Central America Primer Jinete Los Narcos Ingles

7/30/2019 Central America Primer Jinete Los Narcos Ingles

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CENTRAL AMERICA

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Drug trafficking, both wholesale and retail,

has changed Central Americas dessert economies

into increasingly more profitable and globalized vice economies.

Wholesale drug trafficking affects politics and politicians and controls States.

Retail drug dealing and its accompanying philanthropy changes municipalities,

promotes development and provides employment.

Drug traffickers are competitive and socially responsible capitalist entrepreneurs,

The cost is violence. And the challenge is phenomenal.

.

The first horseman of neoliberalism:Drug traffickers

41august 2011

Political scientists identify three major politicalprograms in Latin America: authoritarian, neoliberaland participatory. Authoritarian is the standard

caudillismo (charismatic strongman politics), the one VargasLlosa blames for giving the rest of the world thatunfortunate image of little republics ruled by pistol-totinggunmen and inspired such novels as The Tyrant Banderas,Autumn of the Patriarch, The feast of the Goat and I, theSupreme. It has been utilized by rightwing or reformistmilitarists, fascistic populists and old and new breeds ofself-styled leftists.

In Central America today, its revitalization is embodied

by both Micheletti and Zelaya in Honduras, Ortega inNicaragua and Funes in El Salvador. Micheletti took thepresidency unconstitutionally while efforts of Ortega andZelaya to remain in power are no less anti-constitutional.All of them camouflage their attempts at presidentialist

JOS LUIS ROCHA

regimes as the rule of law. The latest autocratic scenario isFunes attempt to guillotine the autonomous way fourConstitutional Bench justices were ruling on cases in whichfriends of the powerful, who usually warm opulentpresidential chairs, were sitting in the dock of the accused.

Drug traffickers write

straight on twisted lines

The neoliberal program has orchestrated state contractingthat to varying degrees affects all Latin American countries,without exception. We are captivated by the cult of the

market, as blind as justice (although not impartial), asvoracious as Cronus, as capricious and inscrutable as any pre-modern deity, supreme secular judge of lives and property.In all its textures and dimensions, State contracting is thewinning ticket that sediments into the ungovernability of


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42envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

The drug traffickers write undeviatingly

straight on the twisted lines of

conventional programs, speaking

mathematically: the shortest distance

between Latin American secular

poverty as their departure point andimmense fortunes as their destination

financial flows, privatization of public safety (Guatemalahas five and Honduras four times more private securityguards than police and military), remittance-financed socialsecurity, etc.

Countering these two programs, the participatoryprogram is slowly and uncertainly advancing, promotingbenefits disparaged and despised by the dominant culture,

such as consciousness, proactive intervention in politicalprocesses by the dispossessed, the possibility of anotherglobalization, another trade, another world

The political scientists who study the relationshipsbetween civil society and government strive to include NGOagendas, whose optionsprofessed or notcoincide withthese three programs. But where are the programs of threeother groups with extensive clientele: the evangelizingfundamentalists, the drug traffickers and the gangs? Is itperhaps assumed that they have no proposals to back theirappeal? In fact all three, among others that thrive in thehollow States shadow, definitely have their own diverseprojects: apocalyptic, parasitic, millenarian

The drug traffickers write undeviatingly straight on thetwisted lines of conventional programs. Im speakingmathematically here, as applied to the given setting: theshortest distance between Latin American secular povertyas their departure point and immense fortunes as theirdestination. There are transfers, exchanges, acquisitions andfriction among all these programs. The neoliberal programcan use the NGOs participatory projects. The narco-mallthat the Central American streets, clubs, schools, universitieshave become can co-opt the neoliberal and authoritarianprograms. One fact is clear: the emergence of twodevelopment programs. From the NGOs comes the

management of institutionalized altruism and from the drugtraffickers a narco-industry amalgamated with narco-philanthropy. In this article well start by analyzing thenarco-industry.

When Vesco arrived in Central America...

The conspicuous and unsuspected hand of Costa RicanPresident Jos (Pepe) Figueres helped Central America takeone of its first steps into the quicksand of drug traffickingwhen Robert Lee Vesco, a 37 year old con-man and drug dealer,landed in Figueres country on June 29, 1972.

