Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Ivan Briscoe
El desarrollo alternativo: ¿una opción viable para Colombia?
El programa En el Consejo de Ministros del 3 de marzo, la Directora de Sustitución de Cultivos de Uso Ilícito, Gloria Miranda, expuso el nuevo plan del gobierno para acabar con el cultivo de la hoja de coca en el Catatumbo. Este plan fue adoptado en virtud del estado de conmoción interior mediante el Decreto 180 de 2025, que establece “(…) medidas excepcionales para desvincular a los núcleos familiares que dependan de cultivos de uso ilícito y promover su tránsito a economías lícitas (…)”.
Ecuador’s Descent Into Chaos
On August 9, just 11 days before the first round of Ecuador’s presidential election, one of the leading candidates, Fernando Villavicencio, was gunned down as he left a campaign rally in the north of the capital. Even in a region of the world that has long struggled with organized crime and drug violence, high-level political assassinations have become rare; for Ecuador, a country that has in the past been known for its relative calm, the killing seems particularly shocking.
The Coronavirus Is a Perfect Storm for Venezuela
Sign in and save to read later Print this article Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url Request Reprint Permissions A little insistence from Washington used to go a long way in Latin America. In 1954, for instance, the CIA and the U.S. State Department backed a coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz—an episode memorably fictionalized in the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel Fierce Times.
Gustavo Petro’s Big Win
Ivan Briscoe Foreign Affairs Magazine June 21, 2022 Colombia’s first leftist president could transform the region. Read Full Article »
Gustavo Petro’s Big Win
In the lead-up to the country’s presidential election, members of Colombia’s high society braced for disaster. A habitué of the gentlemen’s clubs of Bogotá noted a tide of “catastrophe-minded hysteria” rolling through the salons. Businesses introduced special clauses permitting contracts to be struck down if the worst came to pass. Bleak mutterings circulated through the military barracks.
Gustavo Petro’s Big Win
Sign in and save to read later Print this article Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Get a link Request Reprint Permissions In the lead-up to the country’s presidential election, members of Colombia’s high society braced for disaster. A habitué of the gentlemen’s clubs of Bogotá noted a tide of “catastrophe-minded hysteria” rolling through the salons. Businesses introduced special clauses permitting contracts to be struck down if the worst came to pass.
The Empire of the Anti-Imperialist: Dealing with Nicaragua’s Ortega
In his dotage as a globe-trotting interviewer, the late David Frost traveled to Nicaragua in 2009 with the aim of prising some truths out of its president. He asked the country’s leader Daniel Ortega, who had returned to power two years earlier, about the allegations of corruption, election fraud, and authoritarianism stacking up against him, and wondered whether the president might wish to rule forever.
¿UNA GANGA QUE VALE LA PENA HACER? BUKELE Y LAS PANDILLAS DE EL SALVADOR
IVAN BRISCOE Y TIZIANO BREDA16 DE DICIEMBRE DE 2020 No mucho antes de que la pandemia aterrizara en El Salvador, que a lo largo de los años ha sido el país centroamericano más afectado por la violencia de las pandillas, la nación avanzaba lentamente hacia una paz precaria. En el centro de San Salvador, la capital, las etiquetas pintadas por pandillas en las paredes de las carreteras habían sido pintadas con graffiti.
A Bargain Worth Making? Bukele and the Gangs of El Salvador
Not long before the pandemic touched down in El Salvador, which over the years has been the Central American country hardest hit by gang violence, the nation was inching toward a precarious peace. In downtown San Salvador, the capital, tags daubed by gangs on roadside walls had been painted over with graffiti. When we visited the nearby neighborhood of Iberia, a traditional gang fiefdom, their presence was also less apparent, though certain rules still had to be obeyed.
Deep Dish: Why China’s Aggression in the South China Sea Matters
May 21, 2020 | By Bonnie Glaser , Matthew Dalton, Brian Hanson While the world is distracted by COVID-19, China has been ramping up its military actions in hotly contested waters – the South China Sea. The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Bonnie Glaser and Lieutenant Commander Matthew Dalton, US Navy, join Deep Dish to examine China’s strategy and potential US policy options to ensure freedom of navigation remains intact.
