Narco Killings 2011 Map (Courtesy WM Consulting).
There has been much debate in Mexico about the number of drug-related killings since the start of drug war in 2006. The Mexican government provides an official database that puts this figure at some 35,000. Others, such as Reforma, provide an estimate near the official number — but more current — now totalling some 37,000.
As important as the total numbers is their breakdown. Here, the Mexican government provides some estimates, sorting the murders according to whether they were acts of aggression, executions or occurred as a result of a confrontation. Walter McKay at WM Consulting has built a useful tool by scouring local newspapers in many (but not yet all) Mexican states. This map depicts the murders according to whether the victim was a civilian, politician (or other high profile individual), or law enforcement official, and also shows the sites of car bombs and mass graves. McKay puts the number of deaths as a result of the drug war at some 47,000, significantly higher than the government estimate. As the policy debates continue, these various sources of information will be vital to informing steps forward.
This week the Woodrow Wilson Center released its report, “Organized Crime in Central America: The Northern Triangle”, which has many well researched and written chapters on the accelerated rise of criminal structures over the past three decades in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. To bolster weak rule of law institutions vulnerable to the influence of organized crime in the region, it argues, the U.S. will need to contribute more funds to the region’s security initiatives – even as individual countries play a greater part by collecting more taxes. Though overall the picture is disheartening, this useful study lays out the complex factors underlying the violence in Central America today.
It also shows that while all Central American nations struggle with crime and violence, the real security challenges are in the Northern Triangle – where the magnitude and type of organized criminal operations are unparalleled. This finding questions the traditional blanket regional approach taken by the United States (through CARSI), or the way other Latin American or European countries develop multilateral security initiatives within Central America.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A man holds a symbol of the Patriot Party during a political rally in Solola (Jorge Lopez/Courtesy Reuters).
Front-runner Otto Pérez Molina won 36% of the vote in first round of Guatemala’s presidential elections on Sunday, and will face off against second place finisher Manuel Baldizón in the second round in November. Though winning the runoff election will not be easy for either candidate (both have to build coalitions to clinch a second-round victory); far trickier will be facing Guatemala’s long list of challenges, topped by insecurity.
Guatemala’s murder rate has more than doubled in the last twenty years, reaching a high in 2009 when nearly 6,500 people were killed – 17 a day — more than in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the past four years the government of Álvaro Colom has been unable to quell the violence or bring its perpetrators to justice. During the campaign the leading presidential candidates advocated a mano dura, or iron fist security policy, with Pérez Molina as its most forceful proponent (his Patriot Party has a clenched fist as its emblem). He even proposed bringing back the notorious military task forces used against guerrillas in the 1980s and 1990s, this time to take on drug traffickers.
It is unlikely this strategy will work. Guatemala’s military today doesn’t have the capacity to ramp up its public safety functions. As a part of the 1996 peace agreements (ending 36 years of civil war) the military agreed to downsize. The current force stands at 17,000 troops (roughly 60 percent less than 1990 levels). Earlier this year, when the government called a state of siege in the northern province of Alta Verapaz taken hostage by traffickers, the military could only send 600 soldiers in to patrol the area – less than one tenth the size of the Mexican military force sent to fight the La Familia cartel in Michoacán in 2006. After the operation, President Colom himself admitted that the military could not match the drug traffickers’ vast resources, noting “just the weapons seized in Alta Verapaz are more than those of some army brigades.”
But the issue is not just one of capacity. Even if the government found the resources to beef up the military, it shouldn’t be the force to take over the fight against organized crime. If deploying the armed forces in Mexico’s drug war is considered controversial, in Guatemala it is decidedly more complicated. The Guatemalan army enjoys considerably less citizen trust than their Mexican counterparts due to their long and ignominious involvement in the country’s brutal civil conflict. The U.N. truth commission report (whose findings Pérez Molina questions) deemed the war a genocide, and blamed the army for 93 percent of the massacres of innocent civilians that occurred. Breaking the peace accords’ promise to keep the military out of citizen security would be a step backward to a past many would rather not revisit.
