tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/drug-cartels-51266/articles
Drug cartels – The Conversation
2024-03-27T17:26:37Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223969
2024-03-27T17:26:37Z
2024-03-27T17:26:37Z
‘Bukelism,’ El Salvador’s flawed approach to gang violence, is no silver bullet for Ecuador
<p>Ecuador’s unexpected <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67964229">gang-related security crisis</a> has resurrected the debate on <a href="https://advox.globalvoices.org/2023/05/19/unfreedom-monitor-report-el-salvador/">what’s known as Bukelism</a>, the supposedly miraculous anti-crime strategy named after El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. </p>
<p>Bukelism is credited with dramatically reducing El Salvador’s drug-related homicide rates <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/opinion/el-salvador-bukele-election.html">from 38 per 100,000 people in 2019 to 7.8 per 100,000 in 2022</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/el-salvador-young-maverick-bukele-wins-presidential-election-but-countrys-future-remains-uncertain-111775">El Salvador: young maverick Bukele wins presidential election, but country's future remains uncertain</a>
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<p>This model has, however, come at the cost of an authoritarian drift in El Salvador and <a href="https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/from-bad-to-worse-nayib-bukeles-split-with-washington/">American sanctions for corruption</a>. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, on April 21, Ecuador will hold a <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-02-14/ecuador-sets-april-21-for-referendum-on-tightening-security">landmark referendum</a> to change its constitution in order to emulate the Salvadorean model. </p>
<p>If Ecuadorans vote in favour of these unprecedented reforms on security, they will not only give permanent and extensive powers to the country’s armed forces — along with immunity measures and the dismantlement of democratic checks and balances — but they will also normalize Bukelism, even though recent studies question its effectiveness.</p>
<h2>Eroding democracy</h2>
<p>Ecuador is among <a href="https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/nayib-bukeles-growing-list-of-latin-american-admirers/">a growing number of countries in the region</a> that want to implement this seemingly successful new style of the war on drugs. They’re apparently willing to disregard the impact on <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/el-salvador">freedom of the press and democracy</a> to curb the narco-trafficking crisis. </p>
<p>In 2022, El Salvador declared states of emergency several times and incarcerated more than 73,000 people, giving it the <a href="https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/prisoners/">highest incarceration rate in the world</a>. </p>
<p>These strong-arm tactics against crime give the public a reassuring image of control, even though the massive arrests targeted <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/thousands-of-innocent-people-jailed-in-el-salvadors-gang-crackdown">thousands of innocent people</a> and 327 citizens were forcibly disappeared, according to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/el-salvador-policies-practices-legislation-violate-human-rights/#:%7E:text=Among%20its%20recommendations%2C%20Amnesty%20International,process%20and%20nullify%20judicial%20guarantees">a recent Amnesty International report</a>. In addition, almost 200 died in state custody.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.omct.org/es/recursos/comunicados-de-prensa/comit%C3%A9-de-las-naciones-unidas-pide-a-el-salvador-prevenir-las-detenciones-arbitrarias-e-investigar-todos-los-actos-de-tortura">United Nations has called on El Salvador to stop torturing detainees</a>. <a href="https://www.americas.org/52204/">Attacks on female journalists by authorities and supporters of Bukele’s methods have also increased dramatically</a>, illustrating how Bukelism’s aggressive rhetoric has had a significant impact on journalists, especially women, in a country <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/el-salvador-women-abortion-obstetric-problems-prison-fight/">where abortion has also been completely banned</a> since Bukele’s election.</p>
<p>Yet, even the country’s worst infringements on the rule of law, including hundreds of show trials and laws <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/06/el-salvador-press-censorship-gang-law">threatening journalists with 10- to 15-year prison sentences for criticizing law enforcement</a>, are often regarded as evidence of <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/how-bukele-government-overpowered-gangs-major-findings/">Bukelism’s effectiveness</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/el-salvadors-facade-of-democracy-crumbles-as-president-purges-his-political-opponents-161781">El Salvador's façade of democracy crumbles as president purges his political opponents</a>
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<h2>Bukelism’s popularity</h2>
<p>According to experts like Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica’s former minister of public security and justice, the popularity of Bukelism <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/02/el-salvador-elections-bukele-bitcoin-crime-gang-policy/">is rising</a> largely because it’s frequently described in the media as the only effective model to fight gangs. Chinchilla argues that the Salvadorean model <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cpw79166j9go">is only a “mirage</a>” that ignores other efficient security strategies that don’t dismantle the rule of law, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/OXAN-DB201595">such as her country’s efforts a decade ago</a>. </p>
<p>This myth of Bukelism’s effectiveness creates a dilemma for other democratic countries plagued by drug-trafficking violence: should they opt for the successes of Bukelism despite human rights violations, or choose other strategies that uphold democratic norms?</p>
<p>But this is a false dilemma based on incorrect assumptions, because Bukelism is not as effective as it seems.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://icg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2022-10/096-el-salvadors-prison-fever.pdf">recent report</a> from the International Crisis Group, one of the world’s most trusted non-governmental organizations on security issues, shows that drug-related homicide rates had already fallen by 60 per cent before Bukele’s massive crackdown in 2022. The report also points out that democratic countries like Ecuador can’t duplicate Bukelism without trading off democracy. </p>
<p>In fact, by stifling political opposition, imposing presidential control over the judicial, executive and legislative branches and muzzling the media, El Salvador has slipped to the <a href="https://www.idea.int/democracytracker/country/el-salvador">bottom 25 per cent of countries worldwide in terms of democracy</a> since Bukele was first elected in 2019.</p>
<p>Freedom House’s well-known annual study of political rights and civil liberties worldwide rated El Salvador as “<a href="https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores">partly free</a>” in 2023, along with countries such as Kuwait, Malaysia and Hong Kong.</p>
<h2>Bukelism’s questionable results</h2>
<p>Data from the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/departamento-de-justicia-anuncia-operaci-n-contra-l-deres-clave-de-grupo-criminal-ms-13">U.S. task force Vulcan</a> also show homicide rates have been steadily declining in El Salvador since 2016 due to deals with drug-trafficking gangs. </p>
<p>Bukele’s 2022 crackdown “<a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/el-salvador-keeping-lid-on-prisons/">frenzy,” as the think tank Insight Crime calls it</a>, was therefore merely a reaction to the cartels’ decision to disregard the deals they had previously made with the government. </p>
<p>El Salvador’s small population and its unique geography are also key factors in Bukelism’s purported success that don’t always exist elsewhere. Ecuador, for example, has three times El Salvador’s population and a completely different landscape. What’s more, the country’s drug gangs <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/1/11/24034891/ecuador-drugs-cocaine-cartels-violence-murder-daniel-naboa-columbia-crime">can’t be compared to other Latin American drug cartels</a> in terms of financing, weapons and equipment. </p>
<p>The importance of these factors is evident in failed attempts to implement Bukelism elsewhere. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/04/honduras-gangs-crackdown-xiomara-castro">Recent data shows that neighbouring Honduras</a> has failed to achieve significant results adopting similar measures. After more than six months of duplicating El Salvador’s war on gangs, the country still has the <a href="https://insightcrime.org/news/honduras-makes-few-advances-against-crime-during-6-month-state-of-exception/">second-highest homicide rate in Latin America</a>. </p>
<p>At the opposite end, Colombia seems to be on track to achieve its new “<a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/petros-total-peace-plan-turns-one-good-bad-and-ugly">total peace plan</a>” by negotiating with its <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cm5rlrgvkyno">most iconic drug cartels, including the Clan del Golfo</a>, and providing education for impoverished young people.</p>
<h2>Corruption is part of Bukelism</h2>
<p>But perhaps Bukelism’s biggest flaw is its widespread corruption. Despite <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-sanctions-officials-close-el-salvadors-bukele-alleged-corruption-2022-12-09/">U.S sanctions in 2022</a>, the rampant corruption among state entities, the armed forces and the private sector is too often ignored by the media.</p>
<p>This contributes to the false image of Bukele’s efficiency. Given that new laws restricting the <a href="https://rsf.org/en/serious-decline-press-freedom-el-salvador-rsf-and-its-partners-call-national-authorities-safeguard">freedom of the press</a> were recently adopted, and checks and balances such as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/el-salvador">judicial independence are under attack</a>, corruption is unlikely to receive the media attention it warrants in El Salvador.</p>
<p>This perfect storm of corruption, human rights violations, extended military powers, institutional impunity and <a href="https://ovcd.org/en/criminalisation/">criminalization of journalists</a> poses <a href="https://www.wola.org/analysis/states-of-exception-new-security-model-central-america/">serious risks</a> to the region.</p>
<p>Mexico embraced a model similar to Bukelism in the 2010s, and its war on drugs failed, transforming the country into <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/standing-firm/">one of the three worst in the world</a> in terms of the level of violence and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X17719258">human rights violations against environmental activists and journalists</a>.</p>
<p>Ecuador and other nations flirting with Bukelism must not make the same mistake.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marie-Christine Doran receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-SSHRCC. </span></em></p>
Ecuador is soon holding a referendum to decide whether to follow El Salvador’s controversial strategy to end drug trafficking.
Marie-Christine Doran, Full Professor of Compared Politics, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/220911
2024-01-12T20:28:23Z
2024-01-12T20:28:23Z
How Ecuador went from being Latin America’s model of stability to a nation in crisis
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568975/original/file-20240111-15-p90s4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C85%2C8142%2C5371&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ecuador looks set to entrust its anti-gang fight to the military.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/military-elements-guard-the-car-with-president-of-ecuador-news-photo/1915341584?adppopup=true">Franklin Jacome/Agencia Press South/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-08-13/once-ecuador-was-a-peaceful-country-now-it-is-one-of-the-regions-most-violent.html">Ecuador was until relatively recently</a> seen as <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ecuador-on-Track-to-Become-the-Safest-Country-in-Latin-America-20150621-0009.html">one of the safest countries</a> in Latin America.</p>
<p>That reputation has surely now been destroyed.</p>
<p>On Jan. 9, 2024, images of hooded <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/ecuador-gangs-wave-terror-state-of-emergency">gunmen storming a TV studio</a> were broadcast around the world. It was one of a number of violent incidents that took place that day, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/world/americas/ecuador-gang-prison-emergency.html">prison riots, widespread hostage-taking</a>, the <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/seven-police-kidnapped-in-ecuador-as-president-declares-security-emergency-101704828141894.html">kidnapping of several police officers</a> and a <a href="https://crisis24.garda.com/alerts/2024/01/ecuador-criminal-groups-launch-attacks-jan-9-following-declaration-of-state-of-emergency-and-curfew-update-3">series of car explosions</a>.</p>
<p>I have been <a href="https://pir.fiu.edu/people/faculty-a-z/eduardo-gamarra1/eduardo-gamarra.html">tracking how gang crime has affected states in Latin America</a> for 38 years. When I started, few would have projected that Ecuador would descend into the crisis it finds itself today. But the story of Ecuador reflects a wider story of how countries across Latin America have struggled with organized crime and transnational drug gangs and how they have responded.</p>
<p>Ecuador now looks set to follow the recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/19/bukele-salvador-gang-crackdown/">path of El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele’s leadership</a> in trying to crack the gang problem through the use of military and the suspension of democratic norms. In the aftermath of the Jan. 9 violence, Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa named 22 gangs as terrorist organizations – a designation that makes them legitimate military targets. He has also <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67930452">imposed a 60-day state of emergency</a>, during which Ecuadorians will be subject to curfews while armed forces try to restore order in the streets and the country’s gang-controlled prisons.</p>
<h2>Ecuador: Victim of geography</h2>
<p>To understand why Ecuador has become the epicenter of gang violence, you need to understand both the geography and history of Latin America’s drug trade.</p>
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<p>Ecuador, a nation of 18 million people, is situated between Colombia in the north and Peru in the east and south. Colombia and Peru are the <a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/colombia-sets-new-cocaine-production-record-un-832dac7c">two top producers of cocaine in the world</a>. Further, Ecuador has a near-1,400 mile (2,237-kilometer) coastline through which drugs from the continent can be <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/ecuador-a-cocaine-superhighway-to-the-us-and-europe/">taken to markets in Europe and the United States</a>.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t until the <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/ecuador-war-on-drugs">U.S.-led “war on drugs</a>” put the squeeze on cartels in other countries that Ecuador became the preserve of narco gangs.</p>
<h2>Plan Colombia</h2>
<p>In the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia was the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.504">center of the international illegal drug trade</a>. This is hardly surprising, given that it was the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/pdf/andean/Andean_report_Part4.pdf">top producer of coca leaves</a>.</p>
<p>But beginning in 2000, a joint initiative between Colombian authorities and the U.S., known as <a href="https://www.americasquarterly.org/fulltextarticle/plan-colombia-a-retrospective/">Plan Colombia</a>, <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43813">pumped billions</a> of dollars into an effort to clamp down on the Colombian cocaine trade.</p>
<p>While it may have been successful in <a href="https://www.usglc.org/media/2017/04/USGLC-Plan-Columbia.pdf">supressing drug cartels</a> in Colombia itself, it has had a balloon effect elsewhere in the region: Squeeze in one place, the bulge appears elsewhere.</p>
<p>In this case, it was Mexico’s cartels that “bulged” first. Over the past decade, there has been a <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/mexicos-long-war-drugs-crime-and-cartels">massive growth in Mexican cartels</a>, led by the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación, or Jalisco New Generation. In fact, a study last year found that Mexican cartels were in effect the country’s <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/cutting-cartel-recruitment-could-be-only-way-reduce-mexico-s-violence">fifth-largest employer</a>.</p>
<p>These cartels came to dominate the illegal drug trade in Latin America, not just for cocaine, but also the trafficking of heroin and more lately fentanyl. Aligning themselves with <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/12/terrifying-days-of-terror-under-colombias-gulf-clan-cartel">Clan Del Golfo</a> – a Colombian paramilitary organization formed from the remnants of the gangs dismantled under joint Colombian-U.S. operations – the cartels helped traffic drugs through Ecuador and out of South America.</p>
<p>They were joined by European gangs, <a href="https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/ecuadors-crime-wave-and-its-albanian-connection/">notably from Albania</a>, who began to show up in Ecuador.</p>
<p>The impact locally of these outside gangs has been disastrous for Ecuador.</p>
<h2>Prior immunity</h2>
<p>European and Mexican organizations ran local operatives as enforcers and transporters. And these are the people who have become the backbone of Ecuador’s gang problem today.</p>
<p>Ecuadorian gangs such as <a href="https://insightcrime.org/news/rise-fall-choneros-ecuador-drug-trafficking-pioneers/">Los Choneros</a> developed as a de facto subsidiary of the Sinaloa and other cartels. The <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20240111-what-we-know-about-fito-ecuador-s-notorious-gang-leader-who-escaped-jail">escape from jail</a> of Los Choneros’ leader, Jose Adolfo Macias, on Jan. 7, 2024, set off the latest explosion of violence. </p>
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<span class="caption">Police officers arrest a gunman who burst into a studio of the state-owned TC television.</span>
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<p>But Ecuador’s descent into violence and chaos has also been aided by the very fact that for so long it was immune from the worst of the gang violence of the region.</p>
<p>For many years, Ecuador had <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/01/10/how-ecuador-became-latin-americas-deadliest-country">one of the lowest homicide rates</a> in Latin America – an indicator of low gang activity. As a result, it hadn’t developed a robust police and military response to gangs. Ecuador, in comparison to Colombia, El Salvador and other countries, was seen as a “soft touch” to organized crime bosses. </p>
<p>This became ever more the case in 2009 when former President Rafael Correa <a href="https://en.mercopress.com/2009/09/19/last-us-forces-abandon-manta-military-base-in-ecuador">closed down the U.S. air base in Manta</a>, from where American AWAC surveillance planes had been monitoring and trying to disrupt drug trafficking.</p>
<h2>Militarizing the response</h2>
<p>Explaining how Ecuador became the epicenter of drug gang violence is one thing. Trying to find a way out for the country now is another.</p>
<p>Across Latin America, countries have employed different models to counter organized crime, with varying degrees of success. Colombia, with extensive U.S. assistance, transformed its military and police and went to war with the cartels. The strategy somewhat successfully dismantled organized crime groups in the country, even if it failed to halt drug trafficking itself or lower the high levels of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/08/us-war-drugs-helped-unleash-violence-colombia-today/">violence in Colombia</a>.</p>
<p>Mexican authorities have tried a different approach and have been reluctant to confront the country’s drug cartels head-on. Instead, Mexico has employed a more hands-off approach, allowing drug gangs to essentially govern their states – the state of Sinaloa is <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-sinaloa-cartel-rules/">run largely by the cartel</a> that shares its name. </p>
<p>Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has touted this “<a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/amlos-hugs-not-bullets-failing-mexico">hugs not bullets</a>” approach, but under it the power of the cartels <a href="https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/mexican-cartels-grow-in-power-and-influence-with-calls-to-change-tactics-in-fighting-back-kidnapping-killings-murders-homicides-matamoros-border-crisis">has only grown</a>.</p>
<p>And then there is the Salvadoran model.</p>
<p>For many years, El Salvador suffered from organized crime, with the <a href="https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/who-are-the-maras-the-gangs-that-el-salvador-and-honduras-are-waging-war-against/">Maras gang</a> behind much of the country’s violence. Then in 2019 the electorate voted in Nayib Bukele on a law-and-order platform. Since then, he has <a href="https://insightcrime.org/news/gamechangers-2022-el-salvador-gang-crackdown-steep-human-rights-cost/">militarized the country</a>, adopted draconian security measures and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador-prison-gangs-bukele-42315f24691e0a3136d005ab7c0bee6a">jailed some 72,000 alleged gang members</a>, often without due process.</p>
<p>As a result, El Salvador is now perceived as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/25/el-salvador-crime-human-rights-prisons/">one of the safest places</a> in Latin America. This has been achieved at the expense of human rights, critics say. But, nonetheless, Bukele’s methods have enormous popular appeal.</p>
<h2>Path of El Salvador</h2>
<p>With an unprecedented wave of violence in Ecuador, it looks like President Noboa is looking to take his country down the same path as El Salvador. He has ordered the Ecuadorian military to “<a href="https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20240109-gunmen-burst-into-ecuador-tv-studio-threaten-journalists-live-on-air">neutralize” the criminal gangs</a> that operate in the country.</p>
<p>Whether the approach will work is another matter; Ecuador is in a weaker position than El Salvador.</p>
<p>Whereas many of the gangs were imported into El Salvador – many members of Maras had been deported from the U.S. – in Ecuador, they are homegrown and have become more sophisticated. Further, Noboa – despite taking office in December – has only 15 months of his presidency left before a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/20/world/americas/ecuador-election-assassination-explainer.html">general election takes place in May 2025</a>. </p>
<p>Yet, the adoption of Bukele’s methods might be seen as an election winner.</p>
<p>Like in El Salvador, the majority of Ecuador’s citizens appear ready for an iron fist approach to counter the gangs – even at the expense of some civil liberties. If you speak to the average Ecuadorian, many would no doubt tell you that talk of human rights violations is bogus at a time when they live under the fear of being murdered simply by leaving their homes.</p>
<p>As one man <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ecuador-violence-prisons-television-studio-gangs-72a3df45debae4459663c462304bcf91">told The Associated Press</a> in the aftermath of Jan. 9’s violence, the government needs to employ “a firmer hand, to have no mercy, no tolerance or (respect for) the human rights of criminals.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eduardo Gamarra has received funding from foundations, US government agencies, multilateral organizations and private donors. </span></em></p>
Widespread violence tied to Ecuadorian drug gangs has left the country looking at a draconian response.