The Coronavirus Is a Perfect Storm for Venezuela
A little insistence from Washington used to go a long way in Latin America. In 1954, for instance, the CIA and the U.S. State Department backed a coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz—an episode memorably fictionalized in the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel Fierce Times.
Deep Dish Special Edition: COVID-19 Lessons from Germany
May 14, 2020 | By Michael Camilleri , Ivan Briscoe, Brian Hanson April 30, 2020 | By Ariane Tabatabai, Suzanne Maloney, Brian Hanson April 27, 2020 | By Iain Whitaker How the Council is Responding to the Shutdown For an organization devoted to advancing the connections between Chicago and the world, the arrival of pandemic coronavirus has been as jarring as it is surreal. But the Chicago Council is adjusting to a new way of working.
The Collapse of Venezuela
Get the Magazine on Foreign Affairs magazine! subscribe Foreign Affairs Get in-depth analysis delivered right to your inbox. FOREIGN AFFAIRS THIS WEEK In-depth analysis delivered weekly - Subscribe to our newsletter, featuring our editors' top picks from the past week.
Venezuelans Are Ready for a Truce-Can the Government and Opposition Deliver?
On April 30, leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, among them National Assembly Chair and self-proclaimed interim President Juan Guaidó, gathered before dawn on a three-lane highway in Caracas to proclaim the start of “Operation Freedom,” an uprising to liberate Venezuela. Liberation, however, proved fleeting. A smattering of supposedly mutinous secret policemen had gathered for the uprising, yet within two hours of its proclamation, they had piled into their vehicles and sped off.
How Chavista Officials See the Crisis in Venezuela
As Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro tightens his white-knuckled grip on power, his supporters argue that in at least one respect, they were right all along. The first principle of Chavismo, the movement created by Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, is that Chavistas are locked in a permanent struggle with the imperialist United States and its lackeys in the Venezuelan oligarchy.
Colombia’s Coca Boom
Over the last seven years, the government of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has worked strenuously to dissociate the country from its image as a cocaine exporter. In 2016, Santos struck a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the guerrilla group that for years stood watch over coca farms and had become the wholesaler and arbiter of the cocaine trafficking business.
If there is hope in Colombia, then there can be hope everywhere
A woman reacts during the broadcast of the handing over of weapons of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) at the municipality of Mesetas, in Bogota, capital of Colombia, on 27 June 2017. Jhon Paz/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images. All rights reserved. "If there is hope in Colombia, then there can be hope everywhere". It is with these words that a taxi driver in Bogotá greeted me a few days ago.
Was a peace agreement ever possible in a country as complicated as Colombia?
Easy to imagine the president sizing up how that Nobel Prize would look on his mantelpiece. But the impact of the No vote will only become known in the fullness of time. On October 2, Colombians rejected the government’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). To say it caught the government by surprise would be an understatement: foreign minister María Ángela Holguín said in the aftermath of the plebiscite result that ‘there is no Plan B’.
Colombia: real peace in an era of phony war
While a "new Condor Plan" is rumoured to be stalking the region, Colombia might need more than a sideways glance from self-absorbed neighbours in the years to come. On a rough count over the month of August, six coups were said to be under way across Latin America.
Will The Colombia Peace Deal Last?
The last moments of Latin America’s longest war may be remembered as a race to the finish line.
The racialisation of marginality: sub-Saharan migrants stuck in Morocco
Migration in Morocco has been a topical international issue since an infamous case in 2005, which saw Moroccan police murder sub-Saharan migrants along the fences of Ceuta and Melilla. Here, as in other parts of north Africa, the further securistisation of border control has rendered clandestine crossing to Europe extremely hazardous.
The Brussels pathology
THE HAGUE - It is hard to know what the pathology is. But it is not so difficult to know where to find it. The atrocities in Brussels last week confirmed and repeated the new jihadist modus operandi on European soil, indifferent to the identity of victims so long as the site is crowded and the body count escalates like a round on Call of Duty. They confirmed and repeated public fears, as well as the hand-wringing of politicians and security officials in the aftermath.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Ivan
Contact Ivan, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack