Former Guatemala president Otto Pérez Molina in custody. All rights reserved.
How much of the outrage is left that brought hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans into the streets to protest violence in 2015, and the corruption of then-president Otto Pérez Molina? What momentum remains from the demonstrations in Honduras that demanded a strengthening of its judicial system and investigations into allegations of corruption against President Juan Orlando Hernández and his National Party that same year? And how much of that wave washed across El Salvador? The answer, at least in 2016, was very little.
But judicial reforms and criminal investigations in those three countries, known collectively as the Northern Triangle, continue to etch away at organized crime in the region, one of the world's most violent, corrupt and crime-ridden. To be sure, criminal prosecutions against money laundering, contraband, drug trafficking, and homicides, especially in Guatemala and El Salvador, are beginning to bear fruit in the courtrooms.
