CQGR Crime in Latin America - Sage Publications

Crime in Latin AmericaCAN VIOLENT DRUG CARTELS BE CONTROLLED?

Fed by the drug trade with the United States, crime and corruption threaten Latin America as never be-

fore, reaching from the highest levels of government to the most-impoverished slums. Once largely fo-

cused on illegal drugs, crime cartels have now expanded into a complex range of activities from money

laundering to human trafficking. The crisis is prompting both U.S. and Latino experts and policy makers

to ask how governments and citizens can fight criminal groups, reduce social inequality and create new opportunities

for unemployed young people tempted by a life of crime. At the same time, the United States, which has long been

involved with Colombia’s fight against crime and drug trafficking, is increasingly concerned about the lawlessness and

horrific violence in Mexico, now threat-

ening to spill over into the U.S. While ex-

perts say the situation is likely to get worse

before it gets better, there are some

bright spots, including criminal justice re-

forms that have reduced crime and cor-

ruption in several Latin American countries.

An alleged member of the Beltrán-Leyva Organization,one of seven major drug car tels in Mexico, is brought

before the press last March 19 at Mexican Navyheadquar ters in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon State. In amajor victory against the car tels for President FelipeCalderón’s government, the gang’s notorious leader

was killed at his luxury hideout last December during a shootout with 200 Mexican marines.

SEPTEMBER 2010 VOLUME 4, NUMBER 9 PAGES 211-234 WWW.GLOBALRESEARCHER.COM

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F

212 CQ Global Researcher

THE ISSUES

213 • Can Latin America’s or-ganized crime groups becontrolled?• Can police corruption inLatin America be curtailed?• Do Latin Americanpoliticians have the politicalwill to curtail crime?

BACKGROUND

221 Cold War LegacyCriminal gangs acquiredarms and expertise fromearlier civil conflicts.

221 Impact of U.S. PoliciesU.S. immigration and drugpolicies strengthenedcriminal gangs.

222 Transition to DemocracyCriminals have foundnew ways to influencelawmakers.

222 Economic WoesNeoliberal reforms in the1980s and ’90s pushedmillions into poverty.

225 Youth ExplosionMany children born in the1970s and ’80s drifted intocrime.

CURRENT SITUATION

226 Violence in MexicoPresident Calderón’s anti-crime efforts are seen asfailing.

228 Drug Trade SpreadingCartels are expandinginto new areas of LatinAmerica.

OUTLOOK

228 Signs of OptimismDecreasing poverty may helpdefuse the region’s crime wave.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

214 Violent-Crime Levels Highest in Four NationsMexico, El Salvador,Guatemala and Hondurashad region’s worst rating.

216 Drug Cartels OperateThroughout MexicoSeven groups control vastswaths, including border regions.

218 Amid the Chaos, an Islandof CalmChile has a lot going for it,including a solid economy.

223 ChronologyKey events since 1980.

224 Cracking Down on CentralAmerican GangsDoes the “iron fist” approachwork?

227 At IssueDid Latin America’s transitionto democracy lead to risingcrime?

234 Voices From AbroadHeadlines and editorials fromaround the world.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

231 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

232 BibliographySelected sources used.

233 The Next StepAdditional articles.

233 Citing CQ Global ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

CRIME IN LATIN AMERICA

Cover : AFP/Getty Images/Dario Leon

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September 2010 213www.globalresearcher.com

Crime in Latin America

THE ISSUESI n April, Julio Scherer Gar-

cía, founder and editor ofProceso, a respected Mex-

ican magazine, received an ex-traordinary invitation: Ismael“El Mayo” Zambada, co-leaderof the violent Sinaloa Federa-tion — arguably Mexico’s mostpowerful drug-trafficking car-tel — was offering the veter-an journalist an interview. Theauthor of several books on or-ganized crime traveled deepinto the northern mountains tothe hideout of the feared reclusewith a $2-million bounty onhis head. 1

In a telling exchange, Scher-er asked Zambada whetherthe Mexican government mightever win the war against thecartels, a fight that has grownincreasingly savage in recentyears. “The problem with thenarco business is that it in-volves millions” of dollars,Zambada responded. “How doyou dominate that? As for thebosses, locked up, dead orextradited, their replacementsare already standing by.” 2

Zambada’s retort echoed the grimperception of many observers whohave watched as crime rates in Mex-ico and Latin America have swelledto staggering new heights in recentyears. 3 Organized crime groups haveunprecedented influence, reach andfirepower, making criminality lookmore and more like an unbeatablecancer that cannot be stamped outbecause it simply re-sprouts andspreads. Yet, while crime in manycountries in the region indeed seemsto be out of control, others countrieshave made remarkable progress beat-ing back criminal groups and estab-lishing the rule of law.

A December 2009 report from theInter-American Commission on HumanRights showed that for the first timein decades crime replaced unem-ployment as the region’s top worry.With an average of 25.6 homicidesper 100,000 people, Latin America’srate dwarfs Europe’s rate of 8.9 per100,000. 4 Other polls have demon-strated a similar rising concern aboutcrime. In the 2009 Latinobarómetropoll of 18 countries in Latin Ameri-ca, published annually by The Econ-omist, citizens in seven countries citedcrime as the main concern. 5

The current regional crime waveprobably started in the 1980s, according

to Marcelo Bergman, a pro-fessor in the department oflegal studies at the Center forEconomic Research and Edu-cation, or CIDE, in MexicoCity. Since then, crime hasexpanded into a complexrange of activities, from pi-rated DVD sales to highly so-phisticated money launderingand human trafficking.

As recently as Aug. 25, thebullet-pocked bodies of 72people were found by Mexi-can authorities on a ranch inTamaulipas State, in northeastMexico. Officials believe theywere migrants heading to theUnited States who were killedby a drug gang after resistingdemands for money. 6

“The nature of the threatswe face here, and throughoutthe world, has become bothextremely localized and high-ly globalized,” Ronald K. Noble,Secretary General of Interpol,the international police agency,said in Chile in 2009. “Andmarket forces — or marketopportunities — have moti-vated criminals that used tospecialize to diversify intonew areas of activity.” 7

Most organized crime groups in theregion — from Argentina to Mexico —are now involved not only with drugs,money laundering and human traffick-ing but also arms, smuggling, robbery,kidnapping, extortion, assassinations andcounterfeiting. Many experts have notedthe evolution of criminal groups in LatinAmerica into transnational enterprisesthat conduct business across several con-tinents. Zambada’s Sinaloa Federation,for example, may buy chemicals fromChina to produce methamphetamines,manufacture the drugs in Mexico andthen ship them to the United States orEurope. A separate division in the sameorganization may be responsible for

BY ELIZA BARCLAY

AFP/Getty Im

ages/O

rlando Sierra

Members of the Mara Salvatrucha-18 gang are arrested inMixco, Guatemala, in September 2005 after fighting betweenrival gangs in a juvenile prison near Guatemala City left at least17 inmates dead. Conflicts between gangs in Central America,

as well as in Mexico, are a major cause of violence.


moving cocaine from Colombia toVenezuela to West Africa to Europe. 8

Other crime groups maintain tight andfierce control of vast urban territories:Most of Rio de Janeiro’s 1,000-odd slums,or favelas, for example, are still moreor less within the grip of three drug-trafficking gangs, and the police enteronly reluctantly. 9

The human cost of the groups’ ex-pansion and territorial disputes isshocking. In Mexico, more than28,000 people have been killed indrug-related violence since PresidentFelipe Calderón took on the drugcartels in December 2006. 10 Until re-cently, Brazil and Colombia also hadabsurdly high death tolls, with gangs,police and military factions battling inthe streets, but now the highest mur-der rates in the region from drug-related violence belong to Guatemala,Honduras and El Salvador.

Astonishingly, however, the highestoverall homicide rate in the regionbelongs to Venezuela, with more than16,000 people killed in 2009, or 50 per-cent more than in Mexico during thesame period. 11 Crime’s impact on or-dinary people is also measured throughvictimization surveys, which askwhether a family member was thevictim of crime in the last 12 months.Recent surveys show victimization ratesrising significantly across the region inthe last 15 years. Interestingly, thebiggest increases are in personal theft,not violent crime. 12

Feminicide is another horrifyingproblem in the region. In Ciudad Juárez,near the Texas border, more than 370Mexican women have been murderedin a spate of killings since 1993. 13

The majority were working-classwomen, the most vulnerable sector ofthe border population, according toKathleen Staudt, a professor of politicalscience at the University of Texas at ElPaso. One in three was a young teenwho was killed and sexually tortured.The overwhelmed Juárez authoritiesrarely investigated the murders.


Violent-Crime Levels Highest in Four NationsAmong countries in Latin America, Mexico and three countries in Central America — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — have the highest levels of violent crime, according to the Global Peace Index established by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace. Nicaragua, Chile and Uruguay have the lowest levels of violent crime. The index rates 149 nations on 23 indicators of safety and security.

Source: “Global Peace Index,” Institute for Economics and Peace, 2010, www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/PDF/2010/2010%20GPI%20Results%20Report.pdf

Level of Violent Crime in Latin America (1 = lowest, 5 = highest)

MEXICO

GUATEMALA

COSTA RICA

EL SALVADOR

PANAMA

COLOMBIA

VENEZUELA

GUYANA

ECUADOR

B R A Z I L

P E R U

B O L I V I A

PARAGUAY

ARGENTINA

URUGUAY

CHILE

FALKLAND/MALVINASISLANDS

GALAPAGOSISLANDS

Gulf of Mexico

C a r i b b e a n S e a

P A C I F I C

O C E A N

N O R T H

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

Cape Horn

U N I T E D S TAT E S

CUBAJAMAICA

BELIZE

DOMINICANREPUBLIC

PUERTO RICO

TRINIDAD &TOBAGO

SURINAM

FRENCH GUIANA

BAHAMAS

HAITIHONDURAS

Level of Violence (1=lowest; 5=highest)

1

2

3

4

5

(none)

NICARAGUA


Guatemala has similarly high rates.Between 2001 and 2006, the country’sfemale homicide rate increased by117 percent while the population onlyincreased by 8 percent, according toa 2007 U.N. study. 14

The regional predilection for crimeis typically explained by three factors:high economic inequality, a ballooningpopulation of youth without viable eco-nomic opportunities and weak policeforces and law enforcement institutions.With few exceptions — notably Uruguayand Costa Rica — Latin America hasthe highest levels of income inequali-ty in the world. Unemployment in theregion is at 21 percent, according tothe annual Latinobarómetro publicopinion poll. And the poor often haveonly two options for steady work: theinformal economies or organized crime.“There are thousands of candidates in[Ciudad Juárez] for recruitment [into drugcartels], because of their level of socialexclusion,” Teresa Almada, director ofthe CASA youth development center inCiudad Juárez, says. “They’re young andpoor and disposable.” 15

To make matters worse, law en-forcement is often weak or corrupt.Because of the lack of transparencyand efficiency in the criminal justicesystem in Mexico, for example, fewerthan 25 percent of the crimes are re-ported and just 1 or 2 percent resultin a jail sentence, according to a 2010report by the Trans-Border Institute atthe University of San Diego. 16 In mostcountries (with a few exceptions likeChile and Costa Rica), military and lawenforcement agencies accommodatedrug traffickers and organized crime,making corruption one of the region’smost intractable problems.

Thus, Colombia, Mexico andGuatemala have been forced to turnto the military for crime fighting. Yetthe military is often linked to humanrights abuses. In its pursuit of drugtraffickers Mexico’s army has beenlinked to forced disappearances, actsof torture and illegal raids. Mexico’s Na-

tional Human Rights Commission hasreceived almost 4,000 complaints ofarmy abuses since 2006. 17

Not surprisingly, crime has becomea hot political issue in the region,consistently ranking high among vot-ers’ concerns. In recent presidentialelections in Guatemala and Colom-bia, candidates campaigned on “tough

on crime” platforms. But “iron fist” ormano dura policies in Central Amer-ica in particular largely have failed tocrush the gangs, succeeding only inalienating local communities. 18

The emergence of Mara Salvatrucha(MS-13) and other violent Central Amer-ican gangs has become a high-priorityregional security issue. The major gangin Central America, MS-13 wasformed during the 1980s by Salvado-rans in Los Angeles, reportedly forself-protection from other gangs. Intime, both the MS-13 and its Los An-geles rival Mara Salvatrucha 18 (M-18)

would expand within Central Amer-ica and beyond. Yet many expertsfeel that Central American gangs alsomake an easy scapegoat for govern-ments unwilling to address the rootcauses of the violence: poverty, eas-ily available firearms and the socialfragmentation that comes with highemigration rates.