Eduardo Gamarra, Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157223
2021-03-30T12:42:40Z
2021-03-30T12:42:40Z
Mexico moves to legalize cannabis use, a modest step toward de-escalating drug war
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392357/original/file-20210329-23-17o324x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C18%2C6240%2C4128&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexico's militarized war on drugs – and, often, drug users – has killed at least 150,000 people over the past 15 years.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/june-2020-mexico-mexiko-stadt-women-and-children-look-at-news-photo/1229949132?adppopup=true">Jair Cabrera Torres/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mexico’s lower house of Congress in March <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/world/americas/mexico-cannabis-bill.html">handily approved a bill to legalize the recreational use of cannabis</a>. The <a href="http://gaceta.diputados.gob.mx/PDF/64/2021/mar/20210310-II.pdf">bill</a> is now with the Senate, where it is likely to pass, as Mexican senators have <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2020/11/cannabislegal-senado-regulacion-uso-mariguana/">previously voted to legalize cannabis</a>. </p>
<p>If that happens, Mexico will join <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47785648">Uruguay</a> and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/rob-magazine/article-just-how-high-can-canadas-cannabis-giants-get-in-the-global-market/">Canada</a> in allowing people to use cannabis recreationally, albeit in more limited fashion. </p>
<p><a href="http://gaceta.diputados.gob.mx/PDF/64/2021/mar/20210310-II.pdf">Mexico’s bill</a> would not outright legalize cannabis; it would raise the country’s existing threshold of nonpunishable personal possession from 5 grams to 28 grams. Possession of 29 to 200 grams of cannabis would result in a fine. After that, prison would still be a possibility. </p>
<p>Selling cannabis will still be a crime, meaning peasant farmers in the states of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/29138371/El_mapa_del_cultivo_de_drogas_en_M%C3%A9xico">Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Durango or Michoacán</a> who make a pittance growing cannabis can still end up in jail.</p>
<p>However modest, marijuana legalization would be a symbolic milestone for Mexico, a country immersed in an unforgiving drug war. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man holding box of Kinder candies wears a marijuana leaf-shaped mask and gives a thumbs-up" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C20%2C3462%2C2372&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392350/original/file-20210329-17-1p942j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A chocolate seller celebrates the Senate’s vote to legalize cannabis in Mexico back in November 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chocolate-seller-wears-a-cannabis-plant-mask-as-part-of-a-news-photo/1285000513?adppopup=true">Clasos/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Modest advances</h2>
<p>According to <a href="http://bibliodigitalibd.senado.gob.mx/bitstream/handle/123456789/2035/ML93.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">a 2016 study by the Mexican Senate</a>, Mexican cartels made up to $US2 trillion from cannabis sales in the U.S. – between 15% and 26% of their total income. However, as more U.S. states <a href="https://disa.com/map-of-marijuana-legality-by-state">make cannabis legal</a> – most recently, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/nyregion/ny-legalize-marijuana.html">New York</a> – the drug’s importance to the cartels has <a href="https://www.dw.com/es/legalizaci%C3%B3n-de-marihuana-en-m%C3%A9xico-no-afectar%C3%A1-los-negocios-de-los-carteles-de-la-droga/a-56859353">drastically decreased</a>.</p>
<p>Yet the criminalization of cannabis keeps Mexico’s penitentiary system bloated. <a href="https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2020/LUCHAVSDROGAS20.pdf">In 2018</a>, 37,701 adults and 3,072 teenagers were accused of “narcomenudeo” – low-level drug dealing. Of those indicted on that charge, 60% of adults and 94% of teenagers <a href="https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2020/LUCHAVSDROGAS20.pdf">were arrested with between 5 and 100 grams of cannabis</a> – not caught in the act of selling.</p>
<p>Even under current <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LNEP_090518.pdf">Mexican law</a>, these people should not have been detained unless they had committed other crimes or behaved violently. </p>
<p>The legalization bill should finally end that type of arrest. But it contains several provisions that undermine its intended effect of protecting vulnerable consumers and small-scale growers, as congresswomen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aktB7yTejNc">Laura Rojas</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/LuRiojas/status/1369833293860978690">Lucía Riojas</a> explained when citiquing the new bill. </p>
<p>For example, it authorizes individuals to grow cannabis for their own consumption – up to six plants per adult, or eight per household. However, growers must obtain a permit from the National Council on Addictions.</p>
<p>Riojas, <a href="https://www.milenio.com/politica/lucia-riojas-regala-porro-marihuana-olga-sanchez-cordero">who made headlines in 2019</a> when she offered a rolled joint to Mexico’s new interior minister, said that rule <a href="https://twitter.com/LuRiojas/status/1369833293860978690">perpetuates the social stigma on consumers</a>.</p>
<p>The bill also grants officials authority, without a warrant, to enter the residence of a cannabis grower to verify compliance with the law. That may lead some people who currently grow cannabis illegally at home to avoid registering, preferring their clandestine tranquility over invasive home inspections.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Small plants grow in metal basins" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392359/original/file-20210329-21-6vm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An underground marijuana greenhouse in Mexico City in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/marijuana-plants-which-are-grown-for-medicinal-purposes-are-news-photo/500661398?adppopup=true">Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>SMART litigation</h2>
<p>Such provisions have tempered the celebrations of the activists and academics who have for years <a href="https://www.mucd.org.mx/cannabis-cuenta-regresiva/">intensely lobbied</a> legislators to end Mexico’s cannabis ban for human rights reasons. </p>
<p>In 2013, four <a href="https://www.mucd.org.mx/litigio-estrategico-politica-de-drogas/">board members of the drug policy nonprofit Mexico United Against Crime</a> challenged <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/nacion/sociedad/2015/11/5/un-cuarteto-que-no-la-fuma-pero-pide-libertad-para-decidir">the prohibition of cannabis</a> before the Mexican Supreme Court. The plaintiffs claimed that Mexico’s cannabis ban violated their <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/1_110321.pdf">constitutionally guaranteed rights</a>, including the right to make decisions about their personal health. </p>
<p>Filing what’s known as an “amparo” – a Mexican legal mechanism that allows citizens to defend their own constitutional rights – they argued in court that adults should be able to grow marijuana at home, and use it appropriately.</p>
<p>In 2015, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that Mexico’s total cannabis ban was unconstitutional. Justice Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea <a href="https://www2.scjn.gob.mx/juridica/engroses/1/2014/2/3_164118_2780.doc">noted in this landmark decision</a> that the Mexican Constitution “does not impose an ideal of human excellence” but “allows each individual to choose their own life plan … as long as it does not affect others.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Eight people sit at a long table with microphones; press is visible in the foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392355/original/file-20210329-19-t8x8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The members of Mexico United Against Crime explain the court’s ruling in their favor at a press conference in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-mexican-society-of-responsible-and-tolerant-news-photo/495685168?adppopup=true">Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because the outcome of an amparo trial <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151578239.pdf">applies only to the petitioner</a>, nobody beyond the handful of SMART members could grow marijuana or possess over 5 grams of weed at home. But the decision led to a groundswell of similar amparo cases, and the courts <a href="https://www.scjn.gob.mx/transparencia/lo-mas-solicitado/2019-1">repeatedly ruled in the petitioners’ favor</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, in 2018, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www2.scjn.gob.mx/denunciasincumplimiento/AbrirEngrose.aspx?EngroseID=707373">mandated Congress</a> to end the “unconstitutional” prohibition of cannabis. </p>
<p>Given the complexity of this matter and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court has granted Congress several extensions to comply with this mandate, but the court’s final deadline <a href="https://www.mucd.org.mx/cannabis-cuenta-regresiva/%22">expires on April 30</a>. That means Mexico’s cannabis ban will be annulled on that date, even if the new regulation law has not taken effect.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Small transformation</h2>
<p>Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2021/03/08/version-estenografica-de-la-conferencia-de-prensa-matutina-del-presidente-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-484/">has presented</a> the cannabis bill as a victory of his political party, Morena. </p>
<p>But López Obrador’s views on cannabis have been ambiguous and erratic. Over his long political career, he has frequently voiced his willingness to “debate” legalization but <a href="https://politico.mx/minuta-politica/minuta-politica-gobierno-federal/%C3%AD-se-movi%C3%B3-el-discurso-de-amlo-sobre-la-legalizaci%C3%B3n-de-la-marihuana/">never explicitly committed to do it</a>. </p>
<p>López Obrador <a href="https://theconversation.com/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-was-elected-to-transform-mexico-can-he-do-it-99176">ran for president in 2018 as a progressive</a> who would “transform” and “pacify” Mexico, including by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexicos-presidential-front-runner-amlo-doesnt-want-to-escalate-the-drug-war/2018/06/29/f3081f12-7320-11e8-bda1-18e53a448a14_story.html">rethinking its drug policies</a>. But as recently as February 2020, he declared he would <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2020/02/26/version-estenografica-de-la-conferencia-de-prensa-matutina-del-presidente-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-264/">support only medical cannabis</a>, not recreational.</p>
<p>López Obrador has also largely continued the drug war of his predecessors. In 2006, former Mexican president Felipe Calderón <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">deployed the military</a> to quell the drug trade. Unbridled violence followed as soldiers battled the cartels and, increasingly, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/La_Tropa_Por_Qu%C3%A9_Mata_Un_Soldado_Premio.html?id=VjT0wgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">any citizen perceived as a threat</a> – including people who use drugs.</p>
<p>López Obrador recently <a href="https://www.dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5593105&fecha=11/05/2020">extended the armed forces’ deployment as law enforcement until 2024</a>.</p>
<p>Over the past 15 years, drug cartels and organized crime in Mexico have killed an estimated <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41576.pdf">150,000 people</a>, representing <a href="https://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/olap/proyectos/bd/continuas/mortalidad/defuncioneshom.asp?s=est&c=28820&proy=mortgral_dh">about half of all Mexico’s homicides</a> during that period. Another <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41576.pdf">73,000 people have disappeared</a>. </p>
<p>Ultimately, this bloody history gave rise to cannabis legalization in Mexico – a small yet meaningful step toward de-escalating its war on drugs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Mexico would not fully legalize cannabis; its new regulation plan makes recreational use legal. However modest, that would be a symbolic milestone for a country immersed in a long, deadly drug war.
Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156622
2021-03-10T13:31:53Z
2021-03-10T13:31:53Z
Biden ends policy forcing asylum-seekers to ‘remain in Mexico’ – but for 41,247 migrants, it’s too late
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388635/original/file-20210309-19-1toamej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C7577%2C5199&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The first group of asylum-seekers allowed to cross from a migrant camp in Mexico into the United States following Biden's repeal of the 'Remain in Mexico' policy arrives to Brownsville, Texas, Feb. 25, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/volunteer-welcomes-a-group-of-at-least-25-immigrant-asylum-news-photo/1304097843">John Moore/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The last residents of Mexico’s Matamoros refugee camp <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-mexico-feature/mexican-camp-that-was-symbol-of-migrant-misery-empties-out-under-biden-idUSKBN2AZ0GB">crossed the border</a> into the United States on March 5 to request asylum. </p>
<p>The migrants – many of them <a href="https://theconversation.com/migrants-stories-why-they-flee-114725">Central Americans fleeing endemic violence, poverty and corruption</a> – will be allowed to stay in the U.S. as their cases move through the immigration court system. </p>
<p>The exodus from the <a href="https://twitter.com/nspimentel/status/1367884621254393857">Matamoros camp</a>, which once <a href="https://gpc.batten.virginia.edu/our-work/publications/living-tent-camp-usmexico-border-experience-women-and-children-matamoros">sheltered more than 2,500 asylum-seekers</a>, marks the end of a Trump-era policy called the <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/24/migrant-protection-protocols">Migrant Protection Protocols</a>. Commonly known as “Remain in Mexico,” the January 2019 policy forced <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/mpp/">71,000 migrants</a> who were detained along the U.S.-Mexico border back into Mexico to file for asylum and wait for many months while their claims were processed. </p>
<p>The Trump administration claimed the Migrant Protection Protocols ensured a “<a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/24/migrant-protection-protocols">safe and orderly process</a>.” But it created a refugee crisis in Mexico, whose border cities were not equipped to house, feed and protect tens of thousands of refugees. Matamoros is <a href="https://www.texasobserver.org/life-is-a-fight-scenes-from-a-migrant-tent-camp-in-juarez/">one of many tent camps</a> and Catholic shelters set up to serve this population. </p>
<p>On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, the Department of Homeland Security <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/01/20/dhs-statement-suspension-new-enrollments-migrant-protection-protocols-program">suspended the Migrant Protection Protocols</a>, and by late February asylum-seekers were being screened for COVID-19 and allowed into the United States. The change elicited <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx89j5/we-are-so-happy-migrants-stranded-by-trump-are-finally-entering-the-us">enormous relief</a> among the <a href="https://wgno.com/news/politics/line-to-exit-mpp-program-grows-to-15000-in-less-than-two-weeks/">more than 15,000 migrants</a> at that point stuck in the camps in northern Mexico.</p>
<p>But the border reopened too late for most of the 41,247 migrants whose cases were rejected while they “remained in Mexico.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388639/original/file-20210309-21-qq55uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dozens of tents in a parking lot" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388639/original/file-20210309-21-qq55uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388639/original/file-20210309-21-qq55uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388639/original/file-20210309-21-qq55uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388639/original/file-20210309-21-qq55uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388639/original/file-20210309-21-qq55uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388639/original/file-20210309-21-qq55uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388639/original/file-20210309-21-qq55uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Matamoros camp, next to the international bridge to the United States, Dec. 9, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/camp-for-asylum-seekers-stands-next-to-the-international-news-photo/1193072800?adppopup=true">John Moore/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dangers of waiting</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/">Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse</a> at Syracuse University, where I research immigration enforcement, collects and analyzes government records procured through the Freedom of Information Act. Records we obtained from the Department of Justice show that <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/mpp/">71,036 total asylum cases were filed from Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols</a>, which lasted from January 2019 until January 2021.</p>
<p>So far, 41,888 cases have been completed or closed. Of those, just 641 people were granted asylum or otherwise given shelter in the United States, an approval rate of 1.5%. In 2017, by contrast, <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/">40% of asylum-seekers</a> had their claims granted by a U.S. immigration judge.</p>
<p>Of the 41,888 cases completed under the Migrant Protection Protocols, 32,659 asylum-seekers received a deportation order from an immigration judge – even though they were not physically in the United States. Most of these – 27,898 – received deportation orders because they did not appear for their immigration court hearing on the U.S. side of the border.</p>
<p>There are many reasons migrants waiting in Mexico may not have made it to immigration court. One is the dangers of northern Mexico, where <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/displacement-in-central-america.html">drug cartels and organized crime prey on vulnerable migrants</a>.</p>
<p>Matamoros is in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where <a href="https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/remain-mexico#accountability">rape, torture and kidnapping</a> are so pervasive that the U.S. State Department has a “do not travel” <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html">advisory on the state</a>. </p>
<p>The nonprofit organization <a href="https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/remain-mexico#accountability">Human Rights First documented 1,544 cases</a> of asylum-seekers who became victims of violence while they waited in Mexico. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-12/attorney-central-american-in-mpp-program-murdered-in-tijuana">In one case</a>, Customs and Border Protection returned a Salvadoran family to Mexico in May 2019 despite their expressed fear. In November 2019, the father was stabbed to death in Tijuana, leaving behind his wife and two children. </p>
<p>“I told the judge that I was afraid for my children because we were in a horrible, horrible place, and we didn’t feel safe here,” <a href="https://www.telemundo20.com/noticias/local/migrante-muere-en-espera-de-asilo/1971748/">his widow told the news outlet Telemundo</a>.</p>
<p>Another victim was <a href="https://diario.mx/juarez/secuestraron-federales-a-migrante-20190618-1528960.html">a Honduran woman</a> of the <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/5b9f70157.html">Garífuna</a> Afro-Caribbean minority, who was kidnapped and raped in the city of Juárez while she “remained in Mexico.” </p>
<p>And Vice Magazine reported on David, an asylum-seeker from Guatemala, who was kidnapped by a cartel <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa7kkg/trumps-asylum-policies-sent-him-back-to-mexico-he-was-kidnapped-five-hours-later-by-a-cartel">five hours after he was sent back to Mexico</a> in 2019. David escaped, but because the cartel had taken his paperwork, making an asylum claim became all but impossible.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388638/original/file-20210309-15-fg13oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Line of people standing behind a van, with children playing in dirt in foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388638/original/file-20210309-15-fg13oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388638/original/file-20210309-15-fg13oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388638/original/file-20210309-15-fg13oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388638/original/file-20210309-15-fg13oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388638/original/file-20210309-15-fg13oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388638/original/file-20210309-15-fg13oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388638/original/file-20210309-15-fg13oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Asylum-seekers from the Matamoros refugee camp line up for bottled water on Dec. 9, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/asylum-seekers-wait-for-bottled-water-at-an-immigrant-camp-news-photo/1193073444?adppopup=true">John Moore/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Insurmountable obstacles</h2>
<p>Lack of legal counsel is another reason migrants waiting in Mexico might not have appeared at their U.S. court hearings or may have been denied asylum and issued a deportation order.</p>
<p>Immigrants with an attorney are <a href="https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/access-counsel-immigration-court">twice as likely to win their cases</a>, and 99% of asylum-seeking families with an immigration attorney <a href="https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/access-counsel-immigration-court">attend all their immigration court hearings</a>.</p>
<p>But it was much harder to get a <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/governmental_legislative_work/publications/washingtonletter/november_2019_washington_letter/hearing-recap-laura-pena/">U.S. immigration lawyer in Tamaulipas, Mexico, than in Texas</a> in 2019. In fiscal 2020, only 14% of migrants forced to “remain in Mexico” had found an immigration attorney, compared with <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/">80% of asylum cases for migrants inside the U.S.</a></p>
<p>Without a lawyer, communicating with the American court system across an international border while living in a camp became a nearly insurmountable barrier. </p>
<p>For example, migrants told BuzzFeed News that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement often filed incomplete or inaccurate paperwork, sometimes <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/asylum-notice-border-appear-facebook-mexico">listing “Facebook” as migrants’ physical address</a>. And without a lawyer, it was all but impossible for these migrants to receive crucial court notices.</p>
<h2>End of asylum</h2>
<p>“Remain in Mexico” made it nearly impossible for asylum-seekers to find safety in the U.S. But the asylum process can have profoundly unequal results – regardless of who sits in the White House.</p>
<p>Asylum outcomes are often determined as much by which <a href="https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2914&context=facpub">asylum officer</a> or <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-72">immigration judge</a> decides the case as they are determined by merit. For instance, immigration judges in Atlanta <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/590/">reject, on average, 97% of asylum cases</a>, while those in New York City approve, on average, 74%. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388640/original/file-20210309-17-1c0jbd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men in winter clothing in a room of bunk beds discuss a piece of paper that one man is holding" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388640/original/file-20210309-17-1c0jbd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388640/original/file-20210309-17-1c0jbd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388640/original/file-20210309-17-1c0jbd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388640/original/file-20210309-17-1c0jbd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388640/original/file-20210309-17-1c0jbd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388640/original/file-20210309-17-1c0jbd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388640/original/file-20210309-17-1c0jbd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Cuban migrant discusses next steps in his asylum process under new Biden administration rules at a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on Feb. 19.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mikel-aties-from-habana-cuba-discusses-details-of-his-news-photo/1231272185?adppopup=true">Paul Ratje / AFP via Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though El Salvador and Honduras are among the five top <a href="http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/U-Reports/SAS-Report-GVD2017.pdf">countries in the world for violent deaths</a>, typically courts deny <a href="http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/U-Reports/SAS-Report-GVD2017.pdf">more than 80% of asylum cases</a> from those countries, in large part because the U.S. government has been reluctant to recognize <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/us/politics/sessions-domestic-violence-asylum.html">gang persecution and domestic violence as grounds for asylum</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Political and economic instability in Central America is also <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/children-on-the-run.html">driving children to flee</a> the region. In the past two weeks, 3,200 unaccompanied minors have <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/unaccompanied-minors-border-has-tripled-two-weeks-now-totals-over-3200-1574790">arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border</a>.</p>
<p>“Remain in Mexico” handed asylum-seekers a difficult choice: Stay and hope to survive or lose your chance, however small, of a new life. Luck and perseverance paid off for the <a href="https://wgno.com/news/politics/line-to-exit-mpp-program-grows-to-15000-in-less-than-two-weeks/">estimated 15,000 migrants</a> who may now pursue their asylum claims from the relative safety of the United States. But for everyone else, there is no second chance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Kocher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Luck and tenacity paid off for some 15,000 migrants who may now pursue their asylum cases in the US But nearly 42,000 cases filed from Mexico under a Trump-era rule were already rejected.
