Jonathan Alpeyrie

“We are losing an entire generation due to drugs,” said Michael Cole, the founder of Lauren’s Wish Addiction Triage Center, an organization named after the daughter he lost to a fentanyl overdose. Growing up in West Virginia, Lauren was a strong student, athletic, and kind to others. At 16 she became addicted to opioids. She died on July 9, 2020, at the age of 26.

In this exclusive interview with the Geopoliticalmonitor, photographer Jonathan Alpeyrie discusses humanitarian and security risk stemming from a recent surge in drug trafficking along the Pacific route in the Americas. All photographs are taken by Alpeyrie on assignment and published with his permission.

For decades, the small Central American nation of El Salvador was known for two things: A hard fought proxy war between 1979 and 1992, and later, the taking over of the country by numerous gangs reigning supreme through violence and the drug trade. Today, El Salvador is a different country. With the coming into power of the current president Nayib Bukele and his hard-right government, El Salvador is the safest country in Central America. Over the past year and a half, the Bukele government has launched a merciless offensive against the various Maras criminal gangs which were in control of a large swath of the country.