Gang violence is spreading across Latin America

On October 27th 90 police officers, 22 vehicles and a water cannon stood ready in a field on the outskirts of Santiago, the capital of Chile. They were not there to guard a rowdy protest. Instead, they were there to monitor a narcofuneral: the burial of a young woman with alleged ties to drug-traffickers. Such an event, which often ends with bullets being shot into the air by mourners, would have once been unthinkable in Chile, long considered one of Latin America’s safest countries. But between May 2019 and September 2023 gangs held nearly 2,000 such funerals, according to Gabriel Boric, the president. In September Mr Boric sent a bill to Congress intended to limit them.