Of course, the U.S. appetite for drugsremains a central factor in Latin Amer-ica’s crime problem. At the same time,the U.S. role in crime fighting in theregion has changed dramatically in re-cent years. In the 1980s, the UnitedStates covertly funneled money andarms directly to right-wing militias inCentral America to fight leftist guerril-la movements. Arms still flow freelyover the border to Mexican cartels, butthe U.S. government now has dedicat-ed significant funds to combating crime.

The Bush administration’s MéridaInitiative committed $1.4 billion to

Illegal handguns cover a square in Caracas, Venezuela, as Interior and Justice Minister TareckEl Aissami on June 23, 2009, displays hundreds of seized weapons to be destroyed by thegovernment. Venezuela has the region’s highest homicide rate; nearly 44,000 people werekilled in the country since 2007, or 50 percent more than in Mexico during the same period.

AFP/Getty Im

ages/Juan Barreto


help Mexico fight drug cartel violence.The Obama administration is current-ly working to extend Mérida to Cen-tral America. And over the last decadethe United States has delivered an es-timated $7 billion in military and de-velopment aid to help Colombia fightdrugs and terrorism, while the U.S.military presence in Colombia has slow-ly decreased. 19

Yet, as the Inter-American Dialoguethink tank said in a 2009 report onregional relations, “after years of dis-appointment with the United States,Latin American governments are dis-trustful of Washington and ambivalentabout the U.S. role in the region.”Helping to fight crime is one area

where the United States still has anopportunity to improve its standing. 20

As Latin Americans grapple withdrug cartels and rising crime — andAmericans along the Mexican borderlook on with increasing concern —here are some of the key issues beingdiscussed:

Can Latin American organizedcrime groups be controlled?

Though independent, small- andmedium-sized organized crime groupsare operating in every country in theregion, the Mexican cartels nowdominate the trade in drugs andother goods and form alliances withsmaller groups. The Mexicans manage

complex supply chains running fromthe coca or marijuana field all theway to the consumer.

Today, there are seven main Mexicancartels: the Sinaloa Federation, theGulf Cartel, the Beltrán-Leyva Organi-zation, La Familia Michoacán, the CarilloFuentes Organization, Los Zetas andthe Arellano Felix Organization. 21

Market savvy and prosperousenough to buy off officials through-out the supply chain, the cartels aremore powerful and better at what theydo than the Colombian mega cartelsof the 1980s and ’90s ever were, manycrime experts say. And even with bil-lions of dollars spent, the authoritieshave not fared well against them.

John Bailey, director of the MexicoProject in the Department of Govern-ment at Georgetown University, saysthe crime syndicates have a relativelyeasy time recruiting new members —or replacing members who are killedor arrested — and solidifying theirpresence in a community or country.“The growth of prisons, the over-crowding of prisons and the impunityfor committing crimes creates incen-tives for people inside of prisons to re-turn to the world of crime in whichthe costs of engaging in crime are fair-ly light,” he says.

The celebratory culture and mys-tique that have blossomed aroundcartel leaders may add to the diffi-culty of dismantling their organiza-tions. Mexico’s most wanted crimi-nal, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, wholeads the Sinaloa Federation with Zam-bada, is a legend in some Mexicanregions where the federation does itsrecruiting. When Guy Lawson, a re-porter from Rolling Stone, visited ElChapo’s home state of Sinaloa in 2008,he found a community that bothrevered — and feared — El Chapo.

“In the imagination of Sinaloa, he islike a god from an ancient world: kind,humble, rich, generous, mysterious,” Law-son writes. “Tales of his exploits abound— his fearlessness, his taste in women,


Drug Cartels Operate Throughout MexicoSeven drug cartels control vast swaths of Mexico, including several areas along the U.S.-Mexican border. Violence in Mexico has reached unprecedented levels as a result of both government efforts to confront the cartels using military force and territorial inÞghting among the cartels. Since President Felipe Calderón launched his challenge to the cartels in December 2006, more than 28,000 people have been killed. Most are involved in drug trafÞcking, but an increasing number are civilians and military troops. In recent years, several cartels have expanded southward, into Central America.

Source: This graphic is republished with the express permission of Stratfor ; Dec. 16, 2009

Areas of Cartel Inßuence in Mexico


his generosity. The area has even givenbirth to an entire genre of popularsongs known as narcocorridos, whichglorify the triumphs and travails of Chapoand his rivals.” 22

The glorification of El Chapo’s ex-ploits has been difficult for the author-ities to counter, even when Sinaloansand other Mexicans are confronted withindisputable, and frequent, evidence ofhis brutality and the heavy toll of in-fighting between crime groups.

But while the cartels’ reach and swayare daunting, some observers believethey may not be impossible to break.Adam Isacson, a senior associate in theregional security policy program at theWashington Office on Latin America,says that Colombia’s success in van-quishing its cartels offers some clues asto what may work. “First, we know thatyou need a government in all territo-ries, including the jungle, the borderzones, the slums, all of the places thathave traditionally been ungoverned,”says Isacson. “And you have to have ajustice system that’s present.”

On August 30, in fact, federal officialssaid they had captured Edgar Valdez Vil-larreal, one of Mexico’s most ruthless druglords. Indeed, the arrest was seen as es-pecially significant because the U.S.-bornValdez (nicknamed La Barbie because ofhis blond hair and blue eyes) had beenbattling to control the Beltrán-Leyva gang,causing widespread bloodshed.

Valdez is the third major Mexicandrug figure to have been captured orkilled recently. In December Navy spe-cial forces officers killed Arturo Beltrán-Leyva in a dramatic firefight. And inJuly Mexican army troops killed Igna-cio “Nacho” Coronel, the so-called Kingof Crystal, said to have shipped manytons of crystal methamphetamine acrossthe border.

On the same day Valdez was ar-rested, federal police announced that3,200 officers — 10 percent of the force— had been dismissed this year afterundergoing lie detector tests and otherprocedures to uncover corruption. 23

Isacson emphasizes the importanceof intelligence and witness-protectionprograms, in which countries like Mex-ico and Guatemala have not investedenough. “In areas that have had suc-cess against organized crime, what seemsto matter most is not superior fire-power, or the police or military, but avery well-funded and trained inves-tigative intelligence unit that is not usedfor political purposes,” Isacson notes.

Colombia’s intelligence unit playeda key role in dismantling the Medellínand Calí drug cartels in the 1990s. Withsufficient investment and political will,Mexico could achieve similar successes,Isacson says.

Costa Rica has also been able tokeep organized crime groups at baywith a strong national police unit. “It’snot easy for the drug cartels to oper-ate in Costa Rica,” says Isacson, thoughthey are making short stops along thecoast en route from Colombia north.

Author Sam Logan, the founder ofSouthern Pulse Networked Intelligence,an open source network on securityissues in Latin America, thinks the car-tels are vulnerable. Logan, who is writ-ing a book about Mexico’s Los Zetascartel, believes that the Mérida Initiativeand the newfound political will andcooperation between American andMexican intelligence officials may proveformidable over time.

“I don’t know that we can beatthem entirely, but I predict that in abouteight years we may be able to get toa place where these guys can be hitharder and faster,” Logan says.

“In Colombia now we see dozensof baby cartels instead of big ones.They are much easier to deal with,and maybe Mexico can get there, too.”

Meanwhile, law enforcement agenciesare getting better at hitting cartels whereit hurts most — their wallets — accordingto Andrew Tammaro, an officer with theU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforce-ment’s Bulk Cash Smuggling Center.Tammaro, who recently helped recover$41 million in Latin American drug

money hidden in cargo containers, saidlaw enforcement agencies are more read-ily coordinating and sharing intelligenceacross borders, “offering greater poten-tial for individual jurisdictions to find rel-evance in seemingly unconnected events.This increased capacity can effectivelydisrupt and ultimately dismantle . . . crim-inal organizations or the illicit systemsthey employ,” Tammaro wrote. 24

Can police corruption in LatinAmerica be curtailed?

Police corruption is widespread inLatin America, enabling criminals tobuy off authorities when caught red-handed with illicit goods and makingcriminals’ well-being a higher priorityfor police than protecting the citizen-ry. According to the polling firm Mitof-sky International, police agencies areamong the least respected of Mexicaninstitutions, with just one in 10 Mexi-cans saying they respect the police. 25

Police in much of Latin America re-ceive low pay, which makes them vul-nerable to bribes. The United NationsSpecial Rapporteur on extrajudicialexecutions, Philip Alston, recommend-ed raising police salaries in a report atthe end of his mission in Brazil in 2007.“Low pay for police leads to a lack ofprofessional pride and encouragespolice to engage in corruption, to takesecond jobs, and to form ‘extermina-tion groups,’ ‘death squads,’ ‘militias’ andother vigilante groups to supplementtheir pay,” he wrote. 26

Edgardo Buscaglia, director of theInternational Law and Economic De-velopment Center at the University ofVirginia School of Law and currently avisiting professor at Mexico’s ITAM Uni-versity, thinks anti-corruption measuresthat have the teeth to prosecute politi-cians are essential to police reforms.“Police corruption is like the grandsonof political corruption,” says Buscaglia.

He believes that only two countries,Colombia and Chile, have been ableto move forward with anti-corruptionmeasures and political reforms at all


levels. “In Colombia 32 percent of na-tional legislators were judicially chargedwith organized crime,” says Buscaglia.“That had a lot to do with hamper-ing police corruption in Colombia.”

So police reform cannot happen untilpolitical parties agree to put a stop tocorruption, he says, which hasn’t yethappened in Mexico and many othercountries in the region.

Unfortunately, police work is be-coming less and less attractive for ed-ucated men and women since the car-tels have ramped up their attacks onpolice officers and commanders. Since2006, more than 1,100 of Mexico’stens of thousands of drug-relateddeaths were soldiers, police officersand officials, according to PresidentCalderón. 27

“I believe that the number of attacks[on police] has increased, and now theyare more selective attacks, on commandcenters, and the most obvious reason isthey are trying to intimidate those lead-ers who try to combat organized crimeand also to frighten the rank and file sothey don’t act,” said José Luis Piñeyro,a professor at the National AutonomousUniversity of Mexico. 28


While organized crime groups are terrorizing many LatinAmerican countries, Chile remains an island of rela-tive tranquility. Victimization surveys show crime rates

rising throughout the region in the last decade, but in Chilethey have not grown markedly. For example, 37.8 percent of12,000 Chileans surveyed recently had been the victims of arobbery or attempted robbery in the last six months, accord-ing to the Citizen Peace Foundation’s most recent annual sur-vey, released last October. The figure was slightly lower thanthe 2008 rate, though 7 percent higher than the 2000 rate. 1

By comparison, Argentina in 2005 had a victimization rate of47 percent, while Mexico had a rate of 63 percent, accordingto the Latinobarómetro poll. 2

What’s Chile’s secret? Some say it’s the Carabineros — Chile’snational police force, an arm of the Ministry of National De-fense. Widely considered to be the most professional policeforce in Latin America, the Carabineros spend more time oncrime prevention and civic education than their counterparts inother countries. They are also considered to be among the leastcorrupt, especially when compared to the scandal-prone forcesin Central America and Brazil.

Some also argue that Chile’s swift economic growth in re-cent years, thanks in part to a strong export sector for prod-ucts such as fruit and salmon, has created a larger, better-ed-ucated middle class than its neighbors, making crime a lessappealing, and less necessary, path to riches. The World Eco-nomic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2009-2010ranked Chile as the 30th most competitive country in theworld and the most competitive in Latin America, with crimescarcely a problem for doing business there. 3

Chile’s geography and ecology may also have insulated it fromthe reach of the drug cartels. It has no Andean soil suitable forgrowing coca, nor is it along any trafficking routes. Michael Shifter,president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, also citesseveral cultural factors that may keep crime at bay in Chile.