Austin Kocher, Research Assistant Professor, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148760
2020-10-28T19:50:41Z
2020-10-28T19:50:41Z
Trump and Biden ignore how the war on drugs fuels violence in Latin America
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365847/original/file-20201027-24-7k5mqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C443%2C4000%2C2215&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this July 2020 photo, a woman is comforted in her home during a wake for her son who was killed along with at least 26 others in an attack by drug cartels on a drug rehabilitation centre where he was being treated in Irapuato, Mexico. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the final presidential debate before the United States election, Democrat Joe Biden acknowledged the harmful effects of the war on drugs on racial minorities in the U.S. due to incarceration and police violence, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/talk2020/candidates/joe-biden/quotes/FXLV000020201023egam00001_Q419_SP91719_EP92571">and even suggested decriminalizing cocaine consumption</a>. </p>
<p>But the immigration debate centred on familiar issues. Biden focused on the innocent children who got separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump focused on the “coyotes” — <a href="https://www.univision.com/univision-news/immigration/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-coyote-smuggling-migrants-from-mexico-to-the-united-states">someone paid by migrants to illegally guide or assist them across the border</a> — and drug cartels.</p>
<p>But neither made the link between immigration and the drug war, despite the substantial impact the U.S.-led war on drugs has had on the lives of people in Latin America.</p>
<p>Increasingly, people are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to escape a cycle of violence to which the United States continues to contribute. Immigration is just the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>Murder rates in Latin America have <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/Booklet2.pdf">skyrocketed since the 1980s</a> and are <a href="https://www.latinamerica.undp.org/content/rblac/en/home/presscenter/director-s-graph-for-thought/killing-development---the-devastating-epidemic-of-crime-and-inse.html">still among the highest in the world</a>. This is because Latin America became the battleground for the war on drugs. </p>
<h2>American crackdown</h2>
<p>Over the last 50 years, the U.S. government has pushed for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2012.00146.x">increasingly restrictive international treaties on drugs, which paradoxically increased the profitability of cocaine</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, while Americans were locking up their fellow citizens for drug offences, the U.S. government decided to eradicate the production of coca plants and the sale of cocaine abroad. The U.S. provided political, military and financial support for Latin American governments to eradicate coca production, spraying the lands of peasant coca farmers, supporting police and militia violence against guerrilla movements and cracking down on drug businesses in urban centres. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Soldiers uproot green coca shrubs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers uproot coca shrubs as part of a manual eradication operation in San Jose del Guaviare, Colombia, in March 2019. The amount of Colombian land where peasants and drug traffickers harvest the plant used to make cocaine has been steadily rising since 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1606635021000021377">made foreign loans to Latin American countries conditional</a> upon enforcing tough anti-drug policies. These tough-on-crime measures disproportionately affected marginalized populations: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2012.01.007">Peruvian peasant farmers</a>, <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-anti-black-city">Black Brazilian favela dwellers</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09614520701628121">Salvadorean youth sporting tattoos</a>. </p>
<p>American support for violence in Latin America is not new. During the Cold War, the U.S. supported military coups and civil wars in the region. But with the end of the Cold War and the democratization of Latin American countries, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-016-9631-9">war on drugs became a legitimate excuse for continued state violence</a> as the illicit drug economy fuelled criminality.</p>
<h2>Unsuccessful policies</h2>
<p>These policies did not work. Drug prohibition, combined with continued consumption, has <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/spp/1010">shifted but not dismantled</a> the drug business. The largest consumer market is still the United States.</p>
<p>When Peruvian coca production was reduced, production shifted to Colombia. When Colombian drug cartels were dismantled, Mexican cartels became stronger. Weakened large cartels allowed smaller organizations to fill the void. Brazil’s overcrowded, underfunded, violent and corrupt <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055418000928">prisons became headquarters and training grounds for drug traffickers</a>. </p>
<p>The war on drugs generates criminal and police violence in Latin America, and blurs the boundary between the two. Drug businesses <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520285712/the-killing-consensus">create their own justice systems</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The hands of prisoners are seen grasping the bars of a jail cell." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Imprisoned gang members stand behind bars during a media tour of the prison in Quezaltepeque, El Salvador, in September 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s no point calling the police to help you resolve an illegal business transaction. Drug dealers would rather act as the police than have someone else call the police into their neighbourhoods.</p>
<p>Drug profits create <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002715587100">opportunities for corruption</a>, involving police officers, government bureaucrats and high-level politicians, and all sides create violence when these private-public partnerships go wrong. </p>
<p>Politicians often enlist drug dealers, militia and police officers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-016-9631-9">to eliminate their opponents or to generate societal drama for political gain</a>. </p>
<h2>A vicious cycle</h2>
<p>Combined with the war on drugs, domestic tough-on-crime and restrictive immigration policies in the U.S. generate a vicious cycle of displacement and violence on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Workers repair the facade of a government building riddled with bullet holes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Workers repair the facade of City Hall riddled with bullet holes in Villa Union, Mexico, in December 2019. The small town was the site of violence after 22 people were killed in a weekend gun battle between a heavily armed drug cartel assault group and security forces.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Greater border enforcement means that more immigrants have to depend on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1076720">human smuggling organizations</a>, and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2804692">pass through territories controlled by drug traffickers</a>, to make the crossing. But these relationships go deeper. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/space-of-detention">As the book <em>Space of Detention</em></a> by American cultural anthropologist Elana Zilberg explains, the first wave of Salvadorean refugees to the U.S. were escaping the American-backed civil war and political repression of the 1980s. </p>
<p>Some of these refugees’ adult children joined youth gangs, and were imprisoned and deported from the U.S. due to toughening anti-drug and immigration policies. As they arrived in their parents’ country, one they barely knew, they influenced local youth culture, symbols and gang affiliations, creating transnational youth gangs known as <em>maras</em>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/central-american-gangs-like-ms-13-were-born-out-of-failed-anti-crime-policies-76554">Central American gangs like MS-13 were born out of failed anti-crime policies</a>
</strong>
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<p>Maras were then violently repressed by Salvadorean policies that were modelled on U.S. drug/gang measures, including persecuting young adults if they had tattoos.</p>
<p>Police and criminal violence has generated more insecurity, leading some Salvadorean youth to seek refuge in Mexico and the United States. </p>
<p>U.S. conservatives cite criminal violence in Latin America to deny migrants fleeing that violence the right to asylum, and as an excuse to enforce draconian immigration, policing and deportation policies, which in turn exacerbate the same problems that they’re ostensibly aimed at solving.</p>
<p>Whether these immigrants are members of gangs, are carrying drugs, have learned how to be violent or are innocent victims is beside the point. The point is that the American public should no longer pretend that the United States hasn’t played a critical role in creating and fuelling this violence. The violence doesn’t only go in a south-north direction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luisa Farah Schwartzman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The American public should understand that the United States has played a critical role in creating and fuelling violence in Latin America via its unsuccessful war on drugs.
Luisa Farah Schwartzman, Associate Professor in Sociology, University of Toronto
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/142152
2020-08-04T12:17:50Z
2020-08-04T12:17:50Z
Marijuana fueled Colombian drug trade before cocaine was king
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350268/original/file-20200729-19-qmd65z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5403%2C3580&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A marijuana trafficker practicing his aim in the Guajira, epicenter of Colombia's first drug boom, in 1979.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/colombia-marijuana-dealer-practising-shooting-his-gun-on-news-photo/96345506?adppopup=true">Romano Cagnoni/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Long before Pablo Escobar’s Medellín cartel got rich supplying Americans with cocaine in the 1980s, Colombia was already the United States’ main source of illicit drugs – specifically, marijuana. That’s the takeaway of my new book “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520325470/marijuana-boom">Marijuana Boom</a>.” </p>
<p>This debunks the popular notion of Escobar as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/pablo-escobar-and-the-legacy-of-drug-warfare-in-latin-america-21061">pioneer of Colombian drug trafficking</a>. Rather, it was some of Colombia’s <a href="https://colombiareports.com/la-guajira/">most marginalized people</a> who changed the course of their nation.</p>
<p>Back in the 1970s, peasant farmers from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta – a remote and mountainous region of Colombia’s Caribbean coast – began shifting from banana, cotton and coffee production to marijuana cultivation. When this population again pivoted to growing <a href="http://oaji.net/articles/2020/2336-1580845587.pdf">coca leaf for processing into cocaine</a> in the 1980s, they set Colombia on a course to become the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/colombia-top-cocaine-producing-countries-record-production-2017-3">illicit drug capital of the Americas</a>. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>This research upends other old tropes about the drug trade, including the idea that it’s <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/drug-dealing-is-a-violent-crime">inherently violent</a>. </p>
<p>Colombia’s marijuana economy operated relatively peacefully until the Colombian and U.S. governments in 1978 launched <a href="https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/a-traffickers-paradise-the-war-on-drugs-and-the-new-cold-war-in-c">a militarized campaign to eradicate marijuana crops and increase drug interdictions</a>. Traffickers retaliated, giving rise to the now familiar “war on drugs”-style dynamic of escalating conflict. </p>
<p>My research also disproves the <a href="https://franciscothoumi.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Drogas-Ilegales-Econom%C3%ADa-y-Sociedad-en-Los-Andes.-Francisco-E.-Thoumi-2002.pdf">long-held academic consensus</a> that illegal drug markets emerge in remote areas where the state has insufficient presence. </p>
<p>I find Colombia’s marijuana boom was actually an unintended consequence of state-led efforts to economically develop Colombia. Throughout the 20th century, Colombia worked to build its <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814799345/bananas-and-business/">banana export sector</a>, create <a href="https://archive.org/details/cottonindustryof113port/page/n5/mode/2up">a cotton belt</a> to supply Colombian textile factories and to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/agrarian-question-and-the-peasant-movement-in-colombia/410CEB610724F8514ED2B1928689A125">redistribute land</a>. By the 1970s, Colombia was expanding international trade, particularly with the U.S.</p>
<p>These changes made some rural Colombians rich but, my research shows, impoverished peasant farmers in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. People who’d grown legal commodity crops saw opportunity in exporting an illegal one to the United States: marijuana.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350275/original/file-20200729-27-mm04gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two armed officers search three men with their hands up" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350275/original/file-20200729-27-mm04gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350275/original/file-20200729-27-mm04gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350275/original/file-20200729-27-mm04gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350275/original/file-20200729-27-mm04gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350275/original/file-20200729-27-mm04gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350275/original/file-20200729-27-mm04gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350275/original/file-20200729-27-mm04gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police search suspected marijuana growers in the Guajira, Colombia, 1980.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/armed-police-searching-suspected-marijuana-growers-near-news-photo/3271093?adppopup=true">Timothy Ross/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>My book recounts how and why people in northern Colombia used their farming experience to grow and export marijuana. But it doesn’t detail their next transition, from <a href="https://verdadabierta.com/los-anos-de-hernan-giraldo-en-la-sierra-nevada-de-santa-marta/">marijuana to cocaine</a>. </p>
<p>In southern Colombia, academics have documented how Pablo Escobar’s generation of traffickers <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/between-the-guerrillas-and-the-state">financed new settlers to grow coca leaf</a>, the base ingredient in cocaine, in the 1980s. We just don’t know how cocaine simultaneously supplanted marijuana as the staple drug crop of the peasant economy up north. </p>
<h2>How I do my work</h2>
<p>This began as a personal quest to understand the country of my childhood. My father is from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta area, where marijuana once boomed. </p>
<p>Some of my research was archival, conducted in Colombia and the U.S. But much of it was done on the ground. I began collecting testimonials in northern Colombia in the early 2000s, during Colombia’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/search/result?sg=5ff52dde-56c1-4bd3-94a9-5a94fe3f99e9&sp=1&sr=1&url=%2Fwhy-only-now-after-51-years-war-is-ending-in-colombia-48563">52-year armed conflict</a>. Paramilitary forces controlled the area. The war ended in 2016. But armed groups, including cartels, still operate there.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>To stay safe while studying an industry that uses cash and violence to keep its affairs clandestine, I relied on friends and family, who helped me establish contacts and identify information sources. I also kept my questions focused on the defunct marijuana business – not the active cocaine trade. </p>
<p>This focus helped me avoid reproducing what historian Luis Astorga calls “<a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL896105M/Mitologi%CC%81a_del_narcotraficante_en_Me%CC%81xico">the mythology of the narcotrafficker</a>.” There are no Pablo Escobars in my book – just everyday Colombians who seized on their country’s growing commercial ties to <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3140.html">the world’s largest drug market</a> – the United States – to launch a global business.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142152/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lina Britto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Step aside, Pablo Escobar. New research shows it was poor farmers who helped turn Colombia into the world’s largest drug producer when they started growing and exporting pot in the 1970s.