Vesco was under investigation by the US Securities and

Exchange Commission and on the run from both the UnitedStates and Switzerland. Warmly welcomed by Figueres, Vescomoved his operations from the Bahamas to Costa Rica andgave don Pepes struggling businesses a loan of more thanUS$2 million. It didnt take the SEC investigations long toshow that Vesco had swiped US$224 million from his formerpartners in the United States. Figueres publicly defendedhim and, to protect him from slander and prospective threatsof extradition, granted him the status of retired financieras a recently approved law had opportunely been created toencourage US citizens to retire in Costa Rica. Vesco continuedexpanding his curriculum by funding Nixons campaign andamplifying his relationships with the drug trafficking world.He was finally expelled from Costa Rica under RodrigoCarazos government.

After an unsuccessful attempt to buy the island ofBarbuda in order to establish a sovereign state, Vesco wastaken in by Sandinista Nicaragua, then left there for Cuba,where he lived from 1982 until his death in 2007. Heinvested the last years of his life in drug trafficking, themedicine business (he connected Richard Nixons nephewwith Ral Castro) and, after being convicted of fraud andillicit trading in 1996, in prison.

According to an internal CIA report, a cable from the USembassy in Managua dated October 8, 1982, alerted that

Vesco and Paul Atha, then a Nicaraguan Ministry of theInterior official, were planning a drug smuggling operation.The following day, another cable sent to CIA headquartersstated that Nicaraguas Government Junta of NationalReconstruction had authorized drug trafficking operations,with Interior Minister Toms Borge Martnez as executorand Robert Vesco as adviser.

H&M Investments served as the legal buffer. CornIsland and El Bluff became transit ports for cocaine headingfrom the nearby Colombian island of San Andrs to theBahamas. There were also reports that Borge commissionedFederico Vaughan and Paul Atha to deposit US$350,000 inthe Continental Bank for money laundering purposes. Cables

later showed that Borges drug trafficking missions were onlyknown to the FSLN National Directorate and its closestcollaborators: Atha, Vaughan and his assistant, FrancoMontealegre.

These operations didnt hinder Toms Borge from


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CENTRAL AMERICA

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43august 2011

declaring on November 23, 1986, that his ministrysinvestigations had uncovered a vast drug trafficking networkbacked by the two anti-Sandinista military organizationsthe Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) and the anti-Sandinista union of Miskitus, Sumus and Ramas (MISURA)and the mafia.

Sandinista drug trafficking

vs. contra drug trafficking

The above-mentioned report (known as the Hitz Report forFrederick Hitz, the CIA inspector general who led theresearch), dealt with the links of the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary/CIA/drug-trafficking triadwas it tolerated,fostered, funded?and unveiled drug activities in fourcountries in the region: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaraguaand Costa Rica. The story begins as they all do: Once upona time a few little leaves With a kiss from suitableprinces, the little leaves turned into coca paste, then intococaine powder and finally into crack. Until the 1970s,cocaine was only used by elites, as an alternative to theexcessively common peoples preference for marihuana andthe heavily prosecuted heroin. Ingenuity and greeddiscovered that cut cocainemixed and cooked withbicarbonate of soda and water, then broken up into smallsmokeable pieceswas a mass consumption product. Youonly had to guarantee a plentiful supply of the raw material,a logistical matter handled by scar Danilo Blandn,recognized as the Johnny Appleseed of crack, alluding toJohn Chapman, a man who went through Ohio, Indiana andIllinois planting apple trees in the early 19th century.

In their bestsellerFreakonomics, economist Steven D.

Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner say that Blandn, aNicaraguan emigrant, was suspected of importing morecocaine than any other drug smuggler. Blandn himself laterclaimed that he sold cocaine to raise funds for the CIA-backedcontras in Nicaragua. He liked to say that, in return, the CIAhad his back in the US, allowing him to sell cocaine withimpunity. This statement supported the belief, still currenttoday, especially amongst urban blacks, that the CIA was themain sponsor of the US crack market. Was it?

When Los Angeles was inundated with crack...

