Sadly I don't think they can be maimed, but they can certainly pass away at an alarming rate.
Harry now adopting a crocodile as a pet leaves me rather worried. I'm all the more worried that he seems to be having an increasing influence over the Venezuelan government. One thing is certainly true; South America will never be the same again.
for the moment, even if it comes at a cost, his influence is broadly positive, but he insists on annoying a certain person, who seems to have stationed half the British army on the borders
Was that Bolivia and Colombia that were at war with the regional powerhouses of Brazil and Chile (those South American flags are so similar, it's hard to keep them all apart)? Was that what Harry was trying to get the Venezuelans to realize, that Colombia (with its awe-inspiring '1' rating for military) was already royally screwed, that Venezuela would've been perfectly fine in attacking them?
Even with Harry's rich history of mistakes and shooting himself in the foot... Even with all that, berating Astarte and in the same breath suggesting 'Would help if you could send us some soldiers though' - that is just asking for it. He should consider himself very lucky that she only responded with a request for military access. I suspect that, sooner or later, she's going to fulfill Harry's ill-thought request by landing a half-million strong invasion army.
So, is Harry feeding people to his alligator, or to his coffee grinders, or both? Oh, and speaking of that: There's your problem: you went subtle on me. If the hint isn't hammered home with the force of a wrecking ball, I'm liable to completely miss it.
I've added a few footnotes, it was indeed opaque to the point of being incomprehensible. I've run this about 3 times (trying out options and so on), the main problem is that at the start Columbia is usually too powerful to beat & then later on picks up powerful allies like Mexico or the US. This time I spotted their alliance with Bolivia which is good as Brazil tends to declare war to get its cores back ... at the least my hope was the Columbian army would suffer attrition in that war & early on, for a small power, that is hard to replace.
I need to work out how to introduce this, but Harry has managed to recover a corner of Hell, he's using the heat to roast the coffee (& later to fire his pizza oven) and he's storing a few souls down there (such as Pedro). The alligator he's using for a few generalised assasinations.