Ecuador's police was still fighting to control a jailhouse in Guayaquil after a riot by inmates led to clashes that have so far resulted in 118 deaths in what turned out to be one of Latin America's worst prison massacres.
Business ties between former U.S. officials and an ex-Mexican security minister charged with taking bribes from a drug cartel have raised questions about what U.S. law enforcement knew about him before his arrest this month.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez emerged battered from the trial and conviction of his brother last Friday after the US Justice Department concluded that the evidence showed narco-traffickers had bribed the president and his party.
Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador struggled on Friday to explain his government's capitulation to organized crime after Mexican authorities buckled in the face of an armed campaign of terror and released drug kingpin Ovidio Guzmán López just hours after capturing him.