“Chile is a very institutional, structured society, much moreso than its neighbors,” Shifter says. “A sense of control has beenhistorically important, and governments of the last 20 years

have made a number of reforms to the police that have yield-ed positive results.”

Reforms include the expansion of the forces, the developmentof community policing and a Block Watch Plan, similar to Neigh-borhood Watch in the United States.

Drugs are also shunned in Chile, more so than its economiccounterparts in South America — Brazil and Argentina — whichhave both seen escalating ecstasy and cocaine use among themiddle and upper classes in recent years. 4

“Chile is a little like the U.S. about the drug issue; drugsare somehow seen as a moral failing,” Shifter says. “A socialconservatism makes them very cautious about the spreading ofdrugs because it could upset the order. Chileans are very con-cerned about what would upset order.”

Indeed, even if crime rates remain relatively low, there is aperception among Chileans that it is a serious problem, per-haps in part because the media tend to sensationalize crimecases and frighten the public.

“Victimization surveys suggest crime has been steady for thelast five years or so,” said Andres Baytelman, executive direc-tor of the Citizen Peace Foundation. “But at the same time, itis certainly true that fear of crime has consistently grown.” 5

Yet experts say they’re not particularly concerned aboutcrime in Chile spiraling out of control. If anything, continuedeconomic growth and social vigilance may help push rates evenfurther down over time.

— Eliza Barclay

1 “Entregan resultados de Índice Paz Ciudadana-Adimark,” Citizen PeaceFoundation press release, Oct. 22, 2009, www.pazciudadana.cl/prensa_interior.php?idPub=55.2 Ibid.3 “The Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010,” www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm.4 Alexei Barrionuevo, “Ecstasy Ensnares Upper-Class Teenagers in Brazil,”The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/world/americas/15ecstasy.html.5 Gideon Long, “Is Chile Imagining a Crime Wave?” Time, Oct. 22, 2008,www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1852730,00.html#ixzz0sr5rnsTj.

Amid the Chaos, an Island of CalmChile has a lot going for it, including a solid economy.


Others are not so pessimistic aboutMexico. In a recent article, three Mex-ico experts — Andrew Selee, directorof the Mexico Institute at the WoodrowWilson International Center for Schol-ars; David Shirk, a fellow at the cen-ter and an associate professor at theUniversity of San Diego; and Eric Olson,a senior adviser at the center — arguedthat the government has been sendinga stronger signal that corruption will notbe tolerated.

“Recent arrests and prosecutionshave brought down the head of Mex-ico’s Interpol office, senior officials inthe attorney general’s office, three statepublic security chiefs, hundreds of stateand local police officers and a fewmayors and local police commanders,”they wrote. “Meanwhile, Mexico is slow-ly cultivating a culture of lawfulness,thanks to courageous journalists andnew civic organizations calling forgreater accountability. Far more canbe done, but this is a good start.” 29

Other countries with serious policecorruption also are making headway.Brazil’s two biggest cities, in particular,are starting to see some positive changesafter decades of corruption. São Pauloreformed its police force in the 1990s.And in many favelas (slums) in Rio deJaneiro, intelligence units known as UPPs(for Pacifying Police Units) have beenestablished by José Beltrame, the secu-rity secretary in the state governmentand a former federal police chief. Bel-trame plans to install 40 UPPs — newlyrecruited and specially trained to resistcorruption -- covering 500,000 residentsover the next four years. 30

Los Angeles Police Chief WilliamBratton wrote recently that heavy in-vestments in law enforcement and var-ious reforms can enable Latin Ameri-ca to achieve the same significant dropsin crime and police corruption seenin Los Angeles and New York. 31

Bratton and co-author William An-drews acknowledge that Latin Ameri-ca’s crime problem is far worse thanwhat the United States encountered in

the most challenging era of the late1980s and early ’90s. “Crime growsunchecked in Latin America for thesame reason it grew in the UnitedStates,” they wrote. “The institutionalresponse from the police and the crim-inal justice system has been whollyinadequate and uncoordinated.” 32

Bratton and Andrews make a num-ber of specific recommendations forLatin America, starting with the de-centralization and reorganization ofcommand structures to improve polic-ing at the local level. Districts shouldbe downsized to 150,000 people orfewer, they say. (Many police districtsin Latin American cities cover com-munities of more than 300,000 peo-ple.) With decentralization, “communi-ty members begin to recognize thatthe police are helping, not hurting,their neighborhoods,” they write. Theyalso say police departments must gen-erate better crime data through bettercrime reporting. 33

But they note that “a decentralizedpolice department must still be cen-trally controlled to guard against cor-ruption, incompetence and indiffer-ence,” primarily through record-keepingsystems that closely monitor policeofficers. Police districts also need“quality control units,” or units tohold negligent or corrupt cops ac-countable, and well-staffed and well-equipped internal affairs and corruption-investigation squadrons. 34

Do Latin American politicians havethe political will to curtail crime?

Public security, corruption and crimehave roiled the careers of many a politi-cian in Latin America — and destroyedthe careers of some. For instance, ManuelNoriega, Panama’s former military dic-tator, served several years in prison inthe United States (and is now in prisonin France) on drug trafficking, racke-teering and money laundering charges.

Today several leaders remain ques-tionably committed to tackling crimein a serious way, according to experts,

most notably in Venezuela andGuatemala. In Caracas, Venezuela’s cap-ital, there are 200 homicides per 100,000population, one of the five highestrates in the world, according to thenonprofit organization Venezuelan Vi-olence Observatory (OVV). And theVenezuelan National Counter Kidnap-ping Commission reports a frighteningincrease in kidnappings throughoutthe country since 2006; kidnappingsfrom 2008 to 2009 increased between40 and 60 percent alone. 35

President Hugo Chávez has ac-knowledged that crime, insecurityand violence are “becoming a threatfor the [social] revolution.” In one ofhis lengthy speeches on his Sundaytelevision program, Chávez vowed “todefeat the enemy of the revolution thatis crime: from the little punk . . . tothose much better organized that robbanks, kidnap people, commit homi-cides and the paramilitary.” 36

Chávez is acknowledging that ac-celerating crime is a problem becausehe knows that it makes him vulnerablepolitically, says Michael Shifter, presidentof the Inter-American Dialogue.

“Crime has gotten a lot worse underChávez in the last 10 years, and he isbeginning to respond,” says Shifter. “Theproblem is that these efforts are gener-ally pretty improvised, and inefficient.This is a product of the way he hasgoverned the country: He makes all de-cisions and has politicized everything.”

Shifter adds that Chávez may behinting at the need to develop a pro-fessional police force, but that “it’s veryhard for responses to be effective” be-cause every government institution hasbecome weak under his ironclad grip.

Guatemala is led by a president witha similarly dubious commitment tofighting crime and corruption. UnderÁlvaro Colóm, drug and gang-relatedviolence seems to be spiraling out ofcontrol. Last year, a prominent lawyerwas assassinated after accusing Colómof colluding in the murder of a busi-nessman who had fallen into ill favor


with the government. The public re-sponded angrily, with many demand-ing that Colóm temporarily step downin the face of apparent corruption af-fecting the highest levels of govern-ment; Colóm, however, refused to standaside. As a publication for mayorsnoted, “the national press has describedthe government [of Guatemala] as pre-siding over the weakest and most in-efficient judicial system of all time, whichamong other things has been infiltrat-ed by organized crime.” 37

In nearby Colombia, however, thingsare looking considerably rosier. DanielMejía, a faculty member of the EconomicDevelopment Research Center at the Uni-versity of the Andes in Bogotá, saysnewly elected president Juan ManuelSantos has made security a crucial partof his political platform and will buildon the success of his predecessor,Alvaro Uribe.

“Santos is very close to the gener-al chief of police [Gen. Oscar Naran-jo] who is probably the best directorof police we have ever had,” saidMejía. “Naranjo knows very well whatis going on and has identified the localgangs in Medellín and Calí, is negoti-ating with them, and is breaking smallcartels that are operating to preventthem from growing.”

But Kevin Casas-Zamora, a seniorfellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank and a former vice president ofCosta Rica, says it may be prematurefor Colombia’s political class to pat it-self on the back. Casas-Zamora notesthat drug lords have been buying pro-tection from political parties and can-didates in Mexico and Colombia sincethe 1970s.

“Since then,” he writes, “there arereasons to think that the drug-politicslink has grown deeper in the region.”He notes that in February Mexico’sNational Action Party, or PAN, shelvedall primaries in the border state ofTamaulipas because of the loomingthreat of drug cartel influence. 38


Slum ClearanceWith Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, set to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, police arefocusing new attention on the city’s hundreds of crime-ridden favelas, or slums,including Santa Marta (top), nestled in the shadow of Rio’s high rises. In an effortto reduce the favelas’ high murder rates and stop shoot-outs with drug gangs, policeare attempting to institute less confrontational community policing techniques. Inthe Cantagalo favela, in the famed Ipanema suburb, a young man is questionedby a Special Police Operations officer (bottom) seeking drugs and guns.

Getty Im

ages/Spencer Platt (both)


BACKGROUNDCold War Legacy

Petty criminals and criminal groupshave been fixtures in Latin Amer-

ica for at least a century. But the on-going crime wave in many countriesin the region has ties to a culture ofviolence and lawlessness left overfrom the Cold War conflicts of the sec-ond half of the 20th century. In par-ticular in Central America, violence isoften seen as an acceptable means ofresolving conflict, in part because ofthe limited and sometimes wanton jus-tice meted out by the government.Each country’s story is different, butthe criminal gangs in Central Ameri-ca, Colombia and to some extent Peruoften have benefited in some wayfrom their expertise in guerrilla war-fare and the arms they acquired.

The 1960s saw the rise of the Rev-olutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,a Marxist guerrilla organization knownas FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolution-arios de Colombia) and the paramili-tary National Liberation Army (ELN).Both groups battled the government ina ruthless civil war that only subsidedin recent years under former PresidentUribe. But today the FARC and para-military groups remain entrenched inthe drug trade because they are “tena-cious, skilled at logistical organizationand also heavily armed (with moneyacquired by growing and selling cocaleaf and opium poppies),” writes AlmaGuillermoprieto, a respected Mexican-American journalist and author. 39

In Nicaragua, El Salvador andGuatemala, conflicts between the stateand left-wing rebel groups simmeredfor decades, exacting a traumatic toll:hundreds of thousands of deaths, dis-appearances, refugees and internallydisplaced people. Many have argued

that the weapons and veterans left be-hind from those conflicts have fed di-rectly into the current drug violence,as former soldiers join gangs or trainnew recruits.

Even though it is not technicallyat war, Guatemala remains amongthe world’s least peaceful nations,ranking 112 out of 149 in a recentGlobal Peace Index. Nicaragua ranked64, far behind more peaceful CostaRica, which ranked 26. However,four other Latin American nationswere rated as even more violent thanGuatemala: Haiti, Venezuela, Hon-duras and Colombia. 40 Members ofthe former Guatemalan special forces,known as Kabiles, also have ties to LosZetas, whose members include formerMexican special forces officers, accordingto author Logan of Southern Pulse.

In Guatemala, thousands of womenhave been the victims of sexual vio-lence, torture and assassination. Thisculture of violence towards womenis partly rooted in the legacy of thecivil war, when the government trainedits soldiers and other mercenaries torape and attack women, accordingthe Commission for Historical Clarifi-cation. Today, more than 3,800 womenand girls have been murdered inGuatemala since 2000, and in 2008feminicide was recognized as a pun-ishable crime.

But Victoria Sanford, an anthropol-ogist at the City University of NewYork and author of Buried Secrets:Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala,says that the fact that the state neverprosecuted the killers and rapists ofthe 1980s violence leaves little hopethat the murderers in today’s wave offeminicide will be pursued. 41 “Weshould be able to find out who is im-plicated, who gave the orders, but allof these cases are just sitting in courtsomewhere,” says Sanford. “And todaythe impunity rate is 98 percent, so peo-ple who may be tempted to do thesecrimes know they probably will notgo to jail if they do.”

Impact of U.S. Policies

U.S. efforts to aid Latin America haveoften backfired, helping to strength-

en the regional networks of organizedcrime groups and sparking large-scaleimmigration waves to the United States.In El Salvador alone, hundreds of thou-sands of people during the 1980s civilwar were given asylum status and re-settled in Los Angeles, Houston andWashington, among other cities.