This link isnt surprising in the light of the maxim by Andrs

Lpez, ex-drug trafficker and author ofEl crtel de los sapos(The cartel of snitches): Drug traffickers have always beeninvolved in businesses that are somewhere between legaland illegal. Were there links between the CIA, the contrasand drug traffickers? The facts speak for themselves: in the

winter of 1982, US Attorney General William French Smith,sent then-CIA director William Casey a memorandum ofunderstanding specifying the list of offenses CIA officialswere required to report. The narcotics world was excludedand its absence was denounced by the Department of Justice.Instead of adding drugs to the initial list, Smith just sentanother communiqu to the CIA director, making it clearthat no formal request would be included in light of long-standing transparency between the CIA and the DEA. Thiswise subterfuge opened a black hole through which manytons of cocaine slipped into the United States.

The person who had the most effect in exposing therelationship of the contras and the CIA with the crack boomwas Gary Webb, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News

and winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize who committed suicideunder mysterious circumstances in 2004, years after he wassubjected to a barrage of attacks from Newsweek, TheWashington Post and The New York Times. His series ofthree articles titled Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras,and the Crack Cocaine Explosion focused on the conduct ofUS intelligence agencies during the contra war in Nicaragua.

Webb gathered evidence to show that the contras (whomRonald Reagan called the moral equivalent of the foundingfathers) had financed their war by trafficking the cocainethat flooded the streets of Los Angeles as crack in the early1980s. Based on Webbs story, Universal Pictures developedthe film Kill the Messenger. The screen writer, Peter

Landesman, defines it as the story of a reporter killed fortelling the truth, an intense and relevant story given thatthe CIA and the US government continue making insidiousdeals with evil in the interests of what they allege to be thegreater good.

Were there links between the CIA,

the contras and drug traffickers?

The facts speak for themselves


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44envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

Laundering in fridges...

Webb showed that to supply the contras, the CIA beganrecruiting people and companies involved in drug traffickingup to their ears. There were not only double but evenquintuple agents, working at the same time for the cartels,the Customs Service, the CIA and the DEA and traffickingcocaine on their own account. One of the Costa Rican seafood

companies contracted was Frigorficos de Puntarenas(Puntarenas Refrigeration) which laundered dollar and wasso efficient at trafficking that it managed to introduce a tonof cocaine into the US every week with help from the Miami-based Ocean Hunter.

Although the Internal Revenue Service had warned theFBI that Frigorficos de Puntarenas was just a front for drugactivities, the company received US$231,587 from theNicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office for its servicesto the contras between January and May 1986. Years later,Luis Rodrguez, co-owner of both companies, testified thatboth were used for trafficking and money laundering. TheMiami aviation company DIACSA, led by a Bay of Pigsveteran, received US$14,000 in humanitarian aid for thecontras even though its owners were being accused of havingimported 900 pounds of cocaine. For the same purposes,Vor te x Avia ti on re ce ived US$317 ,0 00 fr om the USgovernment, blind to the charges against Vortexs owner,Michael Palmer, of having smuggled 300,000 pounds ofmarihuana into US territory.

Nicaraguan exiles Norwin Meneses and scar DaniloBlandn worked in partnership with Enrique Bermdez,operational head of the contras northern front. Meneses,known as the drug king, recruited Blandn (former nationalwholesale markets director during Somozas time) to sell

drugs to benefit the contras. Meneses worked on the EastCoast and Blandn thrived in Los Angeles through a beneficialrelationship with Freeway Ricky Ross, an enterprisingmanufacturer who sold US$1-2 million of crack a day, thanks

to his suppliers diligence. While on trial for drug traffickingsome years later, Blandn said that in 1981 alone the Menesesorganization placed almost a ton of cocaine in the US, with awholesale value of US$54 million.

The decade wasnt lost...

The local Honduran link in the early eighties was JuanRamn Matta Ballesteros, who was under surveillance bythe DEA at the time. With the help of Manuel ngel FlixGallardothe godfatherMatta had financed the 1978 coupagainst his countrys reformist President, General MelgarCastro, passing the sash on to a triumvirate at the service ofthe Guadalajara cartel. According to a 1978 DEA report,Matta partnered with coup participant General PolicarpoPaz Garca, oiling the Central American cocaine tobogganbetween the Medelln and Guadalajara cartels. In 1983 theUS Customs Service and the DEA suspected that half thecocaine reaching the US was shipped in by Matta, and twoyears later,Newsweek named him as the man responsible fora third of the cocaine brought into the US.

