -- barely.