As young men fresh from a brutalcivil war found their footing in the Unit-ed States, some were sucked into gangculture. The MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha,a major Central American gang, wasformed during the 1980s by Salvadoransin Los Angeles. In time, both the MS-13and its rival MS-18 would expand with-in Central America and beyond, thanksin part to a U.S. decision to deport gangmembers to their countries of origin. Be-tween 2000 and 2004, an estimated20,000 criminals were sent back to Cen-tral America. 42

U.S. drug policy also has had amajor influence in the reshaping ofcartel networks and power. In the 1980sand early ’90s, cocaine transport routesthat ran through the Caribbean andSouth Florida were eventually shutdown by American law enforcement.Yet the demand was too great and theprofits too high to abandon traffick-ing. In time, cocaine and other drugsstarted flowing through Mexico andacross the border in trucks, carried byhuman “mules” through the desert andby air and sea. In 1990, half the co-caine smuggled into the United Statespassed through Mexico; today it is90 percent, according to the Councilon Foreign Relations. 43

Relocation of shipment routes from theCaribbean to Mexico helped small Mexi-can drug operators morph into big druglords who began producing more mari-juana, poppies and methamphetaminethemselves and using extreme violence toprotect their franchises.


In the beginning the Colombiancartels paid the Mexican cartels in cashfor their transportation services, but to-ward the end of the 1980s the Colom-bians began instead to offer percent-ages of cocaine from the shipments.“This arrangement provided a meansfor the Mexican organizations to ac-tively distribute cocaine, resulting inthe formation of formidable traffickingorganizations in their own right,”writes Customs official Tammaro. 44

Latin American leaders have grownincreasingly critical of U.S. drug policyand its influence on crime. Accordingto Ethan Nadelmann, director of theNew York-based Drug Policy Alliance,which seeks to end the war on drugs,the “prohibitionist approach” to drugcontrol has “wreaked havoc through-out the region, generating crime, vio-lence and corruption on a scale thatfar exceeds what the United States ex-perienced during alcohol prohibition inthe 1920s.”

Nadelmann’s comment is part of aFebruary 2009 report by a distinguishedregional group, the Commission onDrug Use and Democracy. Made upof journalists, academics and politi-cians, including three former presidents— César Gaviria of Colombia, ErnestoZedillo of Mexico and Fernando Hen-rique Cardoso of Brazil — the com-mission said the U.S. “war on drugs”had “failed.” 45

Shannon O’Neil, a fellow in LatinAmerican studies at the Council onForeign Relations, also blames U.S.policy for the drug trade’s move fromColombia to Mexico. “After four decadesand billions of dollars, the U.S. ‘waron drugs’ has pushed the epicenter ofthese illegal criminal networks closerto the U.S. border,” she wrote. 46

U.S. firearms policy — specificallythe 2004 repeal of the U.S. ban onsales of assault-style weapons — alsois seen as aiding Mexican cartels. Ac-cording to the Mexican government,American arms smuggled across theborder account for 90 percent of the

confiscated arms in Mexico, which,ironically, has some of the toughestgun-control laws in the world. 47

Transition to Democracy

Political factors within Latin Americaalso have boosted organized crime

groups. In Mexico, the powerful PRIParty, or Institutional Revolutionary Party(Partido Revolucionario Institutional),controlled the presidency for 70 yearsuntil 2000 and is widely thought tohave protected drug traffickers as theycemented relationships with theColombians in the 1980s and ’90s.

In his new book on narco-trafficking,George Grayson, a professor of gov-ernment at the College of William &Mary and an expert on Mexico,writes that during the PRI era, “drugdealers behaved discreetly, showeddeference to public figures, spurnedkidnapping, appeared with gover-nors at their children’s weddings, andalthough often allergic to politics,helped the hegemonic PRI discreditits opponents by linking them to drug-trafficking.” 48

But Vicente Fox and his NationalAction Party (PAN) upended those re-lationships when they defeated thePRI in 2000. Fox and his successor,Calderón, have made crime-fighting atop priority, exposing deeply en-trenched corruption and a legal sys-tem unprepared to handle the com-plexities of organized crime. Historically,Mexican law enforcement agencieswere an extension of the PRI’s auto-cratic system and could impose order,but they were also tools of “patron-age and political coercion,” accordingto the Trans-Border Institute at theUniversity of San Diego. 49

Casas-Zamora, the Brookings fellowand former Costa Rican vice president,argues that Latin America’s ongoing tran-sition to democracy also has creatednew opportunities for criminals to in-fluence policy. 50 As elections through-

out the region have become moreopen and competitive and campaignspending has increased, criminals haveseized opportunities to invest in politi-cians supportive of their interests, Casas-Zamora said. Weak enforcement of thefew campaign finance laws also helpsdrug traffickers and their allies stayabove the law. 51

Colombia’s shift to democracy standsas a counterpoint to the region’s trou-bles. Aided by the U.S.-funded PlanColombia, the government has rela-tively swiftly instituted wide-rangingreforms to the police and criminal jus-tice systems. In time, all of the majorColombian drug lords of the 1980swere eliminated, including the RodriguezOrijuela family in Calí, Jose GonzaloRodriguez Gacha in the central high-lands and in Medellín the Ochoa familyand Pablo Escobar.

Economic Woes

By the 1990s, most countries in LatinAmerica were facing astronomical

foreign debt and hyper-inflation. Thenew technocrats who replaced the pre-vious authoritarian governments soughtadvice from the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund, whichpushed free-market reforms like priva-tization of state-run businesses, freetrade and foreign investment.

But in hindsight, some developmentexperts argue that these neoliberal re-forms did significant damage, pushingeven more people into poverty. As pub-lic funds were channeled away fromsocial programs, safety nets eroded.And as free trade subjected small farm-ers — Honduran coffee growers andMexican corn planters, for example —to the brutally competitive global mar-ket, millions of rural people, unable tocompete with heavily subsidized U.S.agricultural products flowing into theircountries, migrated to the cities or tothe United States.


Continued on p. 225


Chronology1970s PresidentRichard M. Nixon launches“war on drugs,” setting thestage for crime-fighting policyin Latin America.

•

1980s-1990sCentral American nations con-front severe armed conflictswith little resolution; Colom-bian cartels rise and fall.

1980Civil war breaks out in El Sal-vador; the 12-year conflict leadsthousands of Salvadorans to seekasylum in the United States, in-cluding youths who form the MaraSalvatrucha (MS-13) gang in LosAngeles.

1982Guatemala’s Gen. Romeo LucasGarcia, the last in a succession ofrepressive military leaders thatoversaw a 36-year civil war, isoverthrown.

1989Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartelmurders leading Colombian presi-dential candidate Luis Carlos Galánand declares “total and absolutewar” against the government.

1992U.S. Drug Enforcement Administra-tion’s Kingpin strategy focuses in-vestigative and enforcement effortson specific drug trafficking organi-zations. . . . Brazilian military po-lice storm Carandiru prison to putdown a riot, leading to the mas-sacre of 111 prisoners by policeand other inmates.

1993Escobar is killed in rooftop shootoutwith Colombian National Police.

1994North American Free Trade Agree-ment (NAFTA) lowers trade barriersbetween United States, Mexico andCanada, eventually squeezing millionsof Mexican farmers out of the mar-ket and stimulating migration to U.S.

1997Latin American gang members arrest-ed in sweeps by Los Angeles PoliceDepartment are deported, fueling thespread of gangs in Central America.

1998Family organizations in Ciudad Juárezpressure Mexican government to in-vestigate first of some 400 unsolvedcases of murdered women. . . .Hugo Chávez is elected president ofVenezuela; crime rates will quadruplein the next 11 years.

•

2000s Mexican cartelstake control of drug supplychain; U.S. commits unprece-dented funds to fighting crimein region; some police and judi-cial reforms are introduced;violence in Mexico escalates. . . .U.S. Congress approves contro-versial Plan Colombia to fightdrug trafficking and reduce thepresence of cocaine in Americancommunities.

2001Sinaloa Federation leader Joaquín“El Chapo” Guzmán escapes fromMexican prison. . . . Stricter immi-gration policies enacted after 9/11attacks create new opportunitiesfor human trafficking across U.S.-Mexico border.

2003Film “City of God” poignantly illu-minates Brazil’s severe gang, armsand violence problems. . . . TheRevolutionary Armed Forces of

Colombia rebel group (FARC) isclassified as a major drug traffick-ing organization. . . . Mexican De-fense Department describes LosZetas cartel as the most formida-ble organized crime death squadin Mexican history.

2004FBI creates MS-13 National GangTask Force.

2006Felipe Calderón wins Mexicanpresidency and vows to curbcrime and drug trafficking.

2007State Department reports that 90 per-cent of cocaine flowing into the U.S.now comes through Mexico, upfrom 50 percent in 2000.

2008U.S. Congress enacts Mérida Initia-tive providing Mexico and CentralAmerican countries with $1.4 bil-lion over three years to fight crimeand drugs. . . . Mexican Congressenacts criminal justice reforms, in-cluding oral trials where lawyerspresent a case in front of a judgeinstead of using entirely writtenprocedures.

2009President Mauricio Funes of El Sal-vador announces progressive na-tional security plan targeting gangviolence and crime. . . . Obamaadministration discontinues use ofterm “War on Drugs.” . . . Forbesranks “El Chapo” Guzmán as 41stamong the 67 most powerful peoplein the world.

2010Peru replaces Colombia as world’sleading coca grower. . . . In June,85 people are executed in a singleday in Mexico, the deadliest daysince President Calderón took of-fice in 2006.



Central American gangs, known as maras, have evolvedinto potent security threats in the region, stymieing lawenforcement and terrorizing local communities. With

shaved heads and intricate tattoos that brand their allegianceacross their faces and bodies, machete-wielding mara membershave achieved notoriety for their brutality and fearlessness.

With increasingly sophisticated transnational networks andlinks with better-organized and wealthy drug cartels, some groups,such as the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Mara 18, have grownfrom small-time street gangs focused on extortion into full-fledgedcrime syndicates. Their numbers, especially in Guatemala, El Sal-vador and Honduras, are staggering. The anti-mara division ofthe Honduran Community Police, for example, reported in 2007there were about 70,000 Mara members in the country, includ-ing 800 leaders, 20,000 active members, 15,000 aspiring mem-bers or sympathizers, and 30,000 others who were either familymembers, collaborators or employers. 1

Law enforcement authorities have been aware of the maras’growing ranks and barbarity, but there has been much disagree-ment on whether to focus on crackdowns or softer approacheslike prevention and rehabilitation. The prevention argument seemsto be gaining more traction as harsher policies — known as manodura (iron fist) — like stiff jail sentences for gang members andyouths with tattoos are increasingly seen as failing.

In 2006, the U.S. Agency for International Development sug-gested that law enforcement and prevention programs shouldreceive equal emphasis and funding. 2 And an exhaustive 2007report on gangs in the United States, many also operating inCentral America, showed that social services to at-risk youthare far more effective than the law enforcement approach. 3

In Los Angeles, for example, law enforcement agencies re-ported there are now six times as many gangs and at leastdouble the number of gang members in the region since 1985,when the problem fully emerged, even after billions of dollarswere spent on enforcement and deportation of members.

The research shows that when gang members have the op-portunity to leave gangs early — such as by going back toschool or finding a job — there is a lower risk of lasting reper-cussions later in life. Yet current hard-nosed policies, whichtypically involve arresting and imprisoning gang members, makeit more difficult for them to quit. Prisons serve as “ganglandfinishing schools” and aggravate the problem, according to in-vestigative journalist Ana Arana. 4

In recent years, Congress has taken a greater interest in anti-gang efforts in Central America, appropriating roughly $7.9 mil-lion in 2008 and $5 million in 2009 to the cause, according toClare Ribando Seelke, a specialist in Latin American Affairs at theCongressional Research Service who has written extensively onthe Central American gang issue. 5 Maras have also blipped brighteron Washington radar because of potential ties to terrorist groups.

