Let's agree that the arrest of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman is not going to have an impact on the flow of drugs through Mexico into the rest of North America. That flow is driven by demand, and the demand for drugs in the U.S. and Canada will continue whether Guzman is in prison or out, alive or dead.

Criminal agendas could represent a critical "blind spot" in attempts to resolve armed conflicts in Latin America, capable of sabotaging negotiations and derailing entire peace processes. Taking these agendas into account in two ongoing peace processes in Latin America could now be the difference between sustainable peace and continued turmoil.

The 2013 list of the world's 50 most dangerous cities, compiled by an NGO from Mexico, shows how shifting criminal dynamics through the year have affected violence in places like Cali, San Salvador, Ciudad Juarez and Medellin. San Pedro Sula, Honduras, is the most dangerous city in the world for the third year in a row, according to the Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice.

The Internet, and particularly left-leaning U.S. blogs, are abuzz with a story in the Mexican newspaper El Universal alleging that the United States cut secret deals with one of Mexico's largest drug cartels. The nature of those deals change based on which English-language rewrite you're reading, but in the most extreme and widely circulated tellings, the U.S. allowed the Sinaloa cartel to "smuggle billions of dollars of drugs" and granted the organization "immunity and undisturbed drug trafficking" in exchange for information on rival cartels.