Lina Britto, Assistant Professor of History, Northwestern University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/139613
2020-06-22T12:49:24Z
2020-06-22T12:49:24Z
Coronavirus: narco gangs could see big popularity boost from helping residents in Latin America
<p>La Loma is an area of the city of Medellin, Colombia, which is divided into small neighbourhoods controlled by gangs known as “<em>combos</em>”. Each <em>combo</em> is loyal to one or other of the country’s <a href="http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/137408/">organised-crime groups</a>. La Loma is also a main route for trafficking drugs, narcotics and weapons to different parts of the country. These “<a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.21500/16578031.3825">invisible borders</a>” divide the neighbourhood into criminal territories.</p>
<p>On March 24, when Colombia went into lockdown, all <em>combos</em> in La Loma immediately ordered curfews and implemented ceasefires. As an extra precaution, the south and north <em>combos</em> set up checkpoints in key places, demanding that local communities follow government restrictions and ordering people not to leave their homes outside of allocated times. </p>
<p>After local people received little help from the city council, these gangs began to go door to door to distribute hand sanitiser, food parcels and medicines, while demanding that residents wash their hands. On April 19, the Colombian media began to report that the Medellin city council had negotiated with different <em>combos</em> across the city on the best way to provide similar support to other neighbourhoods, coordinating on <a href="https://lasillavacia.com/los-combos-comuna-8-medellin-estan-modo-solidarios-76373">distributing</a> and supplying <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/opinion/pandemonium-columna-915804">official assistance</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1251947258666500096"}"></div></p>
<p>The case of La Loma is not unique. The <a href="https://lasillavacia.com/los-armados-ahora-tambien-juegan-autoridad-sanitaria-76482">same thing</a> is happening in other cities <a href="https://tubarco.news/tubarco-noticias-occidente/tubarco-noticias-narino-tubarco-noticias-occidente/con-amenazas-disidencia-de-las-farc-dice-que-hara-cumplir-cuarentena-en-narino/">across Colombia</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-crime-cartels-helping-communities-will-extract-a-high-price-in-years-to-come-138592">around the world</a>. </p>
<p>In some regions of Colombia’s north, gangs have been regulating crime, resolving communal disputes and imposing unofficial “<a href="https://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/jep-colombia/control-de-grupos-armados-crece-en-cuarentena-por-coronavirus-487598">rules of law</a>”. At the same time, illegal groups controlling these northern regions are demanding that the population obey government measures set in place to <a href="https://www.elcolombiano.com/colombia/silenciar-fusiles-para-enfrentar-al-coronavirus-el-enemigo-comun-DF12714557">confront the epidemic</a>, creating a clear system of <a href="http://www.ipsnoticias.net/2020/04/grupos-armados-colombia-se-aprovechan-la-covid-19/">local co-governance</a>.</p>
<h2>Narco rule</h2>
<p>In Mexico, the situation is similar. On March 16, the Mexican government declared a national health emergency, imposing tough restrictions to combat the spread of COVID-19. Residents of Ciudad Victoria, the capital city of Tamaulipas, started to receive support from drug cartels. Since April, the distribution of food parcels (<em>despensas</em>), money, medicines and face masks to communities by the Gulf Cartel began to be well documented on <a href="https://www.infobae.com/america/mexico/2020/04/20/narcos-aprovechan-coronavirus-en-mexico-para-repartir-despensas-y-pelear-territorio/">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/nacional/con-despensas-narcos-ganan-simpatias-y-el-control-de-territorios">Facebook</a>.</p>
<p>In other Mexican regions where drug cartels have established de facto governance, the same trend has followed. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel started delivering food parcels and medicines in <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/estados/coronavirus-amlo-confirma-que-narco-ha-entregado-despensas-en-estados">cardboard boxes</a>. Both cartels are using the cardboard boxes and face masks as a <a href="https://twitter.com/plumasatomicas/status/1257783943597826057">propaganda tool</a>, printing the outside of both items with stencil-style images of former Sinaloa cartel chief <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-mexico-cartels/el-chapos-daughter-mexican-cartels-hand-out-coronavirus-aid-idUKKBN21Y3JJ">Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman</a>, or the present head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-52367898">Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho”</a>. </p>
<p>Mexican cartels have also imposed <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/el-chapos-sons-impose-coronavirus-curfew-threaten-beatings-on-mexican-town-controlled-by-cartel-report">curfews in some regions</a> to stop the spread of the coronavirus in territories <a href="https://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/latinoamerica/coronavirus-en-mexico-el-toque-de-queda-de-los-hijos-del-chapo-491424">under their control</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1251344703829786627"}"></div></p>
<p>In Brazil, meanwhile, it has been reported that the Comando Vermelho, a gang which has controlled for decades the famous <em>Ciudade de Deus favela</em> in Rio de Janeiro, has imposed curfews, <a href="https://diariodorio.com/com-medo-do-coronavirus-traficantes-proibem-turistas-em-favelas-do-rio/">forbidden tourists</a> from entering the <em>favelas</em>, and encouraged local residents <a href="https://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2020/03/24/coronavirus-faccoes-do-trafico-impoem-toque-de-recolher-em-favelas-do-rj.htm">to wash their hands</a>. </p>
<p>In Venezuela, the <em>colectivos</em>, the equivalent of the Colombian <em>combos</em>, have imposed curfews in neighbourhoods in Caracas, and encouraged residents to obey quarantine measures. The <em>colectivos</em> <a href="https://elpitazo.net/sucesos/colectivos-imponen-toque-de-queda-en-el-23-de-enero-por-el-coronavirus/">imposed lockdowns</a> in Caracas before the government did so. </p>
<p>The Barrio 18 gang in Guatemala has suspended all demands for extortion payments from local businesses. The gang is also helping the <a href="https://elperiodico.com.gt/nacion/2020/03/26/pandilleros-conceden-indulto-en-el-cobro-de-extorsion/">implementation of health measures</a>. In El Salvador, members affiliated to the MS13 and Barrio 18 gangs are <a href="https://elfaro.net/es/202003/el_salvador/24211/Pandillas-amenazan-a-quien-incumpla-la-cuarentena.htm">enforcing curfews</a> across the country.</p>
<h2>Cartels as governing bodies</h2>
<p>Governing activity by illegal groups goes back much further than the current pandemic. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17440572.2018.1543916">Since 1990</a>, some organised-crime organisations have effectively performed as governing bodies in different countries across Latin America. Drug cartels and gangs aim, in the long term, to <a href="https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/07386.pdf">replace</a> some of the state’s functions in order to guarantee the prosperity of their illegal interests.</p>
<p>But the coronavirus crisis may represent a shift in this story. Drug cartels across Latin America have taken responsibility for providing welfare, security and a sense of certainty to the communities under their control. This is a direct result of the ineffectiveness of some states to effectively tackle the pandemic. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1249002446405292032"}"></div></p>
<p>But there is also something new happening here: illegal groups are now appealing more to positive emotions (gratitude, solidarity, care) to bolster their legitimacy and power in the territories, instead of traditional violent coercion or sporadic assistance. The aim is to create a strong emotional bond with the community to foster their criminal operations in the future. This dynamic reinforces the well-known Robin Hood myth for <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-is-no-robin-hood-but-social-bandit-myth-still-endures-in-latin-america-137207">criminals in Latin America</a> (noble thieves robbing the rich and helping the poor). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-is-no-robin-hood-but-social-bandit-myth-still-endures-in-latin-america-137207">El Chapo is no Robin Hood – but social bandit myth still endures in Latin America</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This will no doubt serve Latin American organised crime well. They will probably see their image as “<a href="https://razonpublica.com/turismo-negro-en-medellin-plata-o-plomo-memoria-o-reparacion/">saviours of the people</a>” revive. Their actions also aim to demonstrate that <a href="https://palabraclave.unisabana.edu.co/index.php/palabraclave/article/view/8054">the state is not needed</a> to reinforce order, guarantee the rule of law, or provide access to health welfare. </p>
<h2>Drug cartels and gangs</h2>
<p><a href="https://ojs.uclouvain.be/index.php/emulations/article/view/4443">My previous research</a> has demonstrated the crucial role of emotions in <a href="http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/137411/">accepting or rejecting</a> democratic ideas. The present pandemic reveals that the meaning of the state for communities depends on two emotional factors: a feeling of protection derived from the effectiveness of both legal and illegal bodies in resolving day-to-day problems, and a feeling of care resulting from the actions of legal and illegal actors to provide solutions. </p>
<p>As all these examples from around Latin America are showing, organised-crime organisations have been very effective in delivering help to the communities under their control, taking on the role, emotionally and effectively, of public institutions and their duty of care.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340346/original/file-20200608-176585-1ka4bo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340346/original/file-20200608-176585-1ka4bo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340346/original/file-20200608-176585-1ka4bo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340346/original/file-20200608-176585-1ka4bo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340346/original/file-20200608-176585-1ka4bo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340346/original/file-20200608-176585-1ka4bo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340346/original/file-20200608-176585-1ka4bo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Posters in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, ask for information about missing relatives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Camilo Tamayo Gomez</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet for many of these groups, their ultimate source of power and strength is control over territory by co-opting the state, partially replacing some of its functions – but not necessarily replacing <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691128559/mafias-on-the-move">the state</a> entirely.</p>
<p>And so the present situation will allow political parties openly affiliated to <a href="https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/illicit-networks-and-politics-in-latin-america.pdf">organised-crime groups</a>, such as the <a href="http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/857/">parapolitics parties</a> in Colombia, to capitalise politically on future support from local communities assisted by illegal organisations during the pandemic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilo Tamayo Gomez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Coronavirus is serving Latin American organised crime well.
Camilo Tamayo Gomez, Teaching Fellow and Programme Director for the MSc in Security, Conflict and Justice, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/140606
2020-06-15T14:14:55Z
2020-06-15T14:14:55Z
Crystal meth: Europe could now see a surge in supply and use
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341513/original/file-20200612-153812-1hvh1e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/background-macro-shot-blue-crystals-salt-1175586049">SeventyFour</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For many people in Europe, the closest they will have got to methamphetamine will be the TV series <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/15/heres-what-breaking-bad-gets-right-and-wrong-about-the-meth-business/">Breaking Bad</a>. But that could be about to change, as a result of developments in the international supply chain for cocaine and a new potential alliance between Mexican drug cartels and illegal European laboratories. </p>
<p>Other members of the amphetamine family have been used in Europe for years. A number are used in medicine, such as <a href="https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/methylphenidate-hydrochloride.html">methylphenidate</a> in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); while <a href="https://www.talktofrank.com/drug/speed">“speed” or d-amphetamine</a> has had a steady following among recreational drug users. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.talktofrank.com/drug/methamphetamine">Methamphetamine</a> is more potent than speed, produces more intense effects, has a longer duration of action, and is more likely to be inhaled or injected. Also known as meth, crystal or ice, regular use is <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/methamphetamine/what-are-long-term-effects-methamphetamine-misuse">more likely</a> to damage users’ brains or affect their mental health. Illicit production of methamphetamine also has a high <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/brabant-dutch-drug-labs-blight-the-landscape/">environmental cost</a> from things like chemical waste. </p>
<p>So far, meth use in Europe has been quite <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/data/stats2019/gps">limited</a>. In England and Wales, for instance, only 15,000 people <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/drug-misuse-findings-from-the-2018-to-2019-csew">reported using</a> the drug in 2018-19. This includes some <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/n7jdd8/uk-british-dont-use-meth">notable pockets of use</a>, but other drugs are more available, more embedded in leisure and lifestyle, and don’t have the same <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1741659012443234">negative</a> media <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/faces-crystal-meth-shocking-before-7260592">representation</a>. In contrast, 976,000 people reported using cocaine, and around half a million used ecstasy. </p>
<p><strong>Methamphetamine use around the world</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341515/original/file-20200612-153849-1ftr6bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341515/original/file-20200612-153849-1ftr6bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341515/original/file-20200612-153849-1ftr6bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341515/original/file-20200612-153849-1ftr6bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341515/original/file-20200612-153849-1ftr6bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341515/original/file-20200612-153849-1ftr6bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341515/original/file-20200612-153849-1ftr6bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341515/original/file-20200612-153849-1ftr6bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2019/prelaunch/WDR19_Booklet_4_STIMULANTS.pdf">Methamphetmine UNODC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is very different to the <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/methamphetamine/methamphetamine-trends-statistics">US</a> and also Asia. In east and south-east Asia, for instance, the meth trade is now <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/scientific/ATS/2020_ESEA_Regonal_Synthetic_Drug_Report_web.pdf">estimated to be</a> worth around US$61 billion (£48 billion) a year, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southeastasia-crime/asia-pacific-meth-drug-trade-worth-up-to-61-billion-un-says-idUSKCN1UD0BO">having quadrupled</a> in five years to become the world’s biggest market. The supply has increased on the back of intense manufacturing in the region, which has improved quality and driven down prices. </p>
<h2>Signs of change</h2>
<p>The gamechanger for Europe could be coming via the cocaine market. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-coca-crash-bolivia-colombia-peru-latin-america/2020/06/09/8c7da42c-a11f-11ea-be06-af5514ee0385_story.html?mc_cid=5b630ec8fa&mc_eid=%5BUNIQID%5D&utm_campaign=5b630ec8fa-SENSEMAKER_MEMBERS_10_06_20&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Tortoise%20Members">Some reports</a> suggest that the price of coca, the raw ingredient of cocaine, is falling. You might think this would lead to heightened demand, but it could actually threaten future supplies as South American coca farmers switch to alternative crops to put food on the table. </p>
<p>This gap in the market could play into the hands of manufacturers of methamphetamine looking to expand into Europe. Historically, meth production in Europe has been quite localised, serving small domestic markets or exporting to more profitable regions like Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. Now, however, there is <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/joint-publications/eu-drug-markets-report-2019_en">intelligence that</a> organised crime groups from Mexico might be beginning to take an interest in Europe, potentially sharing manufacturing expertise and supply chains for raw materials. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341522/original/file-20200612-153849-1f5f4gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341522/original/file-20200612-153849-1f5f4gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341522/original/file-20200612-153849-1f5f4gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341522/original/file-20200612-153849-1f5f4gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341522/original/file-20200612-153849-1f5f4gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341522/original/file-20200612-153849-1f5f4gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341522/original/file-20200612-153849-1f5f4gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341522/original/file-20200612-153849-1f5f4gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Breaking borders?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-cooking-meth-538605031">Nomad_Soul</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A <a href="https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/401784231/mexicanen-aangehouden-bij-vondst-drugslab-in-herwijnen">number of reports</a> from the Netherlands also suggest that well-established laboratories which had been manufacturing large quantities of MDMA (ecstasy) are now <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/3azzvj/dutch-and-mexican-gangs-are-teaming-up-to-sell-high-end-meth-to-asia">switching to meth production</a>. One mobile meth laboratory was even found in a boat moored <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/13/netherlands-police-raid-cargo-ship-crystal-meth-lab-moerdijk">at Rotterdam</a> docks. <a href="https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/">According to</a> the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), reports of police seizures of methamphetamine have also recently increased in Europe.</p>
<h2>Substitution</h2>
<p>Due to the coronavirus, we know that a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52557191">European recession</a> is unfolding. It threatens record levels of unemployment, with knock-on effects on consumer spending and people’s choice of leisure activities. Particularly at a time like this, value for money in the drugs market is just as important as with the legitimate economy. This is where methamphetamine may have an advantage over cocaine: its effects last significantly longer, and falling prices and high purity from more European production may make it seriously competitive. </p>
<p>There are several historical examples of how consumers replace one drug with another. When consumers substitute because of government attempts to clamp down on a specific drug, criminologists sometimes call it the <a href="https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/30/6083923/drug-war-on-drugo">“balloon” or “hydra” effect</a>. </p>
<p>One of the reasons for the recent explosion in meth use in Asia, for example, was authorities <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/14714/655_Drivers_and_Enablers_of_Serious_Organised_Crime_in_Southeast_Asia.pdf?sequence=1">attempting to</a> suppress heroin use and poppy cultivation in the region. This merely increased manufacturing of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine. Not only that, heroin use continued as supply re-routed from Afghanistan to Myanmar. </p>
<p>Shortages of drugs or the arrival of new synthetic drugs have both prompted consumers to substitute one variety for another. And if there is a big rise in methamphetamine use in Europe, drug services in many countries won’t be prepared. </p>
<p>Forseeing what will happen in the drug market is certainly not an exact science. Specialists <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23453028">have predicted</a> a rise in meth use in the UK before and been proven wrong. But this time, along with changes in the global supply chain, we have a pandemic that provides fertile conditions for a stimulant like meth because many people are doing less than usual.</p>
<p>Finally, a thought on how to prepare for this possible surge. In their response to coronavirus, most governments have shown they are willing to “follow the science” to protect the public’s health. As citizens and voters, we can ask them to extend this logic to drugs policy. </p>
<p>The past few decades’ drug policies of control and criminalisation have been costly and have seemingly <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-and-social-care-committee/news/drugs-policy-report-published-19-20/">failed</a> to achieve their intended objectives. Taking control of production and supply of drugs might seem far-fetched, but there are great potential rewards for thinking outside of the box in this area – both in relation to methamphetamine and other recreational drugs. The pandemic has shown that when there is the incentive and willingness to act, no policies are off the table.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harry Sumnall receives and has received funding from public grant awarding bodies for alcohol and other drugs research.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Hamilton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Methamphetamine use has increased dramatically in Asia in the past five years, overtaking even the US. Now cartels spy an opportunities in Europe.