Growing evidence too suggests the military itself may well have ties to organized crime. Reports from the UN peacekeeping mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), and a number of NGOs show that long standing military ties with the criminal groups that today work with Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers. The Kaibiles, an elite special operations force, trained some of the Mexican soldiers that would later become the Zetas, and many former Kaibiles now work full time for the cartels.
If the army is not the right choice for improving security, the only alternative is the National Civil Police (PNC). Unfortunately, the PNC faces many of these same challenges: a lack of manpower, resources, and public trust. Furthermore, the U.S. and the Guatemalan government have tried a number of times, and on the whole failed to reinvent the PNC in the past.
Still, trying again is the least bad alternative. And there are a few hopeful signs from the past year. With new wiretapping, plea bargaining and seized assets laws in place (in no small part due to the work of CICIG), the police have arrested some high-ranking drug traffickers and suspects in high-profile murders. With human rights leader Helen Mack at the helm of a new police reform initiative, some observers are more optimistic about the chances of finally building a professionalized Guatemalan police force.
As the U.S. and other countries in the region look to begin working with the new administration, security assistance – including Mérida funds — should focus on strengthening the national police (and court systems). Despite the PNC’s past failures, and Guatemala’s weak institutions in general, the issue of security is simply too important to let fall by the wayside, or worse, into the wrong hands.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Argentine President Fernandez waves to supporters after hearing the first results of the nationwide primary election in Buenos Aires (Enrique Maracarian/Courtesy Reuters).
The Pew Research Center released the results of a wide-ranging public opinion poll based on interviews with some 800 Mexicans (the study is part of their larger Global Attitudes Project). It finds strong continued support for military – 83 percent favor their role in the drug war – and for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation, with nearly 3 in 4 Mexicans supporting U.S. training and weapons for national security forces. Calderón, despite an economic recession and ever more bloody drug war, still enjoys the confidence of a majority of Mexicans, with 57% saying they view his political influence in a positive light. While these numbers look bad vis-à-vis past Mexican presidents entering their last term in office, other Western Hemisphere leaders (Barack Obama and Sebastian Piñera, for example) would be quite pleased with such levels of support.
A recent survey of the Guatemalan judiciary, on the other hand, paints rule of law institutions in a much more more troubling light. The Plaza Pública study shows that overall Guatemalans see judges as corrupt, controlled (by vested economic interests and other political elites), and inefficient.
This Cefeidas Group report provides an update on the Argentine elections, where Cristina Fernández de Kirchner looks even more likely to win a second term in the October 23rd election, due in part to the weakness of the opposition.
On a different note, Rolling Stone has an in-depth and well written article about La Barbie, a native Texan who rose to become the top drug kingpin in Acapulco. The behind the scenes narrative of his rise and fall shows why going after kingpins will not, on its own, make Mexico safer.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A worker at a luxury cowboy boot factory works on pairs of boots in the central city of Leon (Courtesy Reuters).
An IMF report published this week lauds the Mexican economy’s health, and credits robust fundamentals and good policy choices for its success in weathering the storm of global economic crisis. With even more positive news, a recent study by the Mexican government shows that FDI is still pouring in despite violence, and is actually going to the most dangerous areas. But this doesn’t mean that violence is not having an effect on the economy. In this Americas Quarterly article, Dora Beszterczey and I argue that violence actually has the greatest economic impact on small and medium sized companies, not the multinationals and domestic conglomerates that receive FDI inflows. At this local level there are signs that heightened violence is taking its toll, increasingly forcing entrepreneurs to pack their bags in search of a safer business environment.