Maras have been reported to be in contact with al Qaeda,according to Interpol, the international, police agency, and areheavily involved in the human-smuggling business betweenCentral America and the United States. 6

A few small nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Cen-tral America have had some success preventing youths fromjoining gangs and rehabilitating gang members, such as, JovenesHondureños Adelante Juntos, or Young Honduras Going For-ward Together. Jovel, a member of the group, is now is work-ing to document extrajudicial killings of gang members, an uglypart of mano dura policies in Honduras. 7

Yet the government’s own programs have been less thanexemplary. “Government-sponsored gang prevention programshave tended, with some exceptions, to be small-scale, ad-hoc,and underfunded,” says Ribando Seelke. “Governments havebeen even less involved in sponsoring rehabilitation programsfor individuals seeking to leave gangs, with most reintegrationprograms funded by church groups or NGOs.”

With few places to turn, some gang members have soughtasylum in the United States, with varying degrees of success.In an especially memorable case in 2008, the U.S. Board ofImmigration Appeals rejected the plight of three Salvadoranteenagers trying to flee the MS-13. 8 More recently, other for-mer Central American gang members have failed to convinceAmerican judges to grant them asylum.

“There are gangs everywhere here,” said Nelson BenítezRamos, a Salvadoran and former MS-13 member who has alsobeen unable to win asylum. “When you leave the gangs, evenyour best friend will murder you.” 9

— Eliza Barclay

1 “Honduras: The presence and activities of the gangs, Mara Salvatrucha(MS) and Mara 18 in Honduras, including their structure, the role of women,and the effectiveness of anti-Mara government measures (2007-January 2010),”Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Jan. 28, 2010, www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,IRBC,,HND,4b8631d919,0.html.2 “Central America and Mexico Gang Assessment,” U.S. Agency for Interna-tional Development, Bureau for Latin America and Caribbean Affairs, April 2006,www.usaid.gov/gt/docs/gangs_assessment.pdf.3 “Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for EffectivePublic Safety Strategies,” Justice Policy Institute, July 17, 2007, www.justicepolicy.org/content-hmID=1811&smID=1581&ssmID=22.htm.4 Ana Arana, “How the Street Gangs Took Central America,” Foreign Affairs,May/June 2005, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/60803/ana-arana/how-the-street-gangs-took-central-america.5 Clare Ribando Seelke, “Gangs in Central America,” Congressional ResearchService, Dec. 4, 2009, www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34112.pdf.6 Ronald Noble, “Opening remarks at Interpol’s 20th Americas Regional Con-ference,” April 1, 2009, www.interpol.int/public/ICPO/speeches/2009/20090401SG_ARC20.asp.7 “San Pedro Sula, Honduras — Jovel, 27, a worker of JHA-JA,” JovenesHondureños Adelante Juntos Avancemos, http://estria.net/media/docs/3894_massacre_mural.pdf.8 Julia Preston, “Losing Asylum, Then His Life,” The New York Times, June 28,2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29asylum.html.9 Quoted in ibid.

Cracking Down on Central American GangsDoes the “iron fist” approach work?


Indeed, globalization has increasedinequality and exacerbated poverty insome ways in Latin America, accordingto a 2010 study by the United NationsUniversity. 52 And as a well-known 2002study in the Journal of Law and Eco-nomics showed, income inequality andreduced economic activity are signifi-cantly related to growing crime rates. 53

The theory goes like this: a pooreconomy in the short-run reduces op-portunities for citizens to take part inthe legal economy, increasing the at-tractiveness of criminal behavior.Meanwhile, the wealthy fraction ofthe population becomes a potentialcriminal target, while another, largerfraction remains very low income andsees little downside in engaging incriminal activities. 54

The theory largely was proven inArgentina, where a rapidly wideninggap between rich and poor paralleleda jump in crime. After Argentina’speso crisis in 2001, the number ofpeople in extreme poverty doubled,while criminologists also began to seea rising number of minors with guns,according to Marcelo Saín, a profes-sor of political science at the Nation-al University of Quilmes in BuenosAires. Saín sees a link between crime,robberies and high urban poverty.

Drug traffickers also fill a key eco-nomic and social role in impoverishedcommunities.

“If you were sick and had no money,they’d take you to the hospital andpay for medicine. If you couldn’t af-ford tortillas, they’d buy some for you,”said Veronica Medina, a successful busi-nesswoman from Michoacán, a Mexi-can state where the La Familia Mi-choacán cartel operates. 55

Meanwhile, as the recession hasbattered the region, gang recruitmenthas become increasingly easy in Mex-ico and Central America. Mexico’s econ-omy, which is heavily reliant on tourism,remittances and exports, has been hitharder than the United States, as re-

mittances from family members in theUnited States have tumbled. Immigra-tion, which has long provided lucra-tive opportunities for many young LatinAmericans, is also no longer an op-tion for many. Fewer jobs are avail-able in the United States, and in-creased border security has made illegalentry more expensive and dangerous.

“The number of uneducated youthis increasing, while the jobs for themare decreasing, which opens the op-portunity to enter the criminal work-force,” says author Logan. “Now youhave these deportees in urban centerswho are increasingly involved in sub-contract work for the cartels, drivingtrucks full of cocaine, for example.”

Youth Explosion

High fertility rates and poor accessto contraception in the over-

whelmingly Roman Catholic regionduring the 1980s meant the birth ofmany unwanted children in the 1970sand ’80s. Such children, psychologistsand sociologists have long argued, areoften raised without love and are like-ly to drift into crime. In Latin Amer-ica, a sexist, macho culture limitswomen’s empowerment and toleratesmen’s irresponsibility, limiting the useof contraception.

In recent years, though, experts havebegun to promote family planning asa poverty- and crime-alleviation tool.Norman Loayza, lead economist in theresearch department of the World Bank,has argued that women need to beempowered to use contraceptives, butthat men also need to take more re-sponsibility for the children they fa-ther. “More than a particular form ofbirth control, it’s responsible parent-hood which holds the key for crimeprevention,” Loayza, a Peruvian, wrotein ReVista, the Harvard Review ofLatin America. 56

Nonetheless, many of the children,wanted or not, born in Latin Ameri-

ca in recent years have been borninto poverty. Almost 63 percent ofLatin American and Caribbean chil-dren and adolescents suffer somelevel of poverty, according to a jointreport this summer from several Unit-ed Nations agencies. 57 “Even whenchildren [are] in a situation of ‘mod-erate poverty,’ and not so exposed intheir living conditions, their futureopportunities are seriously curtailed,”authors Ernesto Espíndola and MaríaNieves Rico said in a statement.

Another U.N. report, from UNICEF,showed that from the early 1990s untilthe beginning of the current decade,child poverty increased in 13 of 17 LatinAmerican countries. The increases wereat least 3 percent in Argentina, Brazil,El Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica, Uruguayand Venezuela. Poverty levels onlyimproved in four countries: Nicaragua,Peru, Paraguay and Chile. 58

Youth unemployment, meanwhile,remains three times higher than foradults, according to the Internation-al Labor Organization (ILO). A 2007ILO study found that 20 percent ofyouths ages 15 to 24 do nothing dur-ing the day, while 34 percent are inschool and nearly the same numberwork. “Some 30 million young peo-ple work in the informal economy,mostly under bad working conditions,”the report said, while “some 22 mil-lion youth neither work nor studydue to lack of opportunities or frus-tration, making them a social risk.” 59

As writer Guillermoprieto recentlynoted, “We failed to realize that theseyoung people, the no-futuros, wouldbecome the workforce and the can-non fodder for a phenomenon that isundermining the social stability of onecountry after another: the worldwidetraffic in illegal narcotics.”

Guillermoprieto also laments thatthe young people who are lured intothe drug trade can be the most intel-ligent youths in the community, whoare willing to risk their lives for trendyshoes or cars. 60

Continued from p. 222


CURRENTSITUATIONViolence in Mexico

As the violence in Mexico persistsseemingly unabated, the country re-

mains a focal point in the region. Thedeadliest day in Mexico since Calderóntook office was June 11, with 85 drug-related murders. Among the killings thatday were the execution-style shootings

of 19 people in a drug rehabilitationcenter. 61 With more than 28,000 peo-ple — including civilians, police anddrug traffickers killed since Calderónbecame president — his anti-crimestrategies are increasingly seen as fail-ing. 62 “[Calderón] has lost the reins ofthe country, not partially but totally,”the influential journalist and columnistLydia Cacho wrote recently. 63

But Calderón is aware that the imageof his administration and party is suffer-

ing, and he is fighting back with both arenewed commitment to end the vio-lence and a public relations campaignto woo back investors and tourists. In atwo-page column in mid-June in papersacross the country, Calderón blamed thedrug violence on American hunger fordrugs and the cartels’ easy access to armscoming across the border, along with alack of opportunities for education andemployment. He also defended his poli-cies, noting that the violence is linked tothe weakening and splintering of crimi-nal groups, as his police forces have putcartel leaders on the defensive. 64 “If thegovernment were to stop fighting thecriminals, there are those who think this

would end the violence. I doubt it,”Calderón said in remarks on Aug. 4. 65

Indeed, Logan of Southern Pulse sayssome leaders of the Zetas and SinaloaFederation have retreated into Guatemala,where local law enforcement poses lit-tle threat, and Mexican law enforcementcannot reach them. “But Guatemala isalso a strategic move for these groupsbecause the local criminal groups arenot that strong, or well-organized, sothey’re easy to topple,” says Logan.

Organized crime experts also applaudthe Mexican government’s recent effortsto attack money laundering, which theysee as an under-exploited weak spot ofthe cartels. Mexican banks receive morethan $10 billion a year in cash fromshady sources, the Finance Ministry says.(U.S. analysts estimate the value of drug-related funds flowing to Mexico at $29billion.) In June the Finance Ministry an-nounced new rules aimed at cartels thatlimit bank deposits of U.S. cash to nomore than $7,000 a month. 66

With the $1.4 billion Mérida Initiativeslowly moving forward, cooperation be-tween U.S. and Mexican law enforce-ment agencies also seems to be im-proving. In 2009, Mexico extradited 107people to the United States on drug traf-ficking and other charges. Mexico alsowarmly received the U.S. government’sdecision to send 1,200 troops to the bor-der and share intelligence with policein violence-ravaged Ciudad Juárez. 67

Yet some experts believe these mea-sures will be insufficient. “The U.S. gov-ernment has spent over a decade tak-ing similar measures, placing theNational Guard at the border and build-ing a wall, but there is no significantimpact on the flow of drugs or un-documented workers,” said Jorge Cha-bat, a political science professor atMexico City’s Center for Economic Re-search and Education. 68

As part of its crime crackdown, Mex-ico is implementing widespread judi-cial reforms. With only about 5 percentof Mexican criminal cases ending upin a sentence, criminal justice expertssay the reforms are sorely needed. TheMexican Congress enacted the sweep-ing measures in March 2008, taking aimat three areas: alternative sentencing;greater emphasis on the rights of theaccused, such as a presumption of in-nocence and receiving an adequatelegal defense; and changes to policeagencies and their role in criminal in-vestigations. As of May, however, thejudicial reforms had been implemented


Six police officers allegedly working for a drug cartel are accused of the Aug. 16 kidnappingand murder of Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos of Santiago, an affluent city near the Mexican-U.S.border previously considered immune from cartel violence. Police said seven SUVs rolled up toCavazos’ palatial home and that men in police uniforms abducted the U.S-educated mayor.

His body was found on a nearby road, shot in the head.

AFP/Getty Im

ages/Dario Leon

Continued on p. 230

no


At Issue:Did Latin America’s transition to democracy lead to rising crime?yes

yesLUIS ASTORGARESEARCHER, INSTITUTE OF SOCIALRESEARCH, NATIONAL AUTONOMOUSUNIVERSITY OF MEXICO; COORDINATOR,UNESCO CHAIR ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIALTRANSFORMATIONS CONNECTED WITH THEINTERNATIONAL DRUG PROBLEM

WRITTEN FOR CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHER, AUGUST 2010

t he state created after the Mexican Revolution built securityinstitutions with extralegal power that allowed the state todo two things: protect and contain drug trafficking. Drug

trafficking was born under political control, and it maintainedthis status throughout the rule of the Partido Revolucionario In-stutitional (PRI).

