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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***After a surge in gang violence in Ecuador in the first few days of the new year, the country’s president, Daniel Noboa, declared a state of emergency on Jan. 9, 2023, and said that there is now an “internal armed conflict” in the country. Since then, over 2,700 people have been arrested. The outburst of violence and Noboa’s crackdown, however, shed light on a critical issue plaguing Latin America – the increasing power and scope of armed gangs and cartels trafficking narcotics to the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world. We asked three experts to tell us more about this.Read more below. Ryan C. Berg Director, Americas Program Center for Strategic and International StudiesAs most recently witnessed in Ecuador, Latin America’s cartels have accreted sufficient power to challenge the state and its continued monopoly on violence. While cartels certainly exercised criminal governance and control over wide swaths of territory before COVID-19, the pandemic laid bare state weakness — the product of decades of entrenched corruption — and poorly constructed social safety nets in many countries. This often led to a recruitment bonanza. Moreover, these dynamics converged with a spike in global drug consumption, especially cocaine, which is at an all-time high, with unprecedented demand in Global North countries and even rising demand in Global South countries. Unfortunately, in several countries, such as Colombia and Mexico, we have witnessed governments give up the fight against organized crime — what one scholar adroitly termed “quiet quitting” — betting that political popularity rests in solving other challenges, rather than developing patient, long-term