Ian Hamilton, Associate Professor, Addiction and Mental Health, University of York
Harry Sumnall, Professor in Substance Use, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129530
2020-06-09T12:14:20Z
2020-06-09T12:14:20Z
Scientific fieldwork ‘caught in the middle’ of US-Mexico border tensions
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340154/original/file-20200605-176595-13headg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=215%2C0%2C4066%2C2773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The political border cuts in two a region rich in biological and cultural diversity.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-young-men-walk-along-the-mexican-side-of-the-u-s-news-photo/107497219">John Moore/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine you’re a scientist, setting out camera traps to snap pictures of wildlife in a remote area of southern Arizona. You set out with your gear early in the morning, but it took longer than expected to find all the locations with your GPS. Now, on your hike back, it’s really starting to heat up.</p>
<p>You try to stick to the shaded, dry washes, and as you round a bend, you’re surprised to see several people huddled under a scraggly mesquite tree against the side of the steep ravine: Mexican immigrants crossing the border. They look dirty and afraid, but so do you.</p>
<p>“¿Tienes agua?” they timidly ask, and you see their empty plastic water containers.</p>
<p>This fictionalized scenario reflects a composite of real incidents experienced by U.S. and Mexican researchers, including me, on both sides of the border in the course of their fieldwork. While giving aid may be the moral thing to do, there can be consequences. Humanitarian aid workers in Arizona have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/us/scott-warren-arizona-deaths.html">arrested for leaving food and water for migrants</a> in similar situations, and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/05/28/725716169/extending-zero-tolerance-to-people-who-help-migrants-along-the-border">such arrests have risen</a> since 2017.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340340/original/file-20200608-176595-ekvapg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340340/original/file-20200608-176595-ekvapg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340340/original/file-20200608-176595-ekvapg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340340/original/file-20200608-176595-ekvapg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340340/original/file-20200608-176595-ekvapg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340340/original/file-20200608-176595-ekvapg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340340/original/file-20200608-176595-ekvapg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340340/original/file-20200608-176595-ekvapg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the course of their fieldwork, researchers can encounter migrants, Border Control agents and drug traffickers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/border-patrol-agents-apprehend-illegal-immigrants-near-the-news-photo/938908426">Loren Elliott/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The U.S.-Mexico border is a region of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62085339">significant biological and cultural diversity</a> that draws <a href="https://careers.conbio.org/article/the-need-for-a-next-generation-of-sonoran-desert-researchers/">researchers from a wide variety of disciplines</a>, including geology, biology, environmental sciences, archaeology, hydrology, and cultural and social sciences. It is also an area of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jsw.2018.0015">humanitarian crisis and contentious politics</a>.</p>
<p>Migrants have always been a part of this area, but dangerous drug cartels and increasing militarization have added additional challenges for those who live and work here. U.S. and Mexican researchers are faced with ethical and logistical challenges in navigating this political landscape. To better understand these complex dynamics, <a href="https://nextgensd.com/researchers/user/taylor-edwards/">my colleagues and I</a> conducted an anonymous survey among researchers who work in the border region to learn how border politics affect collaboration and researchers’ ability to perform their jobs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340153/original/file-20200605-176538-1ly207h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340153/original/file-20200605-176538-1ly207h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340153/original/file-20200605-176538-1ly207h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340153/original/file-20200605-176538-1ly207h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340153/original/file-20200605-176538-1ly207h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340153/original/file-20200605-176538-1ly207h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340153/original/file-20200605-176538-1ly207h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340153/original/file-20200605-176538-1ly207h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Camera traps meant to take photos of wildlife also capture images of the people traversing this landscape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Myles Traphagen</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Border fieldwork comes with complications</h2>
<p><a href="http://tumamoc.arizona.edu/about/researchers/benjamin-wilder">Our</a> <a href="https://buhos.uson.mx/PureXML/Investigador/Index/33678-HECTOR%20FRANCISCO%20VEGA%20DELOYA">binational</a>, <a href="https://nextgensd.com/researchers-id/user/michelle-maria-early-capistran/">multidisciplinary</a> <a href="https://wildlandsnetwork.org/person/myles-traphagen/">group</a> <a href="https://nextgensd.com/researchers/user/america-nallely-lutz-ley/">of concerned</a> <a href="https://carolynomeara.weebly.com/">scientists</a> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2034443586_Martha_M_Gomez-Sapiens">distributed</a> an anonymous, online survey to 807 members of the <a href="http://www.nextgensd.com">Next-Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers Network</a>. From this group of academic professionals, college students and employees of nonprofit organizations and federal and state agencies who work in the U.S.-Mexico border region, we received 59 responses. While not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, a summary of our results can be found on the <a href="https://nextgensd.com/n-gen-border-survey/">N-Gen website</a>, and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.25422/azu.data.11977818">original data is available online</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="nx7cb" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nx7cb/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Researchers in our pre-pandemic study reported feeling safe for the most part while working in the U.S.-Mexico border region. However this may reflect the fact that they adjust their work to stay away from risky places.</p>
<p>Respondents noted the importance of knowing individuals and communities where they work. For instance, one U.S.-based researcher told us, “I feel safe in Mexico where I know landowners and they know me. I don’t feel safe in U.S. public lands due to Border Patrol’s extensive presence, their racial profiling ways and guns pulled on me.”</p>
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<p>Many respondents reported having encountered situations during fieldwork when they felt their security was threatened, occurring relatively equally on both sides of the border. Participants did not express safety concerns due to migrants themselves, but instead pointed to the militarization and criminal activity associated with the region.</p>
<p>Safety concerns on the Mexico side were primarily <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00458-6">due to drug cartels</a> and other criminal activity. Concerns in the U.S. centered on direct intimidation or “uneasy” or threatening encounters with U.S. Border Patrol, private landowners or militias. </p>
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<p>As a result of safety concerns, many researchers from both countries reported their organization or employer had placed restrictions on working in the border areas of Mexico. In most cases, this meant limiting access to specific areas or requiring additional paperwork or approval through their institution.</p>
<p>Respondents reported logistical issues “altered or disrupted” their ability to perform fieldwork. These problems ranged from trouble crossing the border to difficulty obtaining necessary paperwork and permissions.</p>
<p><iframe id="9OCrG" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/9OCrG/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>One researcher reported that permit delays for shipping scientific equipment across the border had stalled their research for over a year. More than half of respondents said these issues had increased in frequency or caused greater disruption to their work within the last three years.</p>
<h2>Caught in the middle</h2>
<p>Unsurprisingly, most researchers surveyed (69%) said they’ve encountered undocumented migrants while conducting fieldwork in the border region, although infrequently.</p>
<p>In situations of contact, migrants asked for assistance, such as food, water or a ride, a little over half of the time. Researchers drew a clear distinction between their willingness to offer food or water versus providing transportation.</p>
<p>Despite concerns about recent prosecutions of humanitarian aid workers in the border region, the threat was not sufficient to stop most respondents from taking action they viewed as moral or ethical.</p>
<p>“I would have pause given legal ramifications,” one person told us, “But I do not think this would change how I would act.” Survey respondents commented that they felt “caught in the middle” of an “impossible situation,” where the fear of prosecution conflicts with their moral imperative to help people in need.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340152/original/file-20200605-176560-hoqvqm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340152/original/file-20200605-176560-hoqvqm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340152/original/file-20200605-176560-hoqvqm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340152/original/file-20200605-176560-hoqvqm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340152/original/file-20200605-176560-hoqvqm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340152/original/file-20200605-176560-hoqvqm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340152/original/file-20200605-176560-hoqvqm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340152/original/file-20200605-176560-hoqvqm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A volunteer collects data as part of an ongoing Borderlands Sister Parks project in Rancho San Bernardino, Sonora, Mexico.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sky Island Alliance</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Overall our results suggest that research is affected by border policies in myriad ways: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biy063">Restricted access</a> to areas <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz029">reduces scientists’ ability to collect</a> comprehensive data, such as are necessary for conducting biodiversity inventories.</p>
<p>Restrictions directly affecting the ability of researchers to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal0682">collaborate over international boundaries</a> can limit creativity and discovery. That can have long-term impacts, such as further separating countries’ ability to understand each other and foster <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-science-diplomacy-be-the-key-to-stabilizing-international-relations-87836">meaningful partnerships catalyzed by science</a>, including industrial innovation or ecological sustainability.</p>
<p>Societies have the right to <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/CulturalRights/Pages/benefitfromscientificprogress.aspx">enjoy the benefits of science</a>. This requires that scientists are able to collaborate internationally and to fulfill their functions without discrimination or fear of repression or prosecution.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views of the N-Gen network or its members.</span></em></p>
Government policies and dangerous conditions affect the ability of researchers working on both sides of the US-Mexico border to conduct scientific fieldwork.
Taylor Edwards, Associate Staff Scientist, University of Arizona
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138592
2020-05-15T09:46:21Z
2020-05-15T09:46:21Z
Coronavirus: crime cartels helping communities will extract a high price in years to come
<p>The citizens of Iguala in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, <a href="http://wradio.com.mx/radio/2020/04/28/nacional/1588094431_942427.html">encountered several billboards</a> hanging on different sites recently. They read: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>People of Iguala, we ask you to please stay inside your home, we do not want chaos outside. You have to respect the lockdown, we will seriously hurt those who we catch outside. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This wasn’t the work of some over-zealous local government official. The messages were put up by the local narco cartel. This was not an isolated case: criminal gangs have also been imposing curfews in other Mexican states and <a href="https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2020/03/23/coronavirus-traficantes-e-milicianos-impoem-toque-de-recolher-em-comunidades-do-rio.ghtml">Brazil</a> and <a href="http://alexpresents.com/2020/04/14/taliban-ms-13-hayat-tahrir-al-sham-join-coronavirus-fight/">El Salvador</a>.</p>
<h2>States within states</h2>
<p>During the coronavirus pandemic, governments have undoubtedly been the lead actors in imposing restrictions on their populations while financially supporting individuals and firms for lost income. But in numerous countries, governments have very limited capacity <a href="http://ideas.repec.org/s/spr/ecogov.html">or have</a> to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3840506?seq=1">live with</a> mafia-type organisations. These groups differ from standard criminal operations because they act like a state within a state. </p>
<p>As researchers Gianluca Fiorentini and Sam Pelzman <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/economics-of-organised-crime/632CA5713D3BAACB30F830D2C2B1F15F">wrote in 1995</a> of these groups, they “perform inside [their] territory those activities that typically characterise a collective decision-maker’s intervention on the economy: levying of taxes, coercive provision of public goods, and regulation of private agents through non-fiscal tools”. Little has changed since. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-is-no-robin-hood-but-social-bandit-myth-still-endures-in-latin-america-137207">El Chapo is no Robin Hood – but social bandit myth still endures in Latin America</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Mafia outfits <a href="https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GI-TOC-Crime-and-Contagion-The-impact-of-a-pandemic-on-organized-crime.pdf">have lost profits</a> in many of their <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/covid/Covid-19-and-drug-supply-chain-Mai2020.pdf">core businesses</a> during the pandemic, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-coronavirus-is-changing-the-market-for-illegal-drugs-134753">drug dealing</a>, human trafficking and <a href="http://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/turning-adversity-into-advantage-how-organised-crime-is-responding-to-covid-19/">gambling</a>. But they still have plenty of money from previous years’ activities to be able to step in with support.
Besides imposing curfews, they have been providing various public services. These vary hugely around the world, but there are some common trends. </p>
<p>For one thing, these oranisations have been providing free food and other essential goods to poor people who are running out of cash. A few weeks into the Italian lockdown, for example, this <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/mafia-distributes-food-to-italys-struggling-residents">was happening</a> in Naples and Palermo. </p>
<p>In Naples, the local <em>camorra</em> crime gang has <a href="https://napoli.fanpage.it/spese-domicilio-camorra-napoli/">even been</a> making home food deliveries to people along with illegal drugs. This comes as no surprise in a region where the state was slow to provide help even to those who are entitled to such benefits, never mind the unentitled millions <a href="https://www.istat.it/it/files/2020/01/Conti-economici-territoriali.pdf">who earn</a> a living in everything from agricultural labour to domestic work but are not tax-registered. Criminal groups in southern Italy have <a href="https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-04-18/la-mafia-es-inmune-al-virus.html">also been providing</a> financial help to individuals, with gifts of sometimes €300 or €400 at a time (£266 to £354). </p>
<p>In Mexico, the criminal cartels <a href="https://www.cide.edu/coronavirus/2020/04/27/covid-19-despensas-y-narco/">have also been</a> providing food to the poorest in the states of Guerrero, Michoacán, Tamaulipas and Guanajuato. They seem to take marketing more seriously than their Italian counterparts. The Gulf cartel of north-east Mexico, for example, <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-04-17/el-narco-mexicano-aprovecha-el-virus-para-exhibir-su-poder-ante-las-camaras.html">has been</a> handing out boxes of food and hand sanitiser sealed with a sticker bearing its name and logo. Meanwhile, such has been the shortage of health supplies in parts of Mexico that some hospitals have <a href="https://www.eldinamo.com/actualidad/2020/04/21/coronavirus-mexico-hospitales-piden-ayuda-a-bandas-de-narcotrafico-ante-escasez-de-insumo-sanitarios/">even been</a> seeking the help of the cartels to procure the necessary equipment. </p>
<p><strong>Central Mexico</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335009/original/file-20200514-77255-ah66ag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335009/original/file-20200514-77255-ah66ag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335009/original/file-20200514-77255-ah66ag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335009/original/file-20200514-77255-ah66ag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335009/original/file-20200514-77255-ah66ag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335009/original/file-20200514-77255-ah66ag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335009/original/file-20200514-77255-ah66ag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335009/original/file-20200514-77255-ah66ag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/mexico/@22.1787212,-104.5559057,6z">Google Maps</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Organised crime groups have also been delivering essential goods in Colombia, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africa-coronavirus-lockdown-gangs-cape-town-a9474101.html">South Africa</a> and Japan. In Japan, for instance, the <a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/coronavirus/japanese-gangs-vie-for-power-amid-pandemic"><em>yakuza</em></a> distributed masks and toilet paper when they were scarce in supermarkets. </p>
<p>In Brazil, at a time when President Jair Bolsonaro has been underplaying the severity of the pandemic, gangs have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/apr/21/bolsonaro-wont-help-with-coronavirus-so-brazils-favelas-helping-themselves-video">reportedly been</a> offering hand sanitiser to people in the <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-favelas-of-brazil.html"><em>favelas</em></a>. Such groups can easily access these goods by exploiting their business networks and trafficking routes.</p>
<h2>Business backing</h2>
<p>Criminal groups are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/why-mafia-taking-care-of-everyones-business-in-pandemic">also providing</a> financial help to struggling local businesses. <a href="https://www.agi.it/cronaca/news/2020-03-31/coronavirus-usura-ndrangheta-gratteri-8033085/">One example</a> is the <em>‘ndrangheta</em>, the strongest mafia group in Italy, which is offering loans at interest rates lower than the local banks. These loans are primarily aimed at the likes of small businesses in construction and hospitality, who can’t access credit from banks but urgently need liquidity. The <em>‘ndrangheta</em> and similar groups have <a href="https://www.interpol.int/Crimes/Organized-crime">plenty of funds</a> to make available. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335050/original/file-20200514-77230-18vwwz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335050/original/file-20200514-77230-18vwwz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335050/original/file-20200514-77230-18vwwz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335050/original/file-20200514-77230-18vwwz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335050/original/file-20200514-77230-18vwwz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335050/original/file-20200514-77230-18vwwz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335050/original/file-20200514-77230-18vwwz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335050/original/file-20200514-77230-18vwwz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Italy’s criminal groups have being making home deliveries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/banner-reading-basta-mafia-stop-on-1296625459">christianthiel.net</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mexican criminal groups are also giving out loans to <a href="http://www.omnia.com.mx/noticia/141244">small businesses</a>. No doubt the coronavirus <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2020/04/30/espanol/opinion/crisis-economica-mexico-coronavirus.html">response from</a> President López Obrador is an added incentive: he <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b91c4ac7-76ad-4c1e-bbb5-2caebe148feb">has been refusing</a> to borrow to provide a stimulus package, while continuing the country’s austerity drive – despite protests from many Mexicans.</p>
<p>Yet support can work both ways. The huge amount of money that some governments are injecting into the economy will provide optimal opportunities for fraudulent business claims and the like. The <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/25/europe/mafia-bosses-italy-coronavirus-trnd/index.html">sight of</a> mafia bosses in Italy being released from jail to protect them from coronavirus is only going to help these groups to take advantage. </p>
<p>Without a doubt, the help that mafia-type organisations are offering to households and firms will come at a high cost for many countries. The criminals are <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/04/27/mexican-cartels-are-providing-covid-19-assistance-why-thats-not-surprising/">trying to</a> gain political capital and extend control over their territory. When the crisis is over, they will ask for favours in return, such as money laundering or protection from the police. And a higher unemployment rate will tempt more people to join their ranks to secure stable earnings. </p>
<p>For the time being, the governments of countries where these mafias operate must not only deal with the coronavirus but limit the advancement of these groups at the same time. This is an additional important reason for supporting the general public at this difficult time, even if there may be no perfect solution to groups that have been entrenched for many years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matteo Pazzona does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Many governments can’t afford to offer the sort of economic stimulus we’ve seen in the west, and organised crime is only too happy to fill the gap.