But this dynamic began to shift just as the PRI’s party systemwas weakening and fracturing. The world market for illegal drugswas booming, and traffickers’ economic capacity for corruptionand access to more serious firearms meant their destructive powerwas greater. At the same time the state’s controls were disappear-ing, and the country was transitioning toward democracy.

Security and the challenges posed by the powerful traffick-ing organizations weren’t a priority for the political class in thefirst years of the transition, after Vicente Fox of the Partido AccionNacional (PAN) beat the PRI candidate in 2000 and becamepresident. The political parties were more interested in newopportunities to gain more and better positions of power. Butin the scramble for power they forgot to build the institutionsof security and justice accordingly for the new era. The resultwas a fragmentation of the state and the development of amajor weakness in confronting defiant criminal groups whowent from subordination to politicians to directly confrontingthem and testing the authority of security institutions.

Some criminal organizations developed a new strategy ofterritorial expansion and diversified their revenue sources to in-clude, for example, extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking andthe sale of pirated goods. The lack of substantive politicalagreements during the Fox administration and the difficult andpolemic circumstances of Calderón’s arrival in office ensured thecontinuation of political strife that would not permit the govern-ment in the short term to reach the necessary agreements toreform and consolidate the security and justice agencies.

The unsuccessful use of the military has also made theenemy more tenacious than was expected. The traffickers havebecome more aggressive not only toward each other but alsotoward the police, military and other security figures and civilsociety. Under these conditions the traffickers may continueescalating their use of violence, either in the traditional orterrorist sense, until one group or coalition gains hegemony orthe democratic state can impose authority and assert the rulesof the game.no

MARCELO BERGMANPROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF LEGALSTUDIES, CENTER FOR ECONOMICRESEARCH AND EDUCATION, MEXICO CITY

WRITTEN FOR CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHER, AUGUST 2010

c rime has been rising steadily throughout Latin America. Farfrom being a local problem for a few countries, the highlevel of criminality is a genuine regional phenomenon.

Most people in the region have been victimized over thelast five years, and public outcry has increased due to thestates’ disappointing performance in fighting public insecurity.

Some theories have claimed that the transition to democracyushered in unintended consequences. For example, some saythe problem was police forces whose hands were tied afternew democratic ideals enabled delinquents to feel less threat-ened, generating higher criminality. But the political factor isjust one explanation, and not the only one.

Crime rose in response to a massive economic transforma-tion in the region, including:

• New waves of foreign and local investment;• New policies promoting consumption, and• New optimism, which translated into lower and middle

classes with higher levels of consumption.These factors led to the emergence of groups willing to

meet a new market demand. In short, conditions were ripe forthe emergence of organized crime that posed a challenge toboth legal markets and formal authorities. The rise in criminalityis largely due to the organization of markets of illegal goods.

Organized crime usually is associated with the Mafia ordrug cartels. These are, of course, well-developed and estab-lished criminal organizations. However, the emergence of orga-nized crime in Latin America is closely related to the develop-ment of markets of small- and medium-sized organizations thatdeveloped to supply illicit goods.

Starting in the 1980s and particularly in the ’90s, new eco-nomic conditions led entrepreneurs in the region to supplygoods and services for the growing demand of new consumergroups. The impoverished but nonetheless voracious new con-sumers demanded products at a very low price that only ille-gal activities could deliver. And these low prices were possiblebecause the likelihood of detection and punishment of crimi-nals was very low.

In short, the rise in crime is explained greatly by the growthof organized crime. The two main variables that contributed toits explosive growth are the rapid increase in demand forcheap goods and services and the fragmentation of deterrencethat yielded poor law-enforcement agency performance.


in only 13 of Mexico’s 31 states, ac-cording to the Trans-Border Institute. 69

Guatemala, meanwhile, is confrontingwidespread, high-level corruption withfew remedies in sight. Carlos Castresana,a Spanish judge, resigned in June as headof the U.N.’s International CommissionAgainst Impunity in Guatemala, saying itwas impossible to work with govern-ment counterparts who protect criminals.

“There is criminal activity includingdrug trafficking, murders, contraband,people-trafficking and [authorities who]enable criminal activity by guarantee-ing impunity,” said Castresana. “Thecountry’s institutions are infiltrated.” In-deed, Castresana said there was wide-spread corruption in the judiciary, theinterior ministry and the attorney gen-eral’s office, including the recently ap-pointed attorney general himself. 70

Drug Trade Spreading

Drug trafficking appears to be spread-ing to new areas of Latin Ameri-

ca. Southern Pulse Networked Intelli-gence sources show an uptick in drugtrafficking activity in Honduras andNicaragua, which have historically playedrelatively minor roles as transit pointsfor cocaine. Authorities in both coun-tries have recently discovered clandes-tine airfields used by drug traffickers. 71

Peru, which has long been over-shadowed by Colombia in drug traf-ficking and violence, has earned a new,unwelcome distinction. The annual re-port by the U.N. Office on Drugs andCrime (UNODC), released in June,found that coca leaf production — usedto make cocaine — in Colombia droppedfrom 2008 to 2009, and that Peru is nowthe world’s leading coca grower. 72

Some 45 percent of the world’s cocanow comes from Peru, compared with39 percent from Colombia and 15 per-cent in Bolivia, according to UNODC.

UNODC Executive Director AntonioMaria Costa said that despite the crime

rise in Peru, overall coca acreage inColumbia, Peru and Bolivia droppedby 5 percent in 2009, due to the largedecline in Colombia. Cocaine produc-tion there also fell from 672 tons in2007 to 460 tons in 2009. 73

Experts say the progress is largelydue to Columbia’s tougher drug con-trol policy — combining security anddevelopment. “If the current trend con-tinues, Peru will soon overtake Colom-bia as the world’s biggest coca pro-ducer — a notorious status that it hasnot had since the mid-1990s,” Costa saidin a statement. However, Peru’s UNODCrepresentative, Humberto Chirinos, saysit is likely that Colombia still producesmore coca than Peru. 74

Members of the Shining Path guer-rilla group, which terrorized Peru in the1980s and ’90s, today work as hiredguns for drug traffickers, authorities say.And a recent U.N. report suggests mem-bers have split into two factions fight-ing to be the mercenaries of choice forthe Mexican and Colombian cartels. 75

Meanwhile, Venezuela has become theprincipal exporter of cocaine to Europeand the origin of “all clandestine air de-liveries detected in Western Africa” andof cargoes destined for clandestine airstrips in Honduras, the report said.

Brazil seems to be turning a cornerin fighting crime, most notably in Rio deJaneiro. In 2008 there were 29 murdersin the infamous Cidade de Deus favela,where the “City of God” documentarywas filmed, while this year there hasbeen just one, and it did not involve afirearm, says Rio security chief José Bel-trame. Other crime has fallen, too. “Itwas horror before,” Jeanne Barbosa, afavela resident, told The Economist. “Bod-ies would be thrown out of passing cars,and there were kids with revolvers. Nowthe children can play in the street.” 76

But while Rio’s outsized murder ratemay be plunging, its drug consumption— along with drug use in São Paoloand Buenos Aires — is rising, especial-ly among the middle and upper classes.Ecstasy has become especially popular

in the nightlife scene; Brazil’s federal po-lice said they seized 211,000 Ecstasy pillsin 2007, 17 times as many as the yearbefore. However, the seizures declinedto about 133,000 pills in 2008, possiblyreflecting stiffer trafficking penalties. 77

In 2006, the minimum penalty for drugtrafficking was raised to 8 to 20 years,with no minimum quantity of drugs toconstitute “dealing.” 78

As arrests increase, some countriesare beginning to explore drug decrim-inalization to deal with their own drugproblems, as well as prison over-crowding, organized crime and violence.In 2009, Mexico decriminalized pos-session of small amounts of heroin, co-caine and other drugs, although criticssay that so far its impact has been greateron policy discussions than on Mexicanstreets. 79 Argentina’s Supreme Courtruled the arrest of five young peopleholding a small quantity of marijuanawas unconstitutional. And Brazil is alsoconsidering using education instead ofjail sentences for small drug offenses.

In February, however, the Vienna-based International Narcotics ControlBoard (INCB) expressed anxiety overLatin America’s “growing movement todecriminalize the possession of con-trolled drugs, in particular cannabis.”The board worried “the movement . . .will undermine national and interna-tional efforts to combat the abuse ofand illicit trafficking in narcotic drugsand . . . poses a threat to the coher-ence and effectiveness of the interna-tional drug control system.” 80

OUTLOOKSigns of Optimism

Given the deep roots of the region’scrime problem and the need for

systemic reforms that can’t be imple-mented overnight, the immediate future


Continued from p. 226


looks rather grim to many analysts. Butwith time, some countries may be ableto control organized crime, though it mayhave to get worse before it gets better.Other countries have brighter near-termprospects of building on recent reformsand increasing security for their citizens.

Buscaglia of ITAM University sees Mex-ico’s drug-related violence worsening asorganized crime groups expand theirturf. But more strife is the only thingthat will force the government to makecrucial reforms to the criminal justice sys-tem and punish guilty parties at the high-est levels, he says. He sees the escala-tion of violence in Colombia in the 1990sand the subsequent comprehensive re-sponse by the government as a useful,if ominous, roadmap for Mexico.

“The kidnappings, extortions and killingshave to collectively reach the business andpolitical elite in the realm of hundreds ofcases a week,” Buscaglia says. “There comesa point, where the political and businesselite will start to demand drastic changesas they did in Colombia.”

Among other things, members of thecountry’s powerful oligarchy must pushlegislators to pass tougher laws to ham-per the economic power of organizedcrime, Buscaglia says. In a worst-casescenario, he says Calderón could endup like President Hamid Karzai ofAfghanistan, with little control over out-lying provinces and their warlords.

But such predictions seem too pes-simistic to the authors of “Five Mythsabout Mexico’s Drug War,” who say “vi-olence is not as widespread or as ran-dom as it may appear” and that “orga-nized crime is not threatening to takeover the federal government. . . . Mexi-co is not turning into a failed state.” 81

Colombia, though, even with its newpresident also committed to fighting drugtrafficking and crime, may be on a col-lision course with Venezuela over its al-leged harboring of drug-trafficking FARCleaders in its wild western region.

“Venezuela is providing a safe havenfor the FARC, and that’s a big problemfor Colombia,” says Mejía at the Uni-

versity of the Andes. “Venezuela is notgoing to cooperate, and that makes ithard to catch the top command of FARCand extradite them to the United States.”Mejía adds that this dynamic will beamong the biggest diplomatic and se-curity challenges of President Santos’fledgling administration.

In Central America, Logan of South-ern Pulse Networked Intelligence saysPresident Mauricio Funes of El Salvadorhas sent an encouraging signal to theregion in the form of a new nationalsecurity plan aimed at the root causesof crime and violence. Funes has al-located funds for community centers,roads and soccer fields, targeting thelistless, impoverished youth who mightotherwise be sucked into gangs.

“He had something entirely newwith a robust prevention element, so it’snot just a mano dura [iron fist] ap-proach,” said Logan. “This is a veryprogressive and forward thinking wayto get at national security that may, ifsuccessful, become a model for securitypolicy in the region.”

Poverty also seems to be decreasingthroughout the region and is expectedto continue to decline, which bodes wellfor some of the economic factors behindthe crime wave. Between 2002 and 2008,the percentage of people living in ex-treme poverty dropped from 19 percentof the population to 12 percent, ac-cording to the Economic Commission forLatin America and the Caribbean(CEPAL). Brazil, Peru and Chile all madenotable progress, though CEPAL has cau-tioned that the global recession may slowthe battle against extreme poverty. 82

At the same time, U.S. and Latin Amer-ican authorities are confident their coun-tries will continue honing their abilityto find and arrest criminals. Coopera-tion is especially key in an age of transna-tional crime, where cartel and gangleaders conduct business across multi-ple borders. Tammaro, of U.S. Immi-gration and Customs Enforcement, be-lieves that the highly successful jointoperation with Colombian and Mexican

law enforcement that netted cargo con-tainers filled with cash may have sig-naled a new era of intelligence sharing.