There are a number of interesting profiles of Peru’s new drug chief Ricardo Soberón in the news this week. As I talked about in the past, security issues related to drug trafficking and organized crime will be a huge challenge for Humala. While El Comercio harshly criticizes the choice, Soberón’s academic bonafides and more inclusive approach (he favors eradicating rural poverty before coca plantations, and wants to engage the coca growers movement in the national dialogue about drug policy) may enable the new Peruvian administration to balance their promises of social inclusion with a more comprehensive security policy. For those interested in a more sweeping view of drug policy in the history of U.S.-Peru relations, Paul Gootenberg’s book Andean Cocaine: the Making of a Global Drug is well worth a read.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents usher Fabio Ochoa, Colombian drug kingpin, to an awaiting vehicle following his extradition from Colombia to Florida, September 8, 2001(Courtesy Reuters).
One of the heralded lessons of Colombia’s fight against drug cartels is that fragmentation reduces violence. The vertical command structures of the famed Medellín and Cali cartels were legendary. Their pseudo-celebrity leaders lived extravagantly, socialized widely, and often died violently. They spent billions to buy off politicians, judges, and business leaders, and they spent more to assassinate adversaries they couldn’t buy, chasing their targets not just all over Colombia but the world. The country became, for a time, the most violent place on earth, the nationwide homicide rate topping 80 per 100,000 in 1991.
But a couple of decades later, the drastic levels of violence have fallen, the motorcycle assassins disappeared, the car bombs ended. The conventional story goes something like this: the killing first of Pablo Escobar and then the arrest and conviction of the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers fragmented the cartels and their command structures. From the ruins of the once centralized cartels sprang smaller – and less vicious – criminal organizations. While cocaine production and distribution (which hasn’t changed much) continued, violence fell.
A U.S. law enforcement official once told me that their antidrug strategy in Mexico was first to go after the wolves (the highest level cartel leaders), then go after the snakes (the next level down), and then clean up the remaining rats. The odd animal analogy aside, this strategy seems straight out of Colombia’s playbook.
Mexico has, in fact, done this fairly successfully. Of the 37 thugs on its Most Wanted list, 21 are either behind bars or six feet underground. Where once U.S. and Mexican officials cited four main criminal organizations, today the number has at least doubled, complemented by the rise of many smaller operations and local gangs. But as the Mexican cartels multiplied, violence escalated to all time highs.
Why the difference? Obviously Mexico and Colombia have different histories, and different security problems, so the reasons for divergent outcomes are multiple and complex. Perhaps one issue — seemingly forgotten in the transfer of “lessons learned” —is the direct targeting of the Colombian government by its cartels. In the early 1990s, at the peak of the violence, one of the biggest points of contention was Colombia’s extradition law. The drug cartels wrote open letters offering to stop the car bombs and assassinations, to retire from the drug business, to even pay off the national debt if extradition to the United States was taken off the table. Denied, the cartels tried to lay down their own version of the law on the nation. Fighting back, Colombian law enforcement slowly gained the advantage, and as these groups fragmented, violence declined.
In Mexico, by contrast, the cartels are not openly and directly confronting the state. Sure, they threaten, co-opt and even increasingly kill local and state police and elected representatives. But their open letters –narcomantas hung over important intersections– are primarily directed to their drug trafficking rivals, or to local political alignments. They don’t often explicitly challenge the national government, much less launch violent “campaigns” against it. Even the most high-profile recent killings – for instance DEA officer Jaime Zapata in San Luis Potosi, the brother of former Chihuahua Attorney General Mario Gonzalez or PRI gubernatorial candidate in Tamaulipas Rodolfo Torre Cantú— the assassinations don’t seem to have come from the top. If the violence isn’t ordered from on high (as it was in Colombia), then taking out the top echelons of the cartels won’t end it. Furthermore, if most of the bloodshed is between the criminals themselves, going after the heads will just escalate the cycle, as more and more mid-level criminals fight it out for control of the remaining business (catching innocent civilians and law enforcement officials in their wake).