Matteo Pazzona, Lecturer, Brunel University London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129865
2020-02-03T13:52:41Z
2020-02-03T13:52:41Z
Inside Mexico’s war on drugs: Conversations with ‘el narco’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310622/original/file-20200117-118315-z81n0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5997%2C4007&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 35,000 people were killed in Mexico in 2019, the deadliest year on record. Violence has spiked as a result of the government's ongoing assault on drug cartels.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/es/image-photo/mexico-city07-october-2019-various-weapons-1525889897">Leonardo Emiliozzi Ph / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I am from northern Mexico, one of the regions most affected by the global <a href="https://theconversation.com/rising-suicides-in-mexico-expose-the-mental-health-toll-of-living-with-extreme-chronic-violence-99131">war on drugs</a>. </p>
<p>From 2008 to 2012 my hometown – which I’m not naming here for safety reasons – went through one of the most violent times in its history. Shootings between cartels and the military became frequent events, which could happen at any time of the day anywhere in the city. I personally witnessed a shooting just across from the university where I used to teach.</p>
<p>My friends and family had similar experiences. Some of them witnessed shootings from their cars, others from their home. </p>
<p>In addition to the growing violence, the Zetas cartel started to bribe the local businesses. If owners did not pay, the cartel would either destroy their businesses or kidnap a family member. As a result, many businesses had to close their doors. The cartels fueled paranoia on social media. “Do not come out tonight,” a tweet would warn, “because there will be a shooting.” Sometimes, these threats proved to be true.</p>
<p>Similar <a href="http://theconversation.com/mexican-mennonites-combat-fears-of-violence-with-a-new-christmas-tradition-127982">terror</a> is occurring <a href="https://www.milenio.com/mileniotv/policia/cierran-negocios-por-violencia-en-cordoba-veracruz">across Mexico</a> as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">result of the war on cartels launched by former President Felipe Calderón</a> in 2006. The violence unleashed by the government’s assault on drug-trafficking groups <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">has wracked a nation</a>.</p>
<h2>Life stories of former drug traffickers</h2>
<p>Not wanting to stay in a country where I felt so vulnerable, I decided to continue my postgraduate studies abroad, in England. There, I channeled my frustration with Mexico’s war on cartels into my <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/193726176/Final_Copy_2018_11_06_Garcia_K_G_PhD_Redacted.pdf">doctoral dissertation</a>, which analyzes drug-related violence through the lens of those who committed the crimes. </p>
<p>Between October 2014 and January 2015, I interviewed 33 men who used to work in the drug trade to understand how their experiences relate to their involvement in drug trafficking. From street drug dealers to hitmen and bodyguards, I found, they all share similar life stories. </p>
<p>These firsthand interviews with former drug traffickers, widely known as “narcos” in Mexico, bring a new perspective to <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/mexican-drug-wars-37657">political science research on Mexico’s drug war</a>: that of the perpetrators. </p>
<p><iframe id="eYZRM" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/eYZRM/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>This analysis of the narcos’ narratives sheds light on the possible causes of these men’s involvement in the drug trade and elucidates the logic through which they understand the world. </p>
<p>This view is almost entirely neglected by researchers and politicians. To date, Mexican policies to <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-jailbreak-is-both-a-mexican-and-an-american-story-44679">curb drug trafficking</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/amnesty-for-drug-traffickers-thats-one-mexican-presidential-candidates-pitch-to-voters-96063">reduce violence</a> have been designed using solely the logic of policymakers. </p>
<p>Is it any surprise they’ve failed?</p>
<h2>Neither monsters nor victims</h2>
<p>My research begins with the premise that the narcos are part of Mexican society, just like anyone else. They are exposed to the same messages, values and traditions. </p>
<p>Yet the Mexican government has systematically rejected this notion, preferring to invoke the same binaries present in U.S. policies like the war on drugs and the war on terror. It’s “us” against “them,” this framing goes: the “good guys” versus the “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X13509069">bad people</a>.” </p>
<p>In the movies, the narcos are portrayed as <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/traffic-2001">bloodthirsty criminals</a>. More compassionate views, especially in academia, suggest the drug trade is the “only option” for poor kids in <a href="http://mexicanadesociologia.unam.mx/docs/vol74/num1/v74n1a1.pdf">cartel-infested parts of the country</a>.</p>
<p>Beyond being simplistic, such framing conceals nuances that may actually help to explain the root causes of Mexico’s drug violence. </p>
<p>The narcos I spoke with do not see themselves as victims or monsters. They do not justify their involvement in the drug trade as a survival strategy. They acknowledge that they chose this illegal industry – even when work in the informal economy would have allowed them to support their families – because, they told me, they wanted “more.” </p>
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<p>Despite seeing themselves as free agents who decided to work in the drug trade, the men I interviewed also see themselves as disposable. They shared feelings of social exclusion and a lack of a life purpose, making them feel that their lives are worthless. </p>
<p>“I knew I was alone,” one man, Rigoleto, told me. “If I wanted something, I had to get it myself.” </p>
<p>My research also reveals that these narcos embrace the government’s binary discourse. They identified as “they” – the people excluded from “our” civil society. The former drug traffickers I spoke with also reproduce the individualistic, every-man-for-himself ethos that has permeated Mexican society since the introduction of a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3993429">neoliberal, U.S.-style economic system</a> in the late 1980s. </p>
<p>This ethos is a double-edged sword. Mexico’s narcos may not blame the state or society for their condition of poverty – each is, after all, his own man – but they don’t feel remorse for their crimes, either. They had the “bad luck” of being born in poverty, they told me, and their victims had the “bad luck” to be in their way. </p>
<p>The narco’s logic is simple, according to Yuca, one of the men I interviewed: We are, all of us, bound to the “law of the fittest.” </p>
<p>As Cristian said: “In my neighborhood we all knew the rules: You snooze, you lose. That was the law. You have to be tough, you have to be violent, you have to take care of yourself, because nobody will do it for you.”</p>
<h2>Poverty: A fixed and inevitable condition</h2>
<p>This is one of several shared values I identified in my interviews, which together form what I refer to in my dissertation as “the narco discourse.” </p>
<p>The narco discourse puts poverty in sharp relief. The men I spoke with believe poor people have no future and, therefore, have nothing to lose. </p>
<p>“I knew I would grow up and die in poverty,” said one of my interviewees, Wilson. “I just asked God: Why me?”</p>
<p>Poverty is understood as an inevitable condition. “Somebody has to be poor,” said one man, Lamberto. </p>
<p>“There is nothing you can do to avoid it,” said another, Tabo. </p>
<p>The narco discourse also assumes that poor children will, like them, inevitably become involved with drugs and gangs. It is taken for granted that poor children have no future, that they are disposable. </p>
<p>“When you grow up in a poor neighborhood you know that at some point you will become a drug addict,” said Palomo. “When you are a drug addict you see yourself as rubbish. Who would care about the life of a poor drug addict?”</p>
<p>In this crowd, I learned, an early death is also seen as inevitable. </p>
<p>“When you see so many of your peers dying in street fights, from an overdose, shot by the police, you think that that is your future as well,” a man I’ll call Tigre told me. </p>
<p>The possibility of being killed or killing, then, isn’t necessarily a drawback of the drug trade. The kids who grow up to be drug traffickers assume that death is their destiny. </p>
<p>“I always thought that my destiny was to die from an overdose or by a bullet,” said Pancho.</p>
<h2>Consumerism</h2>
<p>One of the few ways poor kids with this worldview could imagine enjoying life, they told me, is by buying stuff – nice stuff, luxury items, things they couldn’t afford. </p>
<p>The only way to achieve that is with the “easy money” that an “easy life” in the drug business would give them. </p>
<p><iframe id="IXKnS" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/IXKnS/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>They understood the happiness brought on by easy money to be momentary. But still, they said, it was worth it. My interview subjects assume that “in this world you’re a nobody without money,” as Canastas put it. </p>
<p>Crucially, the narcos recognize that the flip side of the “easy life” is either death or jail.</p>
<p>“One day you are in a nice restaurant, surrounded by beautiful women and important people,” Ponciano told me. “The next day you may wake up in a dungeon.”</p>
<p>That’s why the easy life has to be so fast, so hedonistic – to maximize the benefits of that easy money. </p>
<p>As Jaime told me, “My goal was to live every day as if was the last. I did not pinch pennies when it came to enjoy[ing] myself. [I bought] the best trucks, the best wines [and had] the most beautiful women.”</p>
<h2>‘A real man’</h2>
<p>In the narco discourse, physical violence is essential to survive, literally, in poor neighborhoods which participants referred as “the jungle.”</p>
<p>Violence, I was informed, is learned. Men are not born violent, but they must become violent. As Jorge explained: </p>
<p>“When I was a child, older children hit me, they took advantage of me because I was alone. I was not violent, but I had to become even more violent than them. You must do it if you want to survive in the streets.”</p>
<p>In “the jungle,” men also had to keep a certain reputation as a “real man.” As they see it, that means being an aggressive, heterosexual, violent womanizer. A true man is “good for the party, drugs and alcohol,” said Dávila. </p>
<p>The real man cannot show his fears – no emotions, no weaknesses. The best way to hide them, the narcos I interviewed said, is by proving their strength. This can be done in different ways: within your own gangs, fighting rival gangs or at home, with their family. </p>
<p>A recurrent theme in my interviews was the anger that participants felt against their fathers, most of whom were domestic abusers. </p>
<p>Twenty-eight out of the 33 men admitted that at some point in their lives their greatest aspiration had been to kill their fathers. All said their biggest frustration had been watching their fathers beat their mothers. They wanted revenge not for themselves, but for their mothers.</p>
<p>The men invoked the trauma of witnessing gender violence not only when we spoke about their childhood but also when we discussed their reasons for illegal acts like drug use, vandalism and drug trafficking.</p>
<p>To some participants, a fantasy of making their fathers suffer was their main motivation to work in the drug trade. </p>
<p>“My only thought was to kill my father when I grew up,” Rorro explained. “I wanted to cut him into little pieces.” Being a narco gave him that power. </p>
<p>A man named Ponciano told me that he thought of his father when he was torturing his victims. </p>
<p>“And I made them suffer even more, like he made us suffer.”</p>
<p>Not everyone who had the opportunity to kill their fathers could follow through. Facundo, wishing his father to suffer but unable to kill him, told his dad to leave town. </p>
<p>“If I see you again, I will kill you,” he said. </p>
<h2>What can we learn in Latin America?</h2>
<p>Poverty and toxic masculinity. These are, my research finds, two common themes driving the men who commit <a href="https://theconversation.com/murder-and-the-mexican-state-34286">so much violence not only in Mexico</a> but across Latin America, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-fix-latin-americas-homicide-problem-79731">world’s most violent region</a>.</p>
<p>The everyday life of these narcos are a breeding ground for all sorts of violence, from domestic abuse to gang rivalry. When policymakers focus on “ending drug violence,” this is the view so often missing.</p>
<p>Even when poverty is <a href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/desacatos/n40/n40a2.pdf">acknowledged</a> as the root of other major social problems in Mexico, as some <a href="https://revistas.uam.es/index.php/relacionesinternacionales/article/viewFile/5115/5568">researchers have done</a>, there is insufficient knowledge of what living in poverty actually means for these people. While many experiences of poverty where shared by my interviewees, each person in each region and each neighborhood had their own problems and specific needs. </p>
<p>Understanding how that background leads to violence would mean listening – really listening – to men like those I interviewed. And it means asking questions that don’t fit within the “us versus them” mentality of presidents, policymakers and police chiefs. To design more effective policies for ending violence, one must understand the logic, the worldview, of its perpetrators. </p>
<p>Where does all this violence come from? Who justifies its use, and how? How is violence reproduced within Mexican families, and echoed within communities? When the government responds to this violence with more violence – by <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">sending soldiers out to fight crime</a>, as Mexico has done for 12 years – what message does that send? </p>
<p>As long as governments maintain their discourse about “good people” versus “bad men,” my research suggests, it will only feed “their” indifference to “us.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was adapted from the <a href="https://ciperchile.cl/2020/01/03/por-que-fracasa-la-guerra-contra-el-narcotrafico-entrevista-a-33-ex-narcos-mexicanos-para-quienes-morir-es-un-alivio/">original version</a>, published on The Conversation España as part of a collaboration with the Centro de Investigación Periodística (<a href="https://ciperchile.cl/">CIPER</a>) in Chile.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129865/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karina Garcia Reyes' PhD dissertation received funding from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) and additional support from the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) in Mexico.</span></em></p>
A researcher who fled crime-beset Mexico returns to interview the drug cartels behind so much of the violence, asking 33 ‘narcos’ everything about their lives, from birth to their latest murder.
Karina G. Garcia Reyes, Profesora de la Escuela de Sociología, Política y Relaciones Internacionales y del departamento de Estudios Latinoamericanos, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128105
2019-12-11T15:27:27Z
2019-12-11T15:27:27Z
Mexico transformed? Challenges, changes after a year of leftist government
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306204/original/file-20191210-95111-11xt146.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C91%2C3829%2C2407&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador speaks at the signing of an update to the new North American free-trade agreement in Mexico City.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A year ago, the first leftist president in Mexico’s modern history <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mexico-amlo-inauguration-20181201-story.html">took office.</a> </p>
<p>The victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly referred to as AMLO in Mexico, swept aside a long-standing political establishment in a society where most politicians are seen as corrupt and detached from the reality of ordinary citizens. </p>
<p>López Obrador’s victory not only threatened the entrenched political and economic interests that dominated Mexican politics for decades, it also came as a reprieve to an embattled left in Latin America at a time when right-wing forces were on the rise. </p>
<p>The transformative project of the new government, dubbed <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-45712329">Mexico’s “Fourth Transformation,”</a> has promised to break with the neoliberal model that had turned the country into the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/social/inequality.htm#income">most unequal among OECD nations</a>. This has meant a drastic change in policy priorities.</p>
<p>Under López Obrador, the government no longer promotes investment and job creation at any price. Instead, it announced the <a href="https://www.proceso.com.mx/608544/a-punto-de-cumplir-un-ano-en-el-poder-amlo-presume-aumento-del-salario-minimo-y-programas-sociales">largest increase to the minimum wage in 36 years</a>, passed a <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/infographic-mexicos-new-labor-reform">major labour reform strengthening workers’ rights</a> and ended decades of <a href="https://www.elsoldemexico.com.mx/mexico/politica/amlo-erradicara-condonacion-de-impuestos-a-empresas-con-reforma-3913245.html">discretionary tax breaks to large corporations</a>. These measures have unsettled some economic elites, who are now hesitant to invest in a country that is changing the rules of the game. </p>
<p>López Obrador seems aware that the surly relations between the government and the private sector can hinder his transformative agenda. Despite his campaign promise of a four per cent annual growth, the economic scenario in Mexico is daunting. As the country struggles to avoid recession, rating agencies and international organizations are <a href="https://elfinanciero.com.mx/economia/banxico-pasa-tijera-al-pronostico-de-crecimiento-para-2019-por-quinta-vez-consecutiva">lowering their outlooks for the Mexican economy</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306201/original/file-20191210-95173-1t4ko4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C3257%2C1995&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306201/original/file-20191210-95173-1t4ko4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C3257%2C1995&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306201/original/file-20191210-95173-1t4ko4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306201/original/file-20191210-95173-1t4ko4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306201/original/file-20191210-95173-1t4ko4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306201/original/file-20191210-95173-1t4ko4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306201/original/file-20191210-95173-1t4ko4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306201/original/file-20191210-95173-1t4ko4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">López Obrador is seen with Canada’s Chrystia Freeland at the signing of an update to the USMCA.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is why Mexicans were so prompt to ratify USMCA, a renegotiated version of NAFTA, <a href="https://www.dianomi.com/click.epl?pn=53774&offer=13302451&savid=138046&said=4146&adv=6273&unique_id=XfAN0fFCOGvw4zhvPVMPagAAAA0&smartreferer=&is_addefend_user=1">and its subsequent overhaul</a>, despite the free-trade deal being at odds with López Obrador’s anti-neoliberal stance. </p>
<p>The rapid ratification of the trade agreement not only sent a message of certainty to domestic and international investors, it also flagged the limits of the AMLO government when it comes to breaking with Mexico’s neoliberal past. </p>
<h2>Violence persists</h2>
<p>A second threat to López Obrador’s agenda is the rising levels of insecurity in the country. </p>
<p>The new administration has been unable to contain a wave of violence that it inherited from its predecessors. In fact, 2019 is on the verge of becoming the <a href="https://www.reforma.com/libre/acceso/accesofb.htm?urlredirect=/suman-25-890-homicidios-dolosos-en-2019/ar1795431">deadliest year on record in Mexico</a>. The <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mexican-mormon-village-massacre-1.5357206">massacre of the LeBaron family</a> —in which six children and three women were murdered in northern Mexico — and the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50101794">failed attempt to arrest the son of drug lord El Chapo in Culiacán</a>, where the military was outnumbered by cartel gunmen, are just two examples of the government’s incapacity to end the violence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305737/original/file-20191208-90574-dl8rn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305737/original/file-20191208-90574-dl8rn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305737/original/file-20191208-90574-dl8rn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305737/original/file-20191208-90574-dl8rn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305737/original/file-20191208-90574-dl8rn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305737/original/file-20191208-90574-dl8rn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305737/original/file-20191208-90574-dl8rn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters hold a banner in support of the LeBaron family during a protest against López Obrador’s first year in office in Mexico City on Dec. 1, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The president’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/05/mexicos-security-failure-grisly-cartel-shootout-shows-who-holds-the-power">“abrazos, no balazos” (hugs, not bullets) policy</a> has been harshly criticized for its naiveté and has been largely ineffective.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-new-president-has-plans-to-make-his-country-safer-but-will-they-work-100441">Mexico's new president has plans to make his country safer – but will they work?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>However, one year into leftist rule in Mexico and it’s not all bad news. Despite economic woes and enduring violence, López Obrador’s government has made considerable progress dismantling a system that almost solely benefits the political and economic elite and keeps <a href="https://www.coneval.org.mx/SalaPrensa/Comunicadosprensa/Documents/2019/COMUNICADO_10_MEDICION_POBREZA_2008_2018.pdf">more than 50 million Mexicans in poverty</a>. </p>
<p>López Obrador started his term by announcing harsh austerity measures to bureaucrats and politicians, <a href="https://apnews.com/3ca432e8f74d44a2b15b17633c27631c/Mexican-president-elect-slashes-his-own-salary">including cutting his own salary in half</a> and ditching the presidential mansion, jet and guards. </p>
<h2>Tackling corruption</h2>
<p>In a clear break with the past, his government is prosecuting corrupt officials from previous administrations. Social spending is also being revamped. About 18 million youth and elderly Mexicans are now receiving their <a href="https://aristeguinoticias.com/0811/mexico/quiere-amlo-que-pension-por-vejez-y-becas-para-estudiar-esten-en-la-constitucion/">scholarships and pensions</a> from social programs as cash transfers. </p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, López Obrador is transforming the perception of political power in Mexico and how it should be used. At most events he attends, the president finds himself surrounded by supporters who cheer and hug their leader without apparent constraints — in contrast to the strong security measures taken by his predecessors when in public. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306131/original/file-20191210-95159-1l4n2ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306131/original/file-20191210-95159-1l4n2ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306131/original/file-20191210-95159-1l4n2ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306131/original/file-20191210-95159-1l4n2ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306131/original/file-20191210-95159-1l4n2ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306131/original/file-20191210-95159-1l4n2ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306131/original/file-20191210-95159-1l4n2ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">López Obrador greets supporters in Mazatlan, Mexico as he kicked off a nationwide tour after his election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When asked about his safety, López Obrador confidently replies that it <a href="https://noticieros.televisa.com/ultimas-noticias/amlo-guardaespaldas-inconformes-ciudad-valles-seguridad/">is the people who look after him</a>. Despite his populist tone, he seems to understand that first and foremost, Mexico’s marginalized majorities need to be seen and recognized as part of a society that has excluded them for too long.</p>
<p>If we want to understand the change Mexico is undergoing, we must measure progress with metrics other than the GDP. Only when we gauge it via other methods will we understand the extent to which the political and economic structures that have made Mexico one of the most inequitable countries in the world are being dismantled. </p>
<p>Changing public perceptions about political power might not be as tangible as economic growth and decreasing homicide rates, but its impact on building a more inclusive society are real and every bit as important.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sergio Daniel Michel Chavez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In his first year in office, the Mexican president is dismantling the political and economic structures that have made Mexico one of the most inequitable countries in the world.