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North found the ally he waslooking for in Matta and made his company (SETCO AIR)the main contra supplier. Between 1983 and 1985, SETCOAIR carried millions of dollars in munitions, food anduniforms for the contras and further millions in cocaine tothe ever-eager US market. In 1986, while the revealingNewsweek report was still hot, SETCO AIR received$185,924 to supply the Freedom Fighters. Norths diariesallow us to track his orders to Matta and others, and theamount of drug dollars going to support the contras: July 9,1984: bring coca paste from Bolivia and take 1,500 kilos to

the United States; July 12, 1985: $14 million to financeweapons coming from the sale of drugs. The Matta-Northeffect increased cocaine trafficking from 2.3 to 9.3 tonsbetween 1985 and 1987.

Mattas empire came to be worth US$2 billion.Accord ing to the annals in one of the USA vs. MattaBallesteros trials, Matta and Flix Gallardo were pocketingUS$5 million a week. The contras, Paz Garca and Northmust have been grateful for his services. But who was workingfor whom? Drug capitalists earned nearly US $14.2 billionbetween 1981 and 1989, a decade when internal wars wereburning in Central America. The so-called lost decadewasnt so lost for some: in Central America it marked the

beginning of the crack age.

Weapons come, drugs go...

When the accumulated charges against the drug barons and

Drug capitalists earned nearly US

$14.2 billion between 1981 and 1989, a

decade when internal wars were

burning in Central America. The so-

called lost decade wasnt so lost for

some: in Central America it marked thebeginning of the crack age


5/19

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45august 2011

their humble political servants surpassed the US officialsconsiderable patience, the resentment in some sectors ofpublic opinion led to an investigation. Senator John Kerry(the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, who lost toGeorge W. Bush, and now replacement of Bostons SenatorKennedy) headed a commission in 1989 that revealed thepointy white tip of the iceberg. Colombian drug trafficker

Jorge Morales told Senator Kerry under oath that in 1984,while being processed for drug trafficking, two CIA agentsoffered him his freedom in exchange for depositingUS$250,000 a month into the contras coffers.

Once the war in Nicaragua ended, Morales said he haddonated $3million to the contras. To check the veracity ofMorales statements, Kerry contacted and interviewed EdnPastora. With his usual bravado, Commander Zero admittedhaving received vast quantities of cash from Morales, as wellas two helicopters and a C-47 airplane. Morales two pilotsadmitted having made repeated flights with weapons toCentral America and with drugs to the United States,benefiting the contras by no less than US $40 million.

In El Salvador, Hangar 4 in Ilopango military airportwas the starting point for the snowy cargo heading for GrandCayman and then South Florida in the light aircraft pilotedby Carlos Alberto Amador. Further research revealed thatAmador was one of Pastoras men on the contras SouthernFront and that Hangar 4 was under the control of LieutenantColonel Oliver North, who had been commissioned by theWhite House to secure support for the contras. The CIAasked the DEA to stop researching Hangar 4 as it guaranteedthe legitimacy of the operations taking place there. Hangar4 was managed by Flix Rodrguez, a Vietnam veteran,participant in an attempt on Fidel Castros life and present

at the execution of Ch Guevara. When the US mercenaryEugene Hasenfus was interrogated by the Nicaraguan armyafter it shot down the Fairchild C123 plane on which he washandling cargo for the contras, he named Rodrguez as hiscontact. The prosecutor on the Kerry Commission listedRodrguezs greatest feat as smuggling 12 tons of cocainethrough the air force base in Florida.

The conclusion to the 1989 Kerry report stated thatthere was substantial evidence of drug smuggling throughthe war zones on the part of individual contras, pilots whoflew supplies, mercenaries who worked for the contras, andcontra supporters throughout the region. There are seriousquestions as to whether or not U.S. officials involved in

Central America failed to address the drug problem for fearof jeopardizing the war effort against Nicaragua. It addsthat senior US policy makers were not immune to the ideathat drug money was a perfect solution to the contrasfinancial problems.

A decade later, the Hitz Report established that theCIA knew about three companies involved in drug traffickingthat were contracted to support the contras between 1984and 1988, and received information about 21 members ofthe counterrevolution involved in drug trafficking from basesin Honduras and Costa Rica; that Edn Pastora receivedmoney and small planes from Jorge Morales and admitted to

living rent-free in one of Blandns houses in Hondurasbetween 1984-1987; that both he and leaders of the contraorganization called the September 15 Legion received moneyfrom drug trafficking; and that one of Pastoras light aircraftsmuggled cocaine into the Costa Rican capital.