This suggests Mexico should rethink its kingpin strategy — or at least complement it with other approaches. There are many other models out there to consider – the “broken windows” approach (perhaps the other extreme, as it focuses instead on smaller quality of life crimes before building up to the big organized crime rings); community policing models, used to good effect in U.S. cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, New Haven, and elsewhere; or a territorial approach, which integrates neighborhood level policing with other public services, and is already being used in the historic center of Mexico City. These methods may work to raise the social, in addition to the material costs of violence for the criminals.
As Mexico debates the right policy mix in the coming year under Calderón and beyond next July’s presidential elections, the big missing question is how to get Mexican society– the one weapon the cartels can’t match – involved. So far, citizens have been relegated to the status of “clients” or victims. Opening up the security policy to analysis and debate is an important first step.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Miner Gomez celebrates as he arrives on the surface as the ninth to be rescued in Chile (Ho New/Courtesy Reuters).
Today is the one year anniversary of the collapse that buried 33 Chilean miners deep underground for more than two months. Their rescue inspired a jolt of nationalistic pride in Chile, and not a little media fanfare, but now many of the survivors find themselves worse off than before the ordeal. Despite, and in some cases because of their fame (sure to increase with the production of a movie based on their tale), almost half of the 33 are unemployed, and some are back working underground to make ends meet.
Sebastián Piñera’s high hasn’t lasted either – recent polls show his ratings slipped to 31 percent last month, a far cry from his 63 percent approval rate in October 2010. Even the Economist is down on Piñera at this point, criticizing the billionaire for creating ties between government and the private sector that are often too close for comfort.
Dilma Rousseff recently unveiled the “Bigger Brazil Plan”, or “Plano Brasil Maior”, a program designed to make Brazil more competitive and stimulate investment in the face of an increasingly overvalued real and the influx of inexpensive goods from abroad. Some question whether the bill will have any positive effect in the long-run, arguing that the $16 billion in tax cuts for manufacturers will be offset by higher sales taxes, needed to finance recent government spending sprees.
For those that haven’t seen it, this Los Angeles Times four-part series on the Sinaloa cartel is an illuminating profile of the more average citizens involved, the way the business works, and one particular DEA attempt to take down a cartel.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Suspects wait at the Supreme Court in Guatemala City (Jorge Lopez/Courtesy Reuters).
The conventional Guatemalan security story is one of a country riddled with violence, where law enforcement institutions are in shambles and corruption reaches the highest levels of government. Its homicide rate triples that of Mexico, and its notoriously weak rule of law system lets more than 99 percent of criminals walk free. The growing presence of Mexican and Colombian cartels, pushed out of their home countries due to intensive antidrug campaigns, has only made matters worse. As the Zetas in particular move into the northern provinces, observers sound alarm bells about Guatemala’s possible descent into a “narco-state”.
Still, it may be too early to give up on Guatemala. Since the capture of top drug-smuggler Juan Alberto Ortiz-López, alias ‘el Chamalé’, in late March of this year, Guatemalan officials have arrested a number of local gang leaders, some with close ties to the Zetas. Within days of folk singer Facundo Cabral’s murder this month, the authorities announced the arrest of three suspects, presenting a slideshow with a play-by-play rundown of the events. The swift response became a point of pride for Guatemalans accustomed to sluggish, if any, justice.
The UN International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) can take much of the credit for these improvements. Set up in 2007, the commission has been an enormous boost to law enforcement’s (still limited) capacity; assisting in high-profile investigations and promoting important reforms, notably witness protection and plea bargaining laws. It works in conjunction with domestic security agencies, employing a “learning by doing” model that teaches investigative methods to Guatemalan prosecutors on the job. Not least of all, CICIG played an instrumental role in the appointment of current Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, who has had a markedly positive impact on the public prosecutor’s office.
But Paz y Paz and her fellow reformers face an uphill battle. Guatemalans are among the most mistrustful of judicial institutions across Latin America, and the most skeptical of democracy overall. Winning the public’s trust in the justice system requires sustained improvements, not just sporadic high-profile successes. The lack of funding for security poses another major challenge – last year the government cut the public prosecutor’s budget by a quarter. More generally, Guatemala’s tax revenue is the lowest in the region at around 10 percent of GDP (its Central American neighbors are not much better, with this part of the region ranking below the rest of the continent and even Sub-Saharan Africa in tax collection).
The upcoming elections may also stall progress. The presidential frontrunner, Otto Pérez-Molina, is a retired army general with a questionable human rights record and a preference for iron fist, hard-line security policies. While he has promised to respect political appointees’ mandates, many fear that if elected he would replace Paz y Paz and even block the continuation of CICIG’s work beyond its current 2013 deadline. While outsourcing justice is not a long-term solution, banishing the UN commission before it has completed its investigations and trials will handicap efforts to strengthen the rule of law.
For a place that many have already labeled a failed state, the recent advances in security are a ray of hope. A committed Attorney General and external commission have shown that it is possible to make inroads combating organized crime and Guatemala’s pervasive culture of impunity. But to sustain and further these small islands of progress, other branches of government and citizens more generally will have to do their part. The very wealthy will have to pay higher taxes to underpin public security (a point stressed by Hillary Clinton during last month’s Central American security conference). The next president may have to forgo partisan calculations and bolster the justice system, starting with keeping the effective Paz y Paz as chief prosecutor. These are by no means easy steps to take. They require personal sacrifices and the setting aside of self interest for the public good of a stronger state. But if Guatemalans truly want a more stable and secure future, they will have to start making these tough choices. Instead of writing Guatemala off as a lost cause, we should applaud the work of a few courageous reformers and encourage the rest of the country to follow their lead.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Peru's new President Ollanta Humala is sworn in to office in Congress in Lima (Mariana Bazo/Courtesy Reuters).
As President Ollanta Humala assumes office today, it looks as if he has chosen to emulate Lula rather than Chávez. His cabinet is full of moderates, and some even see it as leaning center-right. While growth is expected to continue at about 6 percent, the new administration will face many challenges, in particular security and the increasing presence of transnational crime, as well as high levels of inequality.
This week the Obama administration released a new directive on combating transnational organized crime (TOC). Among its 56 “priority actions” are new and deepened efforts to stop the money laundering and flows supporting these crime networks. New tools include barring TOC members entry into the U.S., freezing assets and other financial sanctions. The document also expands the role of the Justice Department and FBI in investigating transnational crime more generally. Still, many of the nearly five dozen items seem little more than aspirations– such as the commitment to “stop the illicit flow from the United States of weapons.” But generally, this revamped strategy and more focused game plan is welcome.
Finally William Rempel’s new book, At the Devil’s Table, showcases the role one individual can play in the fight against drug cartels. This gripping read chronicles the life of Jorge Salcedo, a Colombian engineer that rose to be head of security for Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, a godfather of the Cali cartel during its heyday. The tale tells the true story of Salcedo’s introduction to crime, his rise within one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world, and the actions he ultimately took to help bring it down. It shows the power of one courageous individual, but also the challenges of going it alone in the belly of the criminal underworld. While the Cali cartel is now gone, others have willingly taken its place, and Colombian coca and cocaine continue unimpeded.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mexico's President Calderon and Secretary of Public Security Luna attend an award presentation to federal police in Mexico City (Daniel Aguilar/Courtesy Reuters).
Mexico’s recent state level elections informally hail the beginning of the presidential election season. The PRI triumph positions Enrique Peña Nieto, the outgoing State of Mexico governor, as the PRI’s candidate, and the one which everyone must beat.
As the politicking begins, so too does the legacy shaping. And here for the current administration no issue is more important than security. Perhaps the hallmark of the Calderón administration has been the creation of the Federal Police. Genaro Garcia Luna, the Secretary of Public Security (SSP) and head of this new force has just released a new book, Para Entender: El Nuevo Modelo de Seguridad to explain Mexico’s “New Security Model.” It is worth a read in order to understand what the government is officially trying to do – then one can judge how far it has progressed down that path.