Sergio Daniel Michel Chavez, PhD Student, Department of Political Science and Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/109490
2019-01-29T11:45:31Z
2019-01-29T11:45:31Z
Mexico is bleeding. Can its new president stop the violence?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255618/original/file-20190125-108345-1q1a7y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero state. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH2PB307&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=816#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH2PB307&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=816&POPUPPN=36&POPUPIID=2C0FQEQJOYWTP">Reuters/Edgard Garrido</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 34,000 people were murdered in <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/docs/pdfs/nueva-metodologia/CNSP-V%C3%ADctimas-2018_dic18.pdf%22">Mexico last year</a>, according to new government statistics — the deadliest year since modern record-keeping began.</p>
<p>Of all the challenges facing Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, curbing violence may be the biggest. </p>
<p>Mexico has seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">ever-growing bloodshed</a> since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-military-is-a-lethal-killing-force-should-it-really-be-deployed-as-police-75521">the Mexican armed forces to fight drug cartels</a>. </p>
<p>Rather than reduce violence, the government’s crackdown actually increased conflicts between and among cartels, according to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-drug-violence-9780190695965?q=the%20politics%20of%20drug%20violence&lang=en&cc=us">my research on criminal violence</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">numerous other studies</a>. It also led to widespread military abuses of power against civilians.</p>
<p>More than 250,000 people have been murdered and <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/rnped/estadisticas-fuerocomun.php">35,000 have disappeared</a> since the beginning of Mexico’s drug war. </p>
<p>López Obrador said on the campaign trail that Mexico must “<a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/06/que-dijeron-los-candidatos-presidenciales-en-sus-cierres-de-campana-estos-son-sus-discursos/%22">consider multiple alternatives to achieve the pacification of the country</a>.” </p>
<p>He pitched several possibilities to reduce crime without using law enforcement, including <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/12/lopez-obrador-precandidato-amnistia/%22">granting amnesty to low-level criminals</a>, negotiating with <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/elecciones-2018/amlo-plantea-analizar-amnistia-lideres-del-narco-para-garantizar-la-paz">crime bosses to dismantle their syndicates</a> and confronting the human rights violations <a href="https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice%22">committed by soldiers, police and public officials</a>.</p>
<h2>Finding the truth</h2>
<p>Some of those ideas – particularly the controversial notion of negotiating with organized crime – have faded away since López Obrador took office on Dec. 1. </p>
<p>So far, his administration has put more emphasis on traditional law-and-order policies. </p>
<p>In December, he ordered the creation of a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-politics/mexican-president-elects-party-presents-national-guard-plan-idUSKCN1NP2MZ">Mexican national guard</a> to fight organized crime. Though human rights advocates and security experts <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">fear</a> this approach will repeat past fatal mistakes of militarizing Mexican law enforcement, the lower house of Congress recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-security/mexicos-new-crime-fighting-national-guard-easily-wins-lower-house-approval-idUSKCN1PB060">approved the measure</a>. It will likely be approved in the Senate. </p>
<p>López Obrador has followed through on one of his campaign proposals for “pacifying” Mexico, though. </p>
<p>Days after being sworn in, the president <a href="http://www.alejandroencinas.mx/home/decreto-presidencial-para-el-acceso-a-la-verdad-en-el-caso-ayotzinapa/">established a truth commission</a> to investigate the unsolved disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college in the southern Mexican town of Iguala in 2014. </p>
<p>Five years after their disappearance, the truth of this infamous case remains elusive. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/massacres-disappearances-and-1968-mexicans-remember-the-victims-of-a-perfect-dictatorship-104196">government</a> of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, the crime was a local affair. Students en route to a protest march in Mexico City were detained by the Iguala police, and, at the mayor’s order, handed over to a local gang, which killed them and burned their bodies. </p>
<p>Investigators <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/activities/giei.asp">from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights</a> could not corroborate this story. In the burn pit identified in 2016, they found no physical evidence of the missing students. </p>
<p>In a scathing <a href="http://centroprodh.org.mx/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/giei-informeayotzinapa2.pdf%22%22">final report</a>, investigators said that authorities had ignored crucial evidence that the army and federal police were involved in the students’ disappearance.</p>
<p>A truth commission will help Mexicans “understand the truth and do justice to the young people of Ayotzinapa,” López Obrador <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/mexico-president-forms-truth-commission-missing-students-181204060357515.html">said on Twitter</a> in announcing its creation.</p>
<p>The Ayotzinapa truth commission will put extraordinary resources and personnel on the case and give the victims’ families and perpetrators a voice in the process – neither of which police investigations in Mexico typically do. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexicans have marched every year since 2014 to demand the truth about what happened to the 43 college students who went missing in Guerrero state in September 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://ustv-mrs-prod.ap.org/9298dcd7a7a54689a889c09efdfb4542/components/secured/main.jpg?response-cache-control=No-cache&response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3DAP_638350409083.jpg&Expires=1538757901&Signature=T1uh0Bfk~MZmcCCL5QXiVcubCD1aAmf~mQvcUkUD3~olkGsqGsm2E~eOFGO0nbaigBDhBkWXLxAm6nhQ07jiy8lLvlfPMz0cxIga~HnNrDhq1vuxJ6S1hJqDTxhX05cP5HGgXOdIsA1mig8t1uqftJtUl9OoTDo~IANEQp~QncA_&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJ2U2YQ4Z3WBFV6TA,%20http://www.apimages.com/Search?query=ayotzinapa+investigation&ss=10&st=kw&entitysearch=&toItem=24&">AP Photo/Marco Ugarte</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Transitional justice</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ictj.org/gallery-items/truth-commissions">Truth commissions</a> aim to create a collective, participatory narrative of human rights atrocities that not only exposes the perpetrators but also identifies the conditions that facilitated violence. They are a central component of transitional justice, an approach to helping countries recover after civil war or dictatorship.</p>
<p>Countries like Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil and Peru all used truth commissions to reckon with the toll of their bloody dictatorships and wars and give reparations to victims. <a href="https://transitionaljusticedata.com/browse/index/Browse.mechanism:truthCommissions/Browse.countryid:all!">South Africa</a> famously used a truth commission to document the horrific human rights violations committed under apartheid.</p>
<p>Mexico’s situation is different: It has a criminal violence problem, not a civil war. </p>
<p>But my research indicates this pacification strategy may have some promise. </p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343318793480%22">studies suggest</a> that truth commissions can actually help prevent future violence. Because they identify perpetrators, who then face punishment for their crimes, truth commissions can both take criminals off the street and deter others from committing crime.</p>
<p>Holding public officials responsible for their <a href="https://www.hrw.org/blog-feed/mexico-lessons-human-rights-catastrophe%22">corruption</a> would be a major achievement in Mexico. </p>
<p>As the U.S. federal <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-trial-shows-why-a-wall-wont-stop-drugs-from-crossing-the-us-mexico-border-110001">trial of drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán</a> illustrates, corruption penetrates the highest levels of Mexican government. </p>
<p>Since the beginning of its drug war, in 2006, Mexican citizens have filed <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/mexico#043288%22">10,000 complaints of abuse against soldiers</a>, including accusations of extrajudicial killings and torture. The government has done little to look into those allegations. Nor has it actively investigated most of the <a href="https://articulo19.org/periodistasasesinados/%22">murders of 97 Mexican journalists</a> since then.</p>
<p>If an Ayotzinapa truth commission enjoys the full support of federal authorities – which is not a guarantee, given the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html">corruption it will almost certainly uncover</a> – it could restore some faith in Mexico’s justice system. Currently, 97 percent of all crimes <a href="https://www.udlap.mx/igimex/assets/files/2018/igimex2018_ESP.pdf">go unpunished</a>. </p>
<p>Focusing on truth may also help the country better understand – and therefore address – the root causes of violence in Mexico.</p>
<p>Truth commissions, however, will not immediately solve an incredibly complex security crisis. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.zocalo.com.mx/reforma/detail/imposible-comision-verdad-por-caso.-ai">Amnesty International has said</a>, the Mexican government cannot create a truth commission to investigate every mass atrocity of the drug war. Mexico also needs a functioning justice system.</p>
<h2>Pardoning low level crimes</h2>
<p>Another transitional justice tool the López Obrador government has proposed is <a href="https://seguridad.nexos.com.mx/?p=712">amnesty to non-violent, low-level drug offenders</a>.</p>
<p>The president’s Secretary of Governance, Olga Sánchez Cordero, says that pardoning people convicted and jailed for growing, processing, transporting or using drugs – particularly women and offenders from <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf">marginalized populations</a> – would <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/07/amnistia-ley-reduccion-penas-sanchez-cordero/">stop the cycle of violence in Mexico</a> and encourage petty criminals to disarm. </p>
<p>Mexico’s amnesty proposal is not unlike the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-signing-ceremony-s-756-first-step-act-2018-h-r-6964-juvenile-justice-reform-act-2018/">First Step Act</a> recently passed in the United States, which will result in the early release of about <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/11/16/what-s-really-in-the-first-step-act">2,600 prisoners, many of them drug offenders</a>.</p>
<p>Mexico’s prison population has been steadily rising for years. </p>
<p>Between 2000 and 2016, it increased 40 percent, from 154,765 inmates to 217,868 inmates, according to the <a href="http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/mexico%22">Institute of Criminal Policy Research</a>. The number of people jailed in Mexico for drug offenders has also increased <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf%22%22">markedly</a>.</p>
<p>As in the United States, most prisoners in Mexico come from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf">Collective for the Study of Drugs and Law</a>, a nonprofit research group. </p>
<h2>What lies ahead</h2>
<p>Should López Obrador’s amnesty idea become policy, it would surely be controversial. </p>
<p>Victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez were outraged when, in August 2018, President-elect López Obrador said residents must be “<a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/08/momentos-foros-paz-juarez/">willing to forgive</a>.” </p>
<p>Many caught in the crossfire of Mexico’s drug war say justice and punishment should come before forgiveness. </p>
<p>But violence in Mexico is so pervasive that, in my opinion, the country must consider every option that might stanch the bleeding. </p>
<p>Truth commissions and amnesties to low level crimes will not pacify the country immediately – but they may bring some of the truth and justice Mexicans so desperately need. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to reflect the correct title of Olga Sanchez-Cordero. She is the Secretary of Governance, not Chief-of-Staff.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angélica Durán-Martínez has received funding from the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). In 2011, she was an SSRC Drugs, Security and Democracy fellow, a program funded by Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p>
President López Obrador campaigned on some outside-the-box ideas to ‘pacify’ Mexico after 12 years of extreme violence. But so far his government has emphasized traditional law-and-order policies.
Angélica Durán-Martínez, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UMass Lowell
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/110001
2019-01-16T23:23:11Z
2019-01-16T23:23:11Z
El Chapo trial shows why a wall won’t stop drugs from crossing the US-Mexico border
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254192/original/file-20190116-163265-14xwn8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artist's sketch of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán at a 2018 pretrial hearing in a Brooklyn Federal courthouse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/El-Chapo-Prosecution/9583047735b142299c6a7bfdab33d3a4/48/0">Elizabeth Williams via AP, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/el-juicio-al-chapo-evidencia-por-que-un-muro-no-detendra-el-trafico-de-drogas-entre-mexico-y-estados-unidos-110087"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>The trial of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera has exposed just how <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html?module=inline">powerful Mexico’s cartels really are</a>.</p>
<p>The trial has now run for two months. On Jan. 15, a Colombian drug trafficker who worked for Guzmán’s Sinaloa Cartel from 2007 to 2013 testified that Guzmán paid former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/nyregion/el-chapo-trial.html">US$100 million bribe</a> while he was in power, a charge Peña Nieto’ office denies. </p>
<p>It was just the latest allegation of the cartels paying off high-ranking politicians in Mexico, presumably to <a href="https://www.forbes.com.mx/cartel-de-sinaloa-soborno-a-calderon-y-epn-abogado-de-el-chapo-falso-responden/">exert influence over the government</a>.</p>
<p>Guzmán is charged with <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/929896/download">drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping and money laundering</a> – crimes he allegedly committed over the past quarter-century as head of the Sinaloa cartel, the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful organized crime syndicate. </p>
<p>With its witness accounts of extreme violence, political corruption, international intrigue and entrepreneurial innovation, Guzmán’s trial is a telenovela-style explainer on why a wall is unlikely to stop the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">lucrative U.S.-Mexico drug trade</a>.</p>
<h2>The Sinaloa cartel</h2>
<p>Founded in Mexico’s Sinaloa state in the 1990s, the Sinaloa cartel now <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/mexico-organized-crime-news/sinaloa-cartel-profile">distributes drugs</a> to some 50 countries, including Argentina, the Philippines and Russia. </p>
<p>Determining the scale of Guzmán’s global empire is difficult, since gangsters usually don’t keep books and charts of accounts. But his 2016 indictment in the U.S. sought forfeiture of more than <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-loera-faces-charges-new-york-leading-continuing-criminal-enterprise">$14 billion</a> in proceeds and illicit profits from decades of narcotics sales in the U.S. and Canada.</p>
<p>The Sinaloa cartel controls perhaps half of Mexico’s drug market, with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/americas/mexican-drug-cartels/">annual earnings of around $3 billion</a>. Mexican estimates suggest that each month it <a href="http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=19103">moves</a> two tons of cocaine and 10,000 tons of marijuana – plus heroin, methamphetamine and other substances.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254193/original/file-20190116-163283-1r3n157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexican druglord Joaquin Guzmán after his capture by Mexican marines in January 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/YE-2016-Latin-America-Top-10-News-Stories/0632fbc853eb4a9793e7f3424bbd2cc5/20/0">AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The drug business</h2>
<p>Illegal drugs are a highly lucrative business. </p>
<p>In 2016, the year El Chapo was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/19/us/el-chapo-guzman-turned-over-to-us/index.html">captured in Mexico</a>, the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/field/10.3_Price_and_Purity_-_Cocaine.xls">wholesale price</a> for a gram of cocaine was approximately $2.30 in Colombia and $12.50 in Mexico. The same gram had a wholesale cost of $28 by the time it got to the United States. In Australia, that same gram of cocaine fetched $176.50 wholesale.</p>
<p>Drug prices rise significantly during transit as intermediaries demand compensation for the <a href="http://faculty.publicpolicy.umd.edu/sites/default/files/reuter/files/Risks_and_prices.pdf">risk</a> they assume in getting the product to consumers. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/field/10.3_Price_and_Purity_-_Cocaine.xls">Retail prices</a> per gram of cocaine are even higher, reflecting the addition of even more middlemen: $82 in the U.S. in 2016 and $400 in Australia. </p>
<p>This liability markup is one reason why some prominent policy experts and even <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/economic-moral-case-legalizing-cocaine-heroin">conservative economists</a> call for <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-commission-calls-for-responsible-control-of-illicit-drugs-through/">legalizing and regulating illicit narcotics</a>. Keeping drugs illegal is what makes them so profitable for the people who traffick them. </p>
<h2>Bribes, violence and threats</h2>
<p>Illegality is also what makes the drug business so <a href="http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/portal/portal109/drugs.pdf">violent</a>.</p>
<p>Running an <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.503.9024&rep=rep1&type=pdf">illicit operation</a>, cartel leaders must both enforce their own business agreements and protect themselves from authorities and competitors. </p>
<p>They do so using a combination of violence, threats and bribes.</p>
<p>At least eight <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2016/04/10/1085638#imagen-1">armed groups</a> worked under Guzmán’s command in Mexico, according to Mexican government reports, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/21/how-el-chapo-built-sinaloa-cartel">attacking</a> competitors and killing defectors.</p>
<p>Guzmán also <a href="http://time.com/3968992/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-escape-seven-arrested/">bribed</a> as many <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html?module=inline">politicians, police officers</a> and prison guards to stay in business. </p>
<p>His elaborate disappearances from Mexican high-security prisons are the stuff of legend. In 2015, <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-jailbreak-is-both-a-mexican-and-an-american-story-44679">Guzmán escaped jail</a> by riding a motorcycle through a lit, ventilated mile-long tunnel constructed underneath his cell.</p>
<h2>American demand</h2>
<p>The Sinaloa cartel didn’t become the world’s biggest supplier of illicit drugs by coincidence. It has flourished because the United States is the world’s <a href="https://www.unodc.org/wdr2016/interactive-map.html">biggest consumer</a> of illicit drugs. </p>
<p>Mexican cartels serve Americans’ “insatiable demand for illegal drugs,” as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/americas/26mexico.html">Hillary Clinton once said</a>. </p>
<p>Despite President Donald Trump’s focus on Mexican drug traffickers, his former chief of staff, <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/kelly-us-must-get-business-drug-demand-reduction">John Kelly, has admitted</a> that the U.S. is part of the problem.</p>
<p>“We’re not even trying,” he told Congress in 2017, calling for more drug-demand reduction programs. </p>
<p>Kelly added that Latin American countries chide American authorities for “lecturing [them] about not doing enough to stop the drug flow” while the U.S. does nothing to “stop the demand.”</p>
<h2>Trump’s wall</h2>
<p>Trump’s continued <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-calls-border-a-crisis-of-the-soul-3-scholars-react-to-his-oval-office-address-109597">insistence on securing the southern border with a wall</a> seems to disregard the economic forces driving the drug trade and diminish Mexican cartels’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wall-and-the-beast-trumps-triumph-from-the-mexican-side-of-the-border-68559">innovative distribution strategies</a>.</p>
<p>A high-tech border fence constructed in Arizona long before Trump’s inauguration has proven virtually useless in stopping drugs from crossing into the U.S.: Mexican smugglers just use a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/marijuana-catapult-trnd/index.html">catapult</a> to fling <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html">hundred-pound bales of marijuana</a> over to the American side. </p>
<p>“We’ve got the best fence money can buy,” former DEA chief Michael Brown <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html">said</a> to The New York Times in 2012, “and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology.”</p>
<p>Then there’s the other ancient technology perfected by Guzmán: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/underworld-monte-reel">the tunnel</a>. </p>
<p>Officials have discovered about 180 cleverly disguised illicit passages under the U.S.-Mexico border. Many, like the one Guzmán used to escape prison, are equipped with electricity, ventilation and elevators.</p>
<p>Trump has admitted that anyone could use “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htR87FTRj2U">a rope</a>” to climb over his wall, but believes that more border guards and drone technology would prevent infiltration. </p>
<h2>Corruption in the US</h2>
<p>Corruption is <a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/2019/01/16/naranjo-en-la-nomina-de-narcos-de-colombia-antes-de-ser-asesor-de-epn-5221.html">not an exclusively Mexican trait</a>. </p>
<p>Over the past decade some 200 employees and contractors from the Department of Homeland Security have accepted nearly $15 million in bribes to look the other way as drugs were smuggled across the border into the United States, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/us/homeland-security-border-bribes.html?_r=0">The New York Times</a> has reported. </p>
<p>Some U.S. officials have also given sensitive law enforcement information to cartels members, according to the Times.</p>
<p>“Almost no evidence about corrupt American officials has been allowed at [El Chapo’s] trial,” New York Times reporter Alan Feuer <a href="https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1082820817438822400">said recently on Twitter</a>.</p>
<p><em>This article is an updated version of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-story-of-a-kingpin-or-why-trumps-plan-to-defeat-mexican-cartels-is-doomed-to-fail-71781">story</a> originally published on Feb. 19, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110001/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
With its tales of bloody violence, corruption, international trade and entrepreneurial innovation, Guzmán’s trial offers a telenovela-style explainer on Mexican cartels and their American clients.
Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96063
2018-05-22T10:47:47Z
2018-05-22T10:47:47Z
Amnesty for drug traffickers? That’s one Mexican presidential candidate’s pitch to voters
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219595/original/file-20180518-42230-o8y9p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can Mexico become a 'loving republic' built on forgiveness rather than punishment?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/original-illustration-drawing-convicted-prisoners-jail-547276720">Shutterstock/Nalidsa</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/amnistia-para-traficantes-eso-propone-este-candidato-presidencial-mexicano-98800"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>With over <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence/mexico-suffers-deadliest-month-on-record-2017-set-to-be-worst-year-idUSKBN1DL2Z6">29,000 murders</a>, 2017 was the deadliest year in Mexico since modern record-keeping began. Nearly two-thirds of Mexicans <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-04/www-march-2018.pdf">say</a> crime and violence are the biggest problems facing their country. </p>
<p>A main cause of the bloodshed, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">studies show</a>, is the Mexican government’s violent crackdown on drug trafficking. <a href="http://calderon.presidencia.gob.mx/2006/12/anuncio-sobre-la-operacion-conjunta-michoacan/">Launched in 2006</a> under President Felipe Calderón, this military assault on cartels has left <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2017/11/23/pena-y-calderon-suman-234-mil-muertos-y-2017-es-oficialmente-el-ano-mas-violento-en-la-historia-reciente-de-mexico_a_23285694/">234,966 people dead</a> in 11 years. </p>
<p>While numerous drug kingpins have been jailed, cartels <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/dec/08/mexico-war-on-drugs-cost-achievements-us-billions">fractured under law enforcement pressure</a>, competing for territory and diversifying their business. Kidnapping and extortion have surged. Mexico is now <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-mexico-actually-the-worlds-second-most-murderous-nation-77897">one of the world’s most violent places</a>.</p>
<p>Now one presidential candidate in Mexico is hoping to win over voters with a novel response to the country’s security crisis: <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/catalina-perez-correa/nacion/amnistia">amnesty for criminals</a>.</p>
<h2>Justice not revenge</h2>
<p>The idea, first floated by leftist front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador in <a href="https://www.proceso.com.mx/450727/ofrece-amlo-amnistia-anticipada-los-grupos-poder">August 2016</a>, is undeveloped and quite likely quixotic. López Obrador has yet to even indicate precisely what benefit the Mexican government would get in exchange for pardoning felons. </p>
<p>Still, as a <a href="https://lha.uow.edu.au/law/contacts/UOW155522.html">law professor</a> who studies drug policy, I must give López Obrador some credit for originality. His three competitors have mostly <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2018/04/22/asi-reaccionaron-los-mexicanos-al-primer-debate-presidencial_a_23417628/">frustrated voters</a> this campaign season by suggesting the same <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/mexico-next-president-rising-criminal-violence-how-to-tackle-it/">tried-and-failed law enforcement-based strategies</a>. </p>
<p>López Obrador, founder and leader of Mexico’s MORENA Party, is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-mexico-a-firebrand-leftist-provokes-the-powers-that-be-including-donald-trump-78918">rabble-rousing politician</a> who delights in challenging the status quo. In this, his third presidential bid, he has on several occasions <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/elecciones-2018/amlo-plantea-analizar-amnistia-lideres-del-narco-para-garantizar-la-paz">suggested</a> that <a href="https://aristeguinoticias.com/0312/mexico/que-amnistias-propone-amlo-videos/">both members of organized crime groups</a> and corrupt politicians could be pardoned for their crimes. </p>
<p>When pressed for details on the amnesty plan, López Obrador has simply responded that “amnesty is not impunity” or that Mexico needs “justice,” not “revenge.” </p>
<p>Former Supreme Court Justice Olga Sánchez Cordero, López Obrador’s pick for secretary of the interior, has offered a few additional hints about the plan. She <a href="https://www.reforma.com/libre/players/mmplayer.aspx?idm=97601&te=100&ap=1">says that voters should think of amnesty</a> not as a security policy but as a kind of transitional justice. It would be an instrument used to pacify Mexico. </p>
<p>The opportunity would be time-limited. Criminals would lose their immunity after a specific date if they have not met certain conditions – though these conditions remain undefined. It would also exclude serious crimes such as torture, rape or homicide. </p>
<p>All presidential pardons would need to be approved by Congress, in accordance with the <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/1_150917.pdf">Mexican Constitution</a>. </p>
<h2>Amnesty in Colombia</h2>
<p>Sound vague? That’s because it is.</p>
<p>López Obrador says that his amnesty idea is still in development, and <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2018/05/08/participa-amlo-en-el-dialogo-por-la-paz-y-justicia-la-agenda-fundamental/">that his team will work</a> with religious organizations, Pope Francis, United Nations General Secretary António Guterres, Mexican civil society groups and human rights experts to develop “a plan to achieve peace for the country, with justice and dignity.” </p>
<p>Colombia offers one example of how amnesty can be used <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombian-guerrillas-disarm-starting-their-risky-return-to-civilian-life-73947">as an instrument for peace</a>. </p>
<p>In 2016 the Colombian government signed an accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, ending the Marxist group’s violent 52-year rebellion. In exchange for laying down their weapons, <a href="http://es.presidencia.gov.co/normativa/normativa/LEY%201820%20DEL%2030%20DE%20DICIEMBRE%20DE%202016.pdf">FARC fighters were offered protection</a> from prosecution for political crimes committed during the conflict.</p>
<p>The amnesty law is extremely controversial. Colombian conservatives and the United Nations alike have <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2017/03/16/colombia/1489680361_529580.html">criticized</a> it for prioritizing the rights of guerrillas over those of their victims. Colombia’s peace process has also been fraught by delays, <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombias-murder-rate-is-at-an-all-time-low-but-its-activists-keep-getting-killed-91602">flare-ups of violence</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-latest-threat-to-peace-in-colombia-congress-87810">political opposition</a>.</p>
<p>Still, according to the <a href="http://www.cerac.org.co/es/">Conflict Analysis Resource Center</a>, a think tank, conflict-related deaths among both civilians and combatants <a href="http://blog.cerac.org.co/un-ano-de-desescalamiento-conflicto-casi-detenido">dropped over 90 percent</a> in 2016. </p>
<h2>Would amnesty work in Mexico?</h2>
<p>Mexico is not Colombia. </p>
<p>López Obrador is proposing amnesty in a different conflict carried out by radically different actors – drug kingpins, corrupt politicians and security forces who for 11 years have waged war with <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-corruption-problems-are-still-among-the-worlds-deepest-76627">virtual impunity</a>.</p>
<p>It’s unclear, for example, why drug traffickers would abandon their <a href="http://olinca.edu.mx/images/PDFs/Antecedentes_CONAGO_A.pdf">US$40 billion</a> illicit industry – which supports around <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/04/01/edito">500,000 jobs</a> in Mexico – in exchange for a preemptive pardon from authorities.</p>
<p>It is also difficult to reconcile López Obrador’s vows for <a href="https://www.forbes.com.mx/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-promete-honestidad-como-pilar-de-su-gobierno/">honest government</a> with his proposal to pardon corruption, though he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ5rvIHoAG4">has committed to</a> finishing all <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/04/19/mexico/1524150473_535247.html">ongoing investigations into public officials</a> accused of corruption. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who goes by his initials, AMLO, has not elaborated on his amnesty idea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>López Obrador claims to seek a new “<a href="http://www.nacion321.com/elecciones/las-claves-para-entender-la-constitucion-moral-de-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador">moral constitution</a>” for Mexico. He maintains that forgiveness is necessary to construct a “república amorosa” – “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=pJHoAQAACAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions">loving republic</a>” – in which Mexicans “live under the principle that being good is the only way to be joyful.” </p>
<h2>A simple expectation</h2>
<p>Mexicans don’t feel joyful right now. </p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-04/www-march-2018.pdf">recent IPSOS poll</a>, 89 percent of Mexicans believe the country is on the wrong track. Almost 70 percent disapprove of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s <a href="https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/politica/Impacta-el-periodo-electoral-en-la-aprobacion-del-presidente-20180301-0153.html">performance</a>.</p>
<p>Journalist and historian Héctor Aguilar Camín has <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=34957">described</a> voters’ current mood as “melancholic.” <a href="https://theconversation.com/governors-gone-wild-mexico-faces-a-lost-generation-of-corrupt-leaders-76858">Rampant corruption</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-many-mexicans-this-government-spying-scandal-feels-eerily-familiar-79981">government repression</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-mexico-actually-the-worlds-second-most-murderous-nation-77897">bloody violence</a> have made them skeptical of politics. But, as Aguilar Camín says, people also need desperately to believe that change is possible.</p>
<p>This discontent has given López Obrador <a href="http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/elecciones-2018/lopez-obrador-el-presidenciable-que-mas-crece-en-intencion-de-voto">a virtually unbeatable lead</a> in the lead-up to the July election. </p>
<p>To paraphrase the prominent Mexican-American Univision reporter Jorge Ramos, all Mexicans want from their next president is <a href="https://twitter.com/oneamexico/status/996036144423952384">to keep them from being killed</a>. So they’re open to unusual ideas.</p>
<p>During <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/05/21/mexico/1526881664_964397.html">two presidential debates</a>, the only candidate other than López Obrador to propose a <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/04/bronco-mochar-manos/">radical new crime-fighting tactic</a> is Governor Jaime “El Bronco” Rodríguez, an independent from Nuevo Leon state. He promised “to cut off the hands” of corrupt politicians and criminals, a suggestion that left moderator <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPcI1RdkYJk">Azucena Uresti</a> – and <a href="https://www.debate.com.mx/politica/memes-bronco-debate-presidencial-declaracion-polemica-20180422-0266.html">most of the country</a> – aghast. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/1_150917.pdf">Mexican Constitution</a> prohibits punishment with mutilation and torture.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qwY4XngqgZ4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mexico held its first presidential debate on April 23, 2018. Independent Margarita Zavala, far left, dropped out of the race in mid-May.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Electoral advantages of ambiguity</h2>
<p>Only López Obrador, with his amnesty suggestion, has questioned whether aggressive law enforcement should even be the core tenet of Mexican security policy.</p>
<p>His competitors have <a href="https://www.publimetro.com.mx/mx/destacado-tv/2018/04/22/todos-me-estan-echando-monton-asi-fueron-los-ataques-amlo-debate.html">attacked</a> the idea, calling it “madness” and “nonsense.” Some accused López Obrador of being “a puppet of criminals.” </p>
<p>Alfonso Durazo, whom López Obrador’s would nominate to be Mexico’s secretary of security, <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/04/alfonso-durazo-presenta-la-estrategia-de-seguridad-de-amlo/">believes</a> that an amnesty law could end the “cycle of war” in Mexico by setting in motion a process of national reconciliation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, to actively combat crime, López Obrador says he would <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/seguridad/">merge</a> the police and the military into one unified <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/11B0aNBuVpHB7GDVXhCKdYvVKw7D7Ta-x/view">national guard</a> under <a href="https://www.laotraopinion.com.mx/video-amlo-admite-que-dominaria-la-guardia-nacional/">direct presidential command</a>.</p>
<p>Maybe forgiveness and justice is what Mexico needs. But, for now, presidential pardons seem like little more than a hollow campaign promise. As Mexican pundit Denise Dresser has <a href="https://www.reforma.com/aplicacioneslibre/editoriales/editorial.aspx?id=133785&md5=bf01a6c9a494d84f5a9996299910ee64&ta=0dfdbac11765226904c16cb9ad1b2efe&lcmd5=e7143908412dfff2e3b6e6f84bc178f5">put it</a>, López Obrador’s amnesty plan is merely “a blank page on the table, with multiple scriveners working on it.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Mexico’s presidential front-runner wants to end violence in Mexico by pardoning drug traffickers and corrupt officials. Some 235,000 people have died in the country’s 11-year cartel war.
Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/92702
2018-03-20T10:40:57Z
2018-03-20T10:40:57Z
MS-13 is a street gang, not a drug cartel – and the difference matters
<p>In October 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-sessions-delivers-remarks-international-association-chiefs-police">announced</a> that pursuing the Mara Salvatrucha, a Salvadoran gang also known as MS-13, was “a priority for our Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces.”</p>
<p>“Drugs are killing more Americans than ever before, in large part thanks to powerful cartels and international gangs and deadly new synthetic opioids like fentanyl,” Sessions told the International Association of Chiefs of Police on Oct. 23. He concluded that “perhaps the most brutal of these gangs is MS-13.”</p>
<p>President Donald Trump also cites MS-13 to justify his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration from Latin America. In his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/nyregion/ms-13-gang-trump.html">2018 State of the Union address</a>, Trump threatened to “destroy” the group, which is responsible for a spate of brutal, high-profile murders in Boston, <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/MS-13-Gang-Arrests-Long-Island-New-York-NY-Police-Murder-468791273.html">Long Island</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/bodies-found-in-holmes-run-park-are-missing-fairfax-county-teens/2017/12/08/b2420ef4-dc15-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html">Virginia</a> and beyond.</p>
<p>There’s a problem here – and it’s not just MS-13’s violent ethos. It’s that the Trump administration is getting this gang all wrong. </p>
<p>I spent three years at <a href="https://www.american.edu/centers/latin-american-latino-studies/">American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies</a> chronicling the MS-13’s criminal exploits for the <a href="https://www.nij.gov/Pages/welcome.aspx">National Institute of Justice</a>. Our <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MS13-in-the-Americas-InSight-Crime-English-3.pdf">study</a> proves that MS-13 is neither a drug cartel nor was it born of illegal immigration. </p>
<p>That misconception is fueling failed U.S. policies that, in my assessment, will do little to deter MS-13. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"931538234169069568"}"></div></p>
<h2>MS-13 is no Yakuza</h2>
<p>The Trump administration is not the first administration to mischaracterize MS-13, which conducts vicious but rudimentary criminal activities like extortion, armed robbery and murder across Central America, Mexico and the U.S.</p>
<p>In 2012, the Obama-era <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1733.aspx">Treasury Department put the group</a> on a organized crime “kingpin” list with the Italian mafia Camorra, the Mexican criminal group the Zetas and the Japanese mob known as the Yakuza. </p>
<p>That designation gave the group a rarefied status in the underworld, which must have pleased its leadership. </p>
<p>But our research found that MS-13 is hardly a lucrative network of criminal masterminds. Instead, it is a loose coalition of young, <a href="https://theconversation.com/central-american-gangs-like-ms-13-were-born-out-of-failed-anti-crime-policies-76554">often formerly incarcerated men</a> operating hand to mouth across a vast geographic territory. </p>
<p>MS-13 was born in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, when scores of Salvadorans, <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/salvadoran-immigrants-united-states">many of them fleeing</a> the country’s civil war, arrived to California. Like other Latino immigrant groups, the new arrivals formed a <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-gang-violence-boyle-20151103-pg-photogallery.html">youth gang of the sort proliferating in L.A. at the time</a>. </p>
<p>Then as now, MS-13 acted as a surrogate family for its members, though not a benign one. MS-13 created a collective identity that was constructed and reinforced by shared experiences, particularly expressions of violence and social control. </p>
<p>It has since spread to at least a half-dozen countries on two continents and has become a prime source of destabilizing violence, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/01/the-teens-trapped-between-a-gang-and-the-law">particularly extortion</a>, in Central American countries like El Salvador and Honduras. </p>
<h2>Inept at drug dealing</h2>
<p>What MS-13 has not done is establish any real foothold in the international drug trafficking market. </p>
<p>It’s not for lack of trying. Our study found that MS-13 leaders have made several attempts to get into the business of running illicit drugs. </p>
<p>In the early 2000s, one MS-13 boss named Nelson Comandari <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/ms13-drug-trafficking-project-entrepreneurism/">tried to use the gang’s national criminal infrastructure</a> to establish a drug distribution network. Comandari was well positioned to do it. He was powerful in L.A., had underworld family connections from El Salvador to Colombia and enjoyed strong ties to the feared <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mexican-mafia-jail-assault-charges-20170630-story.html">Mexican Mafia</a>, a U.S.-based prison gang with connections to Mexican cartels. </p>
<p>Yet within a few years Comandari was frustrated. MS-13 members turned out to be inept at drug smuggling and resistant to the whole idea. Our research found that the gang frowns upon those who put their personal business above the collective’s. </p>
<p>Comandari eventually went into the drug business on his own <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/feds-have-been-hiding-evidence-wiretap-courts-their-war-gangs/">and was captured</a> along the Texas-Mexico border in 2006. </p>
<p>A few years later, one of Comandari’s former lieutenants <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/how-the-ms13-got-its-foothold-in-transnational-drug-trafficking/">also tried to establish</a> an international distribution pipeline between MS-13 and the Mexican drug cartel La Familia. The deal was <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/13-linked-mexican-mafia-and-la-familia-indicted-after-investigation-reveals-plot-join">thwarted by U.S. law enforcement in 2013</a>. </p>
<p>Subsequent efforts have <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/how-ms13-tried-failed-create-single-gang-us/">gotten nipped even sooner</a>. In 2015, a midlevel MS-13 leader named Larry Naverete – spelled Navarrete in some federal documents – began smuggling small loads of methamphetamine into the U.S. via an MS-13 member operating from Tijuana. </p>
<p>Within two years, police on each side of the border had captured Navarete, who was operating from the California State Prison System, and <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/mexico-arrests-ms13-leader-busting-up-latest-gang-trafficking-ring/">his Mexican partner</a>.</p>
<h2>Why MS-13 fails at drug trafficking</h2>
<p>One reason MS-13 has failed so roundly at becoming a drug cartel is that it is <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/ms13-gang-truce-social-criminal-capital/">more of a social club</a> than a lucrative criminal enterprise. Its members benefit from the camaraderie and support that comes with membership – not the heaping monetary rewards that never arrive. </p>
<p>Entrepreneurs who hope to leverage its network for their personal financial gain see the same strong resistance that scuttled Comandari’s plans.</p>
<p>Perhaps more critically, MS-13 is a <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/ms13-case-studies-hierarchy-federation/">decentralized organization</a> with no clear hierarchy. The gang is broken into local cells called “cliques” – or “clicas” in Spanish – that are more loyal to each other than to the various leadership councils that operate around Central America and the U.S. </p>
<p>Put simply, it has no leader. So what looks on paper like a tremendous built-in infrastructure for moving illicit products across borders is actually a disparate, federalized organization of <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/ms13-case-studies-hierarchy-federation/">substructures with highly local, even competing, interests</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, MS-13 is mostly about immediate gratification. It helps members eke out a living and get some perilous criminal thrills. That’s why extortion is a staple. Complex supply chains? Not so much. </p>
<h2>Failed US policies</h2>
<p>These findings suggest that the U.S. could <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/former-gang-members-offer-advice-on-how-to-combat-ms-13">fight MS-13 by better protecting the vulnerable young Latino kids who become its recruits</a> – funding social and educational programs in immigrant neighborhoods, for example, or financing more early child intervention programs.</p>
<p>Instead, the Trump administration has used MS-13 as a foil to push its political agenda. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211002/original/file-20180319-31624-1waa2sd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211002/original/file-20180319-31624-1waa2sd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211002/original/file-20180319-31624-1waa2sd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211002/original/file-20180319-31624-1waa2sd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211002/original/file-20180319-31624-1waa2sd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211002/original/file-20180319-31624-1waa2sd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211002/original/file-20180319-31624-1waa2sd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">MS-13 members allegedly killed several people on Long Island, New York, in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Claudia Torrens</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To justify imposing draconian immigration restrictions, Trump and Sessions <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/03/07/the-dangerous-game-donald-trump-is-playing-with-ms-13/?utm_term=.844f20b8d9e8">link MS-13’s crimes to the issue of illegal immigration</a>. Their rhetoric suggests that the group is staffed with undocumented migrants, thus proving that migrants are dangerous. In fact, <a href="http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Immigration-and-Public-Safety.pdf">statistics</a> confirm that immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born U.S. citizens.</p>
<p>Conflating the gang with the sophisticated cartels currently waging a bloody war in Mexico likewise serves the administration’s goal of tightening border controls. It makes MS-13 seem like a <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-01-31/alien-threat-street-gang-ms-13-was-actually-made-usa">foreign invader</a>, not a homegrown threat. I suspect this rhetoric may also help Trump make the case <a href="http://time.com/5205467/donald-trump-death-penalty-drug-traffickers-opioid/">that the U.S. should impose longer jail sentences for drug trafficking-related crimes</a>.</p>
<p>What harsh law enforcement tactics aimed at ending immigration and breaking up drug cartels won’t do is address the real problems posed by MS-13 and other very violent, very American street gangs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Dudley is the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime, a think thank based in Medellin, Colombia. InSight Crime receives funding from Open Society Foundations, as well as the U.S., Canadian, British and Swedish governments, among others. </span></em></p>
Trump justice officials portray the Salvadoran gang MS-13 as a powerful drug cartel staffed with criminal undocumented immigrants. That’s a dangerous mistake if you actually want to prevent violence.
Steven S. Dudley, Senior Fellow, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.