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Posts tagged Latin American
Curbing Violence in Latin America’s Drug Trafficking Hotspots 

By The International Crisis Group 

Over half a century on from the declaration of a “war on drugs”, Latin America is struggling to manage the eruption of violence tied to the narcotics trade. Though drugrelated organised crime has brought notorious peaks of violence in the past, above all in Colombia and Mexico, never has it spread so wide, and rarely has it penetrated so deeply into states and communities. Criminal groups have splintered, multiplied and diversified, adding lethal synthetics like fentanyl to the traditional plant-based supply of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, as well as moving into new rackets like extortion. Where communities are poor and unprotected, criminal groups act as employers and overlords; where state officials are present, they coerce and corrupt them. With Washington pushing for a fresh military-led crackdown on drug cartels, perhaps involving U.S. forces, Latin American leaders face difficult decisions. Despite the pressure to comply, experience suggests that a balance of improved policing, alternative livelihoods, gun control and, under specific conditions, negotiations would be more effective in reducing violence. The map of the drug trade in Latin America has been transformed in the decades since supply routes from the Andes to the U.S. first emerged. Demand for narcotics outside the region remains at record highs, with newer markets booming – particularly for cocaine in Europe and fentanyl in the U.S. At the same time, waves of U.S.- backed law enforcement, based on capture and extradition of crime bosses (known as kingpins), drug seizures and forced eradication have revolutionised the supply chain. Although Colombia and Mexico remain at the heart of the drug business, a main route to the U.S. and Europe runs down the Pacific, passing through countries that were largely untouched by illicit trafficking such as Costa Rica and Ecuador. Each of these has seen rates of violence rise sharply; in 2024, Ecuador was South America’s most violent nation. Across the region, surges of bloodshed have marked the new hubs of a fast-shifting, hyper-violent drug trade. Understanding how this rolling crime wave came about is fundamental to arresting it. Drug-related organised crime has adapted to the threat posed by law enforcement by becoming more flexible and resilient. In place of hierarchical syndicates that could be dismantled once their leaders were identified, the trade increasingly functions through networks of providers who subcontract each step of the route to lower tiers of operators. High-level financiers engage sophisticated international traffickers, who oversee drug exports to user markets. These in turn partner with national and local crime groups to meet the orders. National groups manage production or ensure safe passage of the drug along a particular trafficking corridor. At the local level, urban gangs are contracted by larger criminal allies for small-scale logistical services like smuggling drugs through ports. All the layers of these networks have learned that capturing state officials is a business asset. Using a mix of threats and payoffs, they target police officers, judges, prosecutors and politicians who can ensure that business runs smoothly, without the risk of arrest or seizure of shipments. Likewise, prisons in some of Latin America’s roughest settings are run by inmates, who manage their criminal enterprises behind bars and carry out vendettas against rivals inside and outside.

Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2025. 51p.

Latin American Crime and the Issue of Inequality

By Garan Ho/mqvist 

Crime is an increasingly worrying social phenomenon in the developing world in general and in Latin America in particular. As shown in Figure 1~, the crime rate (measured by homicide lOO 000, as reported to the UN crime surveys by national police authorities) has virtually exploded since the mid-1980s in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe. Latin America stands out as an exceptional case. Annually in Latin America, approximately 140,000 people are murdered (Londono & Guerrero 1999:27). Using other sources does not change this picture. Figure 2 confirms the exceptional position of Latin America, where the source in mortality statistics is collected from national health authorities instead of the police. Indicators of crime other than homicide are less reliable for international comparison, but estimates point in the direction of Latin America being way above the average for any other region of the world (Bourguignon 1999, Table 1). It has been estimated that 28 million Latin American families are victims of theft or robbery every year (Londono & Guerrero 1999:3). Crime and violence are now viewed as a development issue of importance, which was probably not the case two decades ago. Development agencies such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have quite recently initiated ambitious research projects on crime and violence. Projects directed to the judicial system or police authorities have increased their share in the project portfolio of multilateral as well as bilateral development cooperation agencies. More importantly, crime is becoming a major concern in the daily lives of an increasing number of citizens in the developing world, manifesting itself in national political agendas, in higher crime-related expenditures, and, not the least, in human suffering. There are several reasons to regard crime as a social phenomenon with strong and complex ties to the development process in general. In Latin America, crime is a potential threat to what most people would regard as encouraging development trends, especially after ''the lost decade" of the 1980s, in terms of democratization and resumed growth. The following examples may illustrate how continuous progress in these areas is being made more difficult by the increasing crime levels: 

 Iberoamericana. Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Vol. XXX: 2 2000,pp. 23-53