“To challenge the adaptability oftransnational crime, the law enforce-ment community needs to share itsraw material: information,” Tammarowrites. “Building a capability that em-phasizes coordinated intelligence col-lection and analysis brings the com-munity closer to this goal.” 83

Notes1 Julio Scherer García, “Proceso en la guaridade ‘El Mayo’ Zambada,” Proceso, April 3, 2010,www.proceso.com.mx/rv/modHome/detalleExclusiva/78067.2 Ibid. See also Tracy Wilkinson, “Mexicandrug lord Ismael Zambada, in a rare interview,says his death wouldn’t hurt drug trade,” LosAngeles Times, April 5, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/05/world/la-fg-mexico-zambada5-2010apr05.3 For background see Peter Katel, “Mexico’sDrug War,” CQ Researcher, Dec. 12, 2008, pp.1009-1032, and Roland Flamini, “The New LatinAmerica,” CQ Global Researcher, March 2008,pp. 57-84.4 “Report on Citizen Security and HumanRights,” Inter-America Commission on HumanRights, Dec. 31, 2009, http://cidh.org/countryrep/Seguridad.eng/citizensecurity.toc.htm.5 “A slow maturing of democracy,” The Econ-omist Latinobarómetropoll, Dec. 10, 2009, www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_TVDRDVPV.6 Randal C. Archibold, “72 Migrants FoundDead On a Ranch in Mexico,” The New YorkTimes, Aug. 26, 2010, p. A4.7 Ronald Noble, “Opening remarks at Inter-pol’s 20th Americas Regional Conference,”April 1, 2009, www.interpol.int/public/ICPO/speeches/2009/20090401SG_ARC20.asp.8 Mark Townsend, “How Liverpool docks be-came a hub of Europe’s deadly cocainetrade,” The Guardian, May 16, 2010, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/liverpool-cocaine-mexico-cartels.9 Jon Lee Anderson, “Gangland,” The NewYorker, Oct. 5, 2009, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/05/091005fa_fact_anderson.10 Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, “Mex-ico drug cartels thrive despite Calderon offen-sive,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 8, 2010, http://


articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/08/world/la-fg-mexico-cartels-20100808.11 Simon Romero, “More Killings in VenezuelaThan in Iraq,” The New York Times, Aug. 23,2010, p. A1, www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/americas/23venez.html.12 Marcelo Bergman, “The Integration of Com-mon Crime and Organized Crime in Latin Amer-ica, Woodrow Wilson International Center forScholars, May 19, 2010, www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=607885.13 “Mexico: Killings and abductions of womenin Ciudad Juarez and the City of Chihuahua— the struggle for justice goes on,” AmnestyInternational Public Statement, Feb. 20, 2006,www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=engamr410122006&lang=e.14 Victoria Sanford, “A Daily Threat,” ReVista:Harvard Review of Latin America, winter 2008,www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/view/1035.15 John Burnett, “Mexican Cartels RecruitingYoung Men, Boys,” NPR, March 24, 2009, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102249839.16 Matt Ingram and David A. Shirk, “JudicialReform in Mexico: Toward a New CriminalJustice System,” Trans-Border Institute, Uni-versity of San Diego, May 2010, www.justiceinmexico.org/resources/pdf/judicial_reform.pdf.17 Steve Fainaru and William Booth, “MexicoAccused of Torture in Drug War,” The Wash-ington Post, July 9, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/08/AR2009070804197_pf.html.18 “Report on Citizen Security and HumanRights,” op. cit.19 Michael Shifter, “A Decade of Plan Colom-bia: Time for a New Approach,” Política Ex-terior, June 21, 2010, www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=2407&s=.

20 “Inter-American Dialogue Offers Obama10-point pragmatic Agenda for Latin America &Caribbean,” www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=435.21 Samuel Logan, “Trafficking’s Family Ties: Mex-ico,” Americas Quarterly, spring 2010, p. 76, www.americasquarterly.org/charticle_spring2010.html.22 Guy Lawson, “The War Next Door,” RollingStone, Nov. 13, 2008, p. 75, http://guylawson.com/pdf/rollingstone/HowCartelsWork.pdf.23 See Randal C. Archibold, “Mexican PoliceArrest Man Believed to Be Drug Kingpin,” TheNew York Times, Aug. 31, 2010, p. A6, andNicholas Casey and Jose de Cordoba, “AllegedDrug Kingpin Is Arrested in Mexico,” The WallStreet Journal, Aug. 31, 2010, p. A10.24 Andrew Tammaro, “U.S. Immigration andCustoms Enforcement: Combating Bulk CashSmuggling,” The Police Chief, March 2010,p. 28, http://policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=2036&issue_id=32010.25 Ingram and Shirk, op. cit.26 Philip Alston, “Statement at End of BrazilMission,” United Nations, Nov. 14, 2007, www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/7F0F08340A31AC6FC1257394003B5D47?opendocument.27 William Booth, “Mexico’s crime syndicatesincreasingly target authorities in drug war’snew phase,” The Washington Post, May 2,2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/01/AR2010050102869.html.28 Ibid.29 Andrew Selee, David Shirk and Eric Olson,“Five Myths about Mexico’s Drug War,” TheWashington Post, March 28, 2010, p. B03, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032602226_pf.html.30 “A magic moment for the City of God,”The Economist, June 12, 2010, www.economist.com/node/16326428.31 William Bratton and William Andrews, “Eight

Steps to Reduce Crime,” Americas Quarterly,spring 2010, p. 95, www.americasquarterly.org/node/1500.32 Ibid.33 Ibid.34 Ibid.35 See Romero, op. cit., and “Venezuela CountrySpecific Information,” U.S. State Department,travel.state.gov, http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1059.html#crime.36 “Venezuela tackles crime, 20% of whichcommitted by the police force,” MercoPress,Dec. 8, 2009, http://en.mercopress.com/2009/12/07/venezuela-tackles-crime-20-of-which-committed-by-the-police-force.37 Vanessa Plihal, “President accused of cor-ruption while gangs reign in Guatemala,” CityMayors Society, May 27, 2009, www.citymayors.com/society/guatemala-murders.html.38 Kevin Casas-Zamora, “Dirty Money,” Americ-as Quarterly, spring 2010, p. 57, www.americasquarterly.org/casas-zamora.39 Alma Guillermoprieto, “Crime’s BreedingGround,” Americas Quarterly, spring 2010, p. 50,www.americasquarterly.org/guillermoprieto.40 “2010 Global Peace Index,” Institute forEconomics & Peace, www.visionofhumanity.org/.41 Sanford, op. cit.42 Clare Ribando Seelke, “Gangs in CentralAmerica,” Congressional Research Service,Dec. 4, 2009, www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34112.pdf.43 Shannon O’Neill, “Mexico-U.S. Relations:What’s Next?” Americas Quarterly, spring 2010,p. 68, www.americasquarterly.org/node/1505.44 Tammaro, op. cit.45 Alexei Barrionuevo, “Latin America WeighsLess Punitive Path to Curb Drug Use,” TheNew York Times, Aug. 26, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/world/americas/27latin.html.For background see Peter Katel, “War on Drugs,”CQ Researcher, June 2, 2006, pp. 481-504.46 O’Neill, op. cit.47 Chris Hawley, “Mexico: Gun controls under-mined by U.S.,” USA Today, April 1, 2009, www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-03-31-mexicoguns_N.htm.48 George Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violenceand a Failed State? (2010), p. 29.49 Ingram and Shirk, op. cit.50 For background see Peter Katel, “Changein Latin America,” CQ Researcher, July 21,2006, pp. 601-624, and Kenneth Jost, “Democ-racy in Latin America,” CQ Researcher, Nov. 3,2000, pp. 881-904.51 Casas-Zamora, op. cit.52 Machiko Nissanke and Erik Thorbecke,


About the Author

Eliza Barclay is freelance journalist in Washington, D.C., whowas based in Mexico City for three years. She has reportedfrom Latin America, Africa and Asia, and her writing has ap-peared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The WashingtonPost and other publications. She has received fellowships fromthe International Reporting Project and the Metcalf Institute forMarine and Environmental Reporting. She graduated with a B.S.from the University of California at Berkeley and is working onan M.A. in science writing from Johns Hopkins University.


“Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality inLatin America: Findings from Case Studies,”World Development, Vol. 38, No. 6, p. 797-802,http://website1.wider.unu.edu/lib/pdfs/WD-38-6-10-1-Nissanke.pdf.53 Pablo Fajnzylber, Daniel Lederman andNorman Loayza, “Inequality and Violent Crime,”Journal of Law and Economics, April 2002, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/Crime&Inequality.pdf.54 Ibid.55 William Finnegan, “Silver or Lead,” TheNew Yorker, May 31, 2010, p. 39, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/31/100531fa_fact_finnegan#ixzz0t41PjDR5.56 Norman Loayza, “Preventing Violence: Long-Run Crime Prevention Policies,” ReVista: Har-vard Review of Latin America, winter 2008,p. 9, www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/view/1032.57 “Almost 63% of Children and AdolescentsSuffer some Type of Poverty,” Economic Com-mission for Latin America and the Caribbean,press release, June 22, 2010, www.eclac.cl/cgi-bin/getProd.asp?xml=/prensa/noticias/comunicados/1/39951/P39951.xml&xsl=/prensa/tpl-i/p6f.xsl&base=/tpl/top-bottom.xslt.58 “Child Poverty in Latin America,” UNICEFChallenges Newsletter, September 2005,www.unicef.org/lac/Desafios_1_ing(5).pdf.59 “Unemployment, informality and inactivitymenace young people in Latin America and theCaribbean,” International Labor Organization,press release, Sept. 4, 2007, www.ilo.org/global/About_the_ILO/Media_and_public_information/I-News/lang-en/WCMS_083989/index.htm.60 Guillermoprieto, op. cit.61 Thomas Black, “Mexico Has 85 Organized-Crime Deaths, Bloodiest Day of CalderonPresidency,” Bloomberg, June 11, 2010, www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-12/mexico-has-85-organized-crime-deaths-bloodiest-day-of-calderon-presidency.html.62 Wilkinson and Ellingwood, op. cit.63 Lydia Cacho, “PLAN B: Se acabó el sexenio,que sigue?” Día Siete, June 14, 2010, www.diasiete.com/14-06-2010/plan-b-se-acabo-el-sexenio-%C2%BFque-sigue.64 Sara Miller Llana, “Mexico Drug War: HasFelipe Calderon lost control?” The ChristianScience Monitor, June 16, 2010, www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/0616/Mexico-drug-war-Has-Felipe-Calderon-lost-control.65 William Booth, “Mexican president calls fornation’s help to curb defiant, violent crimi-nals,” The Washington Post, Aug. 8, 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/

2010/08/07/AR2010080702604.html.66 Ken Parks and José de Córdoba, “MexicoTargets Cartels’ Finances,” The Wall StreetJournal, June 16, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703280004575308730570231438.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond.67 Nacha Cattan, “Why Mexico WelcomesObama’s Plan to send 1,200 troops to the bor-der,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 26,2010, www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0526/Why-Mexico-welcomes-Obama-s-plan-to-send-1-200-US-troops-to-border.68 Ibid.69 Ingram and Shirk, op. cit.70 Sarah Grainger, “Corruption deep inGuatemala’s justice system,” Reuters, June 14,2010, www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N14165292.htm.71 “Nicaragua: More clandestine airfields dis-covered,” Southern Pulse Networked Intelligence,June 21, 2010, www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N14165292.htm, cited in ibid.72 “Divergent coca crop cultivation trends inthe Andean countries,” United Nations Officeon Drugs and Crime, press release, June 22,2010, www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2010/June/divergent-coca-cultivation-trends-in-the-andean-countries.html.73 Ibid.74 Kirsten Begg, “Peruvian president slams UN

report,” Colombia Reports, June 23, 2010, http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/10436-peruvian-president-slams-un-coca-report.html.75 Simon Romero, “Coca Production Makesa Comeback in Peru,” The New York Times,June 13, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/americas/14peru.html.76 “A magic moment for the City of God,”op. cit.77 Alexei Barrionuevo, “Ecstasy EnsnaresUpper-Class Teenagers in Brazil,” The NewYork Times, Feb. 14, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/world/americas/15ecstasy.html.78 Ibid.79 Dennis Wagner, “Drug law changes littlefor life in Mexico,” Arizona Republic, Jan. 10,2010, azcentral.com, www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/01/10/20100110mex-drugs.html#ixzz0wmbLvFfc.80 Sara Miller Llana, “UN: Latin America under-mining drug war by decriminalizing drugs,”The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 24, 2010,www.csmonitor.com/World/2010/0224/UN-Latin-America-undermining-drug-war-by-decriminalizing-drugs.81 Selee, Shirk and Olson, op. cit.82 Simon Romero, “Economies in Latin Amer-ica Race Ahead,” The New York Times, June 30,2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/world/americas/01peru.html.83 Tammaro, op. cit.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONAmericas Society/Council of the Americas, 680 Park Ave., New York, NY 10065;(212) 628-3200. The Society is a forum dedicated to education, debate and dialoguein the Americas; the Council is an international business organization for the hemi-sphere. The two jointly publish Americas Quarterly and co-host many events.