Mexico’s new model comprises three essential parts. The first is technology – led by the much heralded Plataforma México, a comprehensive national crime database. Its goal is to make information easily accessible, searchable, and actionable for law enforcement across the nation. The second is people, working to make “Mexico’s finest” live up to the moniker. This involves creating a truly professional force through new ways of recruiting, vetting, training, and career planning. It has also meant changing the Constitution to give the federal police more powers than they previously had, including the ability to investigate crimes. The third arm is the prison system, seen more often as both a revolving door for powerful criminals and a training ground for those just starting out. The model envisions expanding and upgrading the current overcrowded and run-down facilities and professionalizing the staff.
The book gives a strong vision of the reasons, goals, and processes behind the administration’s police reforms, which they hope will truly transform Mexico’s security situation. This work now needs to be complemented by analyses of how much progress has been made so far in making this aspiration a reality. Some of the preliminary figures out there are promising: the number of federal police officers has risen from nearly 6,500 when Calderón took office to the current 35,000. More than 7,000 – or roughly 20% —are college educated, practically unheard of under previous national level forces.
But other numbers are more worrisome. The crime reports submitted (called Informes Policiales Homologados, or IPHs) to Plataforma México are uneven and overall sobering. Sources show that many municipalities and states submit less than one report a month. Plataforma México – no matter how sophisticated the technology — is only as good as its inputs. Recruitment too has been a problem, particularly the search for more skilled and educated, to the point of leaving positions unfilled.
Also left relatively untouched in Luna’s book is his agency’s relationship with the Attorney General’s office, the PGR. During the creation of this new model, the fights between the PGR and SSP were legendary, and undoubtedly some hard feelings remain. But for Mexico to reduce violence and crime, the links and cooperation between these two branches is vital. How evidence is collected and handed off, how federal police do, should, and will work with prosecutors remains unclear – even in the book’s visionary schematic.
Calderón’s legacy will depend on the security situation not just when he steps down at the end of 2012, but over the next generation. If the new Federal Police strengthens and the vision expands to include state and local forces; if the judicial reforms are implemented, transforming Mexico’s system of justice; and if these two law enforcement branches learn to work together, then it will look very good indeed. But these are still big ifs. The legislative battles and international agreements are perhaps the easiest part of Mexico’s institutional transformation. The hardest slog will be in the bureaucratic trenches, trying to change the on-the-ground ways of doing things. It is this challenge that the next President – and Mexico more generally– still faces.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
An elderly Guatemalan woman rests before leaving Bolivia from Santa Cruz (David Mercado/Courtesy Reuters).
For those of you that haven’t seen this yet — the Economist’s Americas editor Michael Reid provided a great overview of Latin America’s progress in recent years, as well as the challenges that lie ahead in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sub-Committee on the Western Hemisphere two weeks ago.
The following are two, slightly less optimistic pieces – based on economics, and in particular income inequality. FOCAL recently released a policy brief authored by Guillermo Perry and Roberto Steiner on “Economic Growth and Inequality” in Latin America. Two graphs stand out here. The first, on page 3, reflects that while inequality is getting better in Latin America, the situation is still pretty abysmal, as the most equal countries in the region are still more unequal than most countries across the globe. The figure on page 5 suggests a possible explanation: Latin American countries have among the least progressive taxation systems in the world.
A World Bank study from 2008, “The Measurement of Inequality of Opportunity: Theory and an application to Latin America” gives a sense of just how much this matters in the lives of Latin Americans. Analyzing data from 6 countries in the region, it shows that up to half of differences in income are due to structural inequalities. Getting ahead in Latin America today, it seems, still depends on being born a specific race, in a particular place, and within a certain kind of family.
Lastly, CFR’s independent Task Force report “Global Brazil and U.S.-Brazil Relations” argues that the U.S. must take Brazil seriously as the newest pillar in a multipolar world.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
