December was the most violent month of 2012 for the metropolitan area of Caracas, with 542 homicide victims passing through the doors of the city’s Bello Monte morgue. The Venezuelan capital reported 512 homicides in November and 532 in October.

In total, 5,623 fatal victims were reported in Caracas alone for the year of 2012.

The December 2012 statistics are 15% lower than the corresponding month of the previous year, in which time 623 lives were taken by criminal violence. Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional, however, suggests that many bodies remain stored in hospitals before being transferred to the morgue in order to manipulate data.

Thirty-one violent deaths were reported in the city between the 28th and the 31st, a statistic which would increase to 43 if the early hours of 1 January were taken into account. Many victims were assaulted by armed suspects on motorcycles.

Security specialist Pedro Rangel of the organisation Incosec stated “the efficiency of programs and methods has been conspicuously absent, and I believe it will not improve in the short term”.

Venezuela’s official rate of homicides is 48 for every 100,000 inhabitants, a statistic that has made it the third most dangerous country in Latin America after Honduras and El Salvador, two countries in the grips of prolonged, violent gang conflicts. Its homicide rate also remains well above Mexico’s (18 for every 100,000 inhabitants) despite that country’s on-going battle between the military and narcotics traffickers.

New Years was a particularly violent time throughout the whole of Latin America, with approximately 200 deaths reported in the region.

São Paulo’s military police launched “Operation Saturation” on Monday, designed to crack down on drug trafficking, robberies, and assaults in and around the city’s largest favela, Paraisópolis. The campaign comes during a bloody wave of violence for Brazil’s largest city, during which police officers have been especially affected; some say the prison-based criminal organization, First Capital Command (PCC), is responsible for the officers’ deaths.

The southern neighbourhood of 80,000 residents has since been subject to heavy surveillance, including searches and horseback patrols, by 600 heavily armed military police officers. “The object is to face organized crime, to destroy its structure,” explained mayor Alexandre Gasparian, who oversaw the mission. The one-month operation will extend through other favelas as well.

So far, the operation has yielded 17 arrests and confiscated 170 kilograms of marijuana, ten kilograms of cocaine, 50 packets of synthetic drugs, five illegal firearms, and ammunition. The police have also discovered what they say is a 15-metre tunnel connecting several homes-turned-cocaine-refineries.

Suspicious documents have also been seized, including a letter instructing its addressee to make retaliation murders and a list of names, which some believe to be a death list for police officer victims. Authorities are investigating whether those names are actually those of military police officers and for what purposes they would have been used.

Crime is a charged topic in São Paulo’s as it copes with a bloody wave of killings, many of them of military police officers. With 144 deaths, September’s city homicide rate was more than double that of the previous month. At least 40 have died since Thursday alone, according to the Security Secretary, many of them by armed men in cars or motorcycles. In the past year, 98 police officers have been killed, most of them while off duty. Those killings have been followed by shootings of individuals suspected to be linked to robberies and drug trafficking, which the victims’ family members claim were acts of revenge from military police.

Lucas Tavares, spokesperson for the São Paulo city police, which investigated those crimes, says that Operation Saturation is not a reaction to the surge in violence. Rather, it was based on intelligence that indicated that criminals, weapons, and drugs were located in the favela. “It’s one of those operations that the military of police conducts periodically and it doesn’t have anything to do with the recent wave of murders. There will be more actions of this kind in the next few days.” However, on Monday, state Security Secretary Antonio Ferreira Pinto said that some of the police killings were instigated in Paraisópolis.

The press has suggested that the operation is linked to a power struggle between the military police and the PCC. The organization, which trafficked drugs and supported families of the incarcerated, arose in the 1990s. Some sources say it is the largest organized crime entity in Brazil and poses the greatest threat to the Sao Paulo police.

Law enforcement authorities deny that it holds any power at that scale. In an interview with Folha de São Paulo, Ferreira Pinto denied that more than 1,300 members working in 123 Brazilian cities. “The faction is much smaller than what they say. They don’t even have 30 or 40 individuals, who were imprisoned long ago and dedicate themselves to selling drugs. We have drowned that traffic with huge arrests.” Ferreira Pinto added that there is no proof of any link to between police killings and the PCC.

Among the detainees is Edson “Nene” Santos, 31, a suspected PCC member and assistant to Francisco Antonio Cesario da Silva, “Piauí”, an incarcerated drug lord who Tavares insists has no proved association with the PCC.

Months after an unsolved quadruple homicide in La Plata last November, police have identified a new suspect linked to their initial suspect, a 28-year old karate expert

The incident was discovered on 27th November, when police found the bodies of the suspect’s then-girlfriend, Barbara Santos, 29, along with the bodies of Santos’ mother, her 11-year old daughter, and her friend Marisol Pereyra.

Police initially responded to testimony from taxi driver Marcelo Tagliaferro, who had dropped Marisol off at Santos’ apartment in La Plata. Tagliaferro told police that that the suspect assured him there would be no need to return later for another ride, offering the driver money to comply.

The karate expert was detained for 38 days as a “necessary participant” in the crimes, accused of homicide and aggravated murder. He was released after a Court of Appeals ruling cited lack of merit in the evidence, which stalled the case.

More than five months after the incident, acting on traces of DNA matched at the crime scene, police have detained a new suspect. Sources close to the investigation claim the new individual, nicknamed “The Hyena”, has already confessed to carrying out the murders on behalf of the preliminary suspect.

The case remains under the prosecution of La Plata’s Álvaro Garganta, who will re-evaluate the circumstances in light of the new suspect’s confession and the karate expert’s role in coordinating the brutal attacks.

A warrant has been sent out from Bogotà, demanding the immediate arrest of 29 soldiers, among them high-rank generals, for the unjust assassination of civilians.

The troops are accused of murdering youths and presenting the victims as terrorist guerrillas killed in combat.

Colonel José Gabriel Castrillòn Garcia was a soldier captured in a series of high-profile arrests, accused of the homicide of four youths in Unguìa in February 2004. On that occasion the victims were alleged to be FARC (a guerilla terrorist group) militants and were claimed to have provoked the incident.

Three AK-47 guns, a landmine and communication radios were reported to have been found at the scene.

Rumours have surfaced that the young men were tricked by soldiers into leaving their homes, and then killed.

Families of the deceased say that their sons were promised jobs on banana plantations, and in agriculture and construction, only to be discovered dead just days later.

Human rights groups suggest that the recent arrests represent little, with the casebook still open on over 1000 suspicious deaths of a similar nature.

Colombian president Àlvaro Uribe has called for impartiality with regards to the latest reports.

“The law asks for total impartiality. We are trying to organise the judicial defence of our soldiers and police. Just as there are human rights violations, which will be punished, there are also falso accusations.”