Fundación Paz Ciudadana (Citizen Peace Foundation), Valenzuela Castillo 1881,Providencia, Santiago, Chile; +56 363 3800. Dedicated to reducing crime in Chile.

Open Society Institute, 400 West 59th St., New York, NY 10019; (212) 548-0600.Works to build vibrant and tolerant democracies in Latin America.

Southern Pulse Networked Intelligence, www.southernpulse.com. An open-source,Web-based network on security, politics, energy and business in Latin America.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, regional offices throughout LatinAmerica; www.unodc.org. Develops multilateral partnerships to combat “problemswithout borders” including drugs, crime and terrorism.

Washington Office on Latin America, 1666 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 400,Washington, DC 20009; (202) 797-2171. Promotes human rights, democracy andsocial and economic justice in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Ronald Reagan Buildingand International Trade Center, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave.,N.W., Washington, DC 20004-3027; (202) 691-4000; http://wilsoncenter.org. Providesa nonpartisan forum through its Latin American Program.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Books

Bowden, Charles, Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and theGlobal Economy’s New Killing Fields, Nation Books, 2010.A Tucson-based investigative reporter explores the border town

of Ciudad Juárez and its disintegration into crime and violence.

Bowden, Mark, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’sGreatest Outlaw, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001.The Atlantic Monthly writer tells the compelling story of the

rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the notorious Colombian cartelkingpin who became one of the drug trade’s first billionaires.

Garzón, Juan Carlos, Mafia & Co: The Criminal Net-works in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, Planeta, 2008.A Colombian political scientist analyzes the inner workings

and expansion of organized crime cartels in Latin America.

Rosenberg, Tina, Children of Cain: Violence and the Violentin Latin America, Penguin, 1992.Though nearly 20 years old, this powerful work by a Pulitzer

Prize-winning journalist continues to be relevant as an investiga-tion into the question: Why is violence so endemic to the region?

Articles

“Narco-trafficking and Transnational Crime,”Americas Quar-terly, spring 2010, www.americasquarterly.org/current.This issue is dedicated to drug trafficking and crime, with

a wealth of informative articles on topics ranging from crimeand politics to U.S.-Mexico relations to policing.

Anderson, Jon Lee, “Gangland,” The New Yorker, Oct. 5,2009, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/05/091005fa_fact_anderson.Anderson takes a comprehensive look at the criminal gangs of

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with a focus on Fernandinho — one ofthe most-wanted criminals in Rio — who lives openly in the city.

Corchado, Alfredo, “Two more arrests made in Juarez,”Dallas Morning News, Aug. 17, 2006, www.amigosdemujeres.org/twomore.pdf.The arrest by U.S. authorities of Mexican men believed to

be part of a gang that raped and killed at least 10 womenin Ciudad Juarez is hailed as a significant breakthrough inthe slaying of hundreds of women in this area since 1993.

Finnegan, William, “Silver or Lead,” The New Yorker,May 31, 2010, p. 39, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/31/100531fa_fact_finnegan#ixzz0t41PjDR5.Finnegan investigates Mexico’s La Familia Michoacán cartel

and considers the widespread power of the country’s drugtraffickers.

Lawson, Guy, “The War Next Door,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 132008, p. 75, www.rollingstone.com.Lawson’s look at the rise of criminal drug lords in Mexico

focuses on the Sinaloa Federation and “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Scherer, Julio, “Proceso en la guarida de ‘El Mayo’ Zam-bada,” Proceso, April 3, 2010, www.proceso.com.mx/rv/modHome/detalleExclusiva/78067.The editor of a leading Mexican investigative magazine

interviews El Mayo Zambada, the co-head of Mexico’smost notorious drug trafficking organization, the SinaloaFederation.

Reports and Studies

“Central America and Mexico Gang Assessment,” USAIDBureau for Latin America and Caribbean Affairs, April 2006,www.usaid.gov/gt/docs/gangs_assessment.pdf.The report explores the gang problem in Mexico and Central

America, including the causes and costs.

“Crime and Development in Central America: Caught inthe Crossfire,”United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,May 2007, www.unodc.org/pdf/research/Central_America_Study_2007.pdf.The report looks at why Central America is vulnerable to

crime and how crime is hurting development.

Ingram, Matt, and David A. Shirk, “Judicial Reform inMexico: Towards a New Criminal Justice System,”Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego, May 2010, www.justiceinmexico.org/resources/pdf/judicial_reform.pdf.The report describes the much-needed reforms approved in

2008 for Mexico’s criminal justice system and the challengesand prospects for implementing them.

Fajnzylber, Pablo, Daniel Lederman and Norman Loayza,“Inequality and Violent Crime,” Journal of Law andEconomics, April 2002, http:// siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/Crime&Inequality.pdf.A key study of the link between income inequality and vio-

lent crime, with a focus on Latin America, concludes that in-come inequality has a significant effect on the incidence ofcrime.

Ribando Seelke, Clare, “Gangs in Central America,” Con-gressional Research Service, Dec. 4, 2009, www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34112.pdf.The report provides background on gangs and addresses

anti-gang efforts at the country level and examines alternativeapproaches and responses to the problem.

Selected Sources


Bibliography

Chile

“Chile Destroys Over 7000 Firearms to Take IllegalWeapons Off Street,” Thai Press Reports, Nov. 30, 2009.Chilean officials have melted more than 7,000 firearms as

part of a government initiative to reduce gun use and cir-culation among civilians.

Barrionuevo, Alexei, “Chile Rejects Church Call to PardonOfficials,” The New York Times, July 26, 2010, p. A7.Chilean President Sebastian Pinera has rejected calls by the

Catholic Church to pardon imprisoned military officials con-victed of human rights violations during the 1980s.

Santiago, Jonathan Franklin, “Six Arrested Over Killing ofEx-Chilean President,” The Guardian (England), Dec. 9,2009.Six men have been arrested in Chile for the murder of for-

mer President Eduardo Frei Montalva, whose death in 1982remains a mystery of the Pinochet regime.

Mexico Drug Trade

“Clinton Demands New Phase in US-Mexico Anti-DrugWar,” Thai Press Reports, March 25, 2010.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised to broaden

Mexico’s drug war that has so far failed to curb the influenceof traffickers.

“Mexico’s 2010 Murder Toll Surpasses 2,000,” EFE NewsService (Spain), March 18, 2010.Nearly 19,000 lives have been claimed in Mexico since 2006

because of the country’s illegal drug trade.

Bellatin, Mario, “Human Currency in Mexico’s Drug Trade,”The New York Times, March 28, 2010, p. WK11.It is common for drug dealers in Mexico to “rent” people

to beat up or kill others perceived as enemies.

Cornwell, Rupert, “Neighbours Feud Over Drugs, Guns,and Immigration,” Independent on Sunday (England),June 13, 2010.Mexico and the United States are clashing at each other’s

borders largely due to the drug trade and illegal immigration.

Police Corruption

“Mexican Army Takes Over Police Department, Arrests 12Officers,” EFE News Service (Spain), May 6, 2010.The Mexican federal police took over the police department

in the small town of Guadalupe because of accusations ofpolice corruption.

“Mexican Mayor on Corruption Charges,” Western Mail

(Wales), June 2, 2010.The mayor of Cancun as well as his police chief have been

charged with allegedly protecting drug cartels.

“Panama’s Police Try New Tactics Against Drug Trafficking,”La Prensa (Panama), March 29, 2010.Panama Police Director Gustavo Perez has initiated programs

to reduce the amount of police corruption in drug trafficking.

Wagner, Dennis, “Drugs: New Law, Same Issues,”ArizonaRepublic, Jan. 10, 2010, p. A1.Mexican laws that increase penalties for possessing drugs

beyond allowable amounts may increase police corruption bygiving officers incentives for extortion.

Politicians

“Colombian Kingpin Implicates Ex-President in Politician’sMurder,” EFE News Service (Spain), Jan. 22, 2010.A Colombian drug lord has implicated ex-President Ernesto

Samper in the murder of a conservative politician.

“Peru’s Fujimori Sentenced to 6 Yrs for Corruption,”The Associated Press, Sept. 30, 2009.Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has been sen-

tenced to six years in prison for authorizing wiretaps and bribesto politicians.

Corella, Karina Alpizar, “President Tells Europeans Realityof Organized Crime,” Prensa Libre (Costa Rica), May 21,2010.Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla says crime in Latin

America can be curbed by strengthening education and pro-viding opportunities for youth.

Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

CITING CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHERSample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography

include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats

vary, so please check with your instructor or professor.

MLA STYLEFlamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Re-

searcher 1 Apr. 2007: 1-24.

APA STYLE

Flamini, R. (2007, April 1). Nuclear proliferation. CQ Global

Researcher, 1, 1-24.

CHICAGO STYLE

Flamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Researcher,

April 1, 2007, 1-24.

www.globalresearcher.com September 2010 233

The Next Step:

Voices From Abroad:

LAURA CHINCHILLAPresident, Costa Rica

Violence has severalcauses

“Lack of access to oppor-tunities, inequalities, and theincrease in drug trafficking,as well as organized crimehave combined to create ahighly explosive environmentin Latin America on the issueof violence.”

Prensa Libre (Costa Rica) May 2010

FELIPE CALDERÓNPresident, Mexico

The problem is crime“My goal is to free the

citizenry from the oppres-sion of criminals and not toeliminate drugs because thatis simply impossible.”

EFE news service (Spain) November 2009

NEIL MCKEGANEYProfessor of Drug MisuseResearch, University ofGlasgow, Scotland

Drugs cause politicalchange

“The political change ofheart in Latin America is aresult of the devastating im-pact of the drugs trade inthose countries — wheremultiple murder is a dailyoccurrence and where druggangs have more weaponsthan the national army.”

The Guardian (England) September 2009

CARLOS PASCUALU.S. Ambassador to Mexico

Crime drives up businesscosts

“We have already frozen theaccounts of the Gulf cartel andLos Zetas, crippling their abil-ity to use the financial systemand move money for their op-erations. The cost of doingbusiness is increasing due tothe violence generated by crim-inal organizations.”

EFE news service (Spain)April 2010

FERNANDO HENRIQUECARDOSO

Former President, Brazil

Addressing the problemdifferently

“The status of addicts mustchange from that of drug buy-ers in the illegal market to thatof patients cared for in thepublic health system. Police ac-tivities can then be better fo-cused on the fight against thedrug lords and organised crime.”

The Observer (England)

JOSÉ SERRAPresidential Candidate,

Brazilian Social Democracy Party

Bolivia is weak“I hate cocaine because

it is a disgrace to mankind,to Bolivia, to Latin America,and to Brazil. I believe theBolivian Government is weakin terms of fighting cocaine.”

La Razon (Bolivia), August 2010 Cagle Cartoons/El Universal, M

exico City/Angel Boligan

GEOVANY DOMINGUEZSenior Editor, El Tiempo,

Honduras

Intimidating reporters“You get the impression

that the government wantsyou in terror so you don’tknow what to report. Atthe end you don’t reportanything that will makepowerful people uncom-fortable.”

EFE news service (Spain) July 2010

CHRIS BRYANTForeign Affairs Minister,

United Kingdom

Stemming the tide“The drugs trade in Latin

America is a big and violentbusiness. Cartels battle for localcontrol, and ordinary membersof the public are mown downin the crossfire. That is whywe must continue working withLatin American governmentsto tackle the corruption andstop the violence.”

The Independent (England)October 2009

Documents

CQGR Crime in Latin America - Sage Publications