Sandinista Nicaragua wasnt just a

victim in this bullets and cocaine

conspiracy. The other side of the

scales was weighted with FSLN links

with Pablo Escobar Gaviria

When Pablo Escobar was allied with the FSLN...

Sandinista Nicaragua wasnt just a victim in this bullets andcocaine conspiracy. The other side of the scales was weightedwith FSLN links with Pablo Escobar Gaviria.

In his bookKilling Pablo, US journalist Mark Bowdenreveals that Escobar showed up in Managua after thespectacular failure of his relationship with General Noriega.

On June 25, 1984, he was photographed in Los Brasilesairport supervising the cramming of a cocaine shipment intoa light aircraft piloted by Barry Seal, a former drug traffickerand Oliver North collaborator, who cut a deal to collaboratewith the DEA in exchange for his conviction. Using a camerahidden in the front of the plane, Seal photographed Escobarand his associate Rodrguez Gacha along with FedericoVaughan, at the time in charge of the Nicaraguan InteriorMinistrys finances. Years later, when questioned about thisepisode, Vaughan, also the Interior Ministrys right-handman for naval and, so it would seem, air affairs, declared thathe had survived by virtue of the code of silenceomerta, asthey say in Sicily. In 1988 a CIA cable reported that Escobars

group had paid Interior Minister Toms Borge US$3 millionto guarantee Nicaragua as a base for the Medelln cartelsoperations.

An exploration of Pablo Escobars history throws lighton his ideological affinity with the Sandinistas and the


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46envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

common justification for their bond. According to Bowden,Escobars brother-in-law, leftwing intellectual Mario Henao,supplied Pablo with the honorable patriotic argumentsnecessary to justify their trafficking business: the flow ofcocaine to the United States could be considered arevolutionary tactic that, while soaking up US dollars,corrupts the brains and blood of decadent gringo youth.

These arguments were attributed to Federico Vaughan in aCIA cable: The idea is to inundate the United States withcocaine to the detriment of imperialist youth while helpingthe Nicaraguan revolution.

trafficking), that the rise in cocaine trafficking closelyfollows the routes of the Cold War and US policy. Its a ColdWar drug. This statement is amply supported by a briefhistorical tour of the first steps cocaine took in CentralAmerica, an episode that involved four countries (El Salvador,Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica), each of which addedtheir little grains of rock to the crack boom in Los Angeles.

Costa Rica, through having been the operations platformof Edn Pastoras counterrevolutionary effort and ofFrigorficos de Puntarenas; Honduras, through its drug-coupand its services as a base for the drugs-for-weapons exchange;El Salvador through the drug flights from Ilopango airport;and Nicaragua through the lucrative carte blanche the FSLNgave the Medelln cartel. The Sandinistas werent alone inthe drug trade. Perus Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)was already putting the same pragmatic system of co-existence with drug trafficking into practice: jointlycontrolling strategic territories and charging fees for lightaircraft and for armed protection during the exchanges.

Other knotty bits in the Cold Wars indulgences, afterfailed demilitarization processes, are right up the drugtraffickers alley: the survival and fury of the kaibiles, nowaffiliated to the Zetas; vast territories marked bygovernmental neglect that serve as compliant beachheadsfor the cartels; regions abused by governmental coercion inwhich villages and towns only know the cruel arm andfrowning face of the law, for whose people illegal is justanother label in the eternal struggle against a foreign power;and city-based, capital city oriented rules oblivious to themud in the villages and overcrowding in the barrios. Anumber of these regions receive unexpected opportunitiesfrom the narco-industry.

Were now drug economies

Its impossible to calculate the dimensions and benefits ofthe narco-industry given its illicit nature. In the 1990s,Colombian Professor Francisco Thoumi, an expert in drugeconomics, said that the profits from the cargo of a lightaircraft, say 250 kilos of cocaine, are enough to buy between1,200 and 4,800 hectareseven after paying US$150,000to the pilot and abandoning a US$100,000 plane. In otherwords, they are left with around US $10 million. The OAS,the UN and the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC)confirm that 90% of the worlds cocaine production passes

through Central America. Experts on the subject assure usthat, valued in capital, over US$250 million passes throughthe region every month. Cocaine seizures give a rough ideaof the growth in drug trafficking: from 15,838 kilograms ofcocaine seized in 2001 to 71,829 in 2006.

By the end of the 1980s, Escobar and

his Antioquian colleagues from the

Medelln cartel controlled over half the

cocaine entering the US, making billion

dollar profits

A tsunami on the Colombian economy

By the end of the 1980s, Escobar and his Antioquiancolleagues from the Medelln cartel controlled over half thecocaine entering the US, making billion dollar profits.

According to Bowden, their companies became the mostimportant in Colombia and financed mayors, councilors,members of Congress and Presidents. By the mid 1980sEscobar owned 19 residences just in Medelln, each with a

heliport. His enormous fortune had the impact of a tsunamion the Colombian economy. As Bowden describes it, themoney that began to come in was more than anyone inMedelln even dared to dream of; money in such quantitiesthat it could establish not only individuals, but also citiesand countries. Between 1976 and 1980 Colombian bankdeposits more than doubled. Among the consequences werea construction boom, the birth of myriad new businesses anda dizzying drop in the unemployment rate. Over time, saysBowden, the economic explosion caused by cocaine moneyshook the countrys economy and turned the rule of lawupside down.

Cocaine: A Cold War drug

Mexican journalist Diego Enrique Osorno wrote in his book,El crtel de Sinaloa. Una historia del uso poltico del narco

(The Sinaloa Cartel. A history of the political use of drug


7/19

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47august 2011

The psychotropic effects of this volume are felt at alllevels of Central Americas economies. The Economistestimates that between 250 and 350 tons of cocaine passthrough Guatemala each year. The result is evident: Petnis full of clandestine landing strips for drug-laden planescoming from Venezuela and Colombia.

Guatemala and Costa Rica:

Tons of cocaine and millions of dollars

Scions of the traditional elites study in the same exclusiveschools and universities, frequent the same clubs, dance inthe same restricted-clientele discotheques, eat in the samegourmet restaurants and swallow communion wafers in thesame churches as the offspring of drug traffickers. In theFrancisco Marroqun and del Valle universities, in The VillageSchool and The Mayan School, in the Hacienda Nueva cluband the San Isidro country club, with its unimaginable golfcourse, and in the St. Martin de Porres and Our Lady of Peacechurches social relationships are woven with the drug eliteswho attend with washed and shaved faces or with the rougeand mascara that bestows full citizenship status. Socialacceptance is bought and sold in the temples of knowledge,pleasure and the Lord.

The cocaine barons occupy managerial armchairs in themost respectable institutions. They stop access to entiretowns so they can become racetracks for an eveningsentertainment, with bets being placed that are wads ofhundreds of thousands of dollars. They build citadels suchas the one in Bananeras. They rule extensive territories:Carlos Cabal Peniche, raised to the level of model bankerby former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and

later reduced to being a fugitive from justice for moneylaundering and drug trafficking, got to control more than10,000 hectares in the strategic corridor from Tabasco(Mexico) to Petn (Guatemala). The acquisition of Del MonteFresh Produce allowed him territorial dominion and themovement of merchandise and storage capacity, an idealfusion of infrastructure and alibis for the most profitablefruits in the world.

Costa Ricas current President, Laura Chinchilla,acknowledged that Central America is no longer just a conduitfor transporting cocaine, but a location for drug production,processing and use. The Switzerland of Central Americanhas broken with its accustomed difference from the other,

plebeian Central American countries and tilts its cervix tococaine: Fernando Berrocal Soto, former public safetyminister, reported that more than 50 tons of cocaine a year isnow negotiated and trafficked in Costa Rica, producing somany millions of dollars that it has pushed down the

exchange rate, grossly distorting the economic variables, tothe serious detriment of domestic producers and exporters.

Scions of the traditional elites study in

the same exclusive schools and

universities, frequent the same clubs,

dance in the same restricted-clientele

discotheques, eat in the same gourmet

restaurants and swallow communion

wafers in the same churches as the

offspring of drug traffickers

Honduras narco-municipalities

Honduras is the noble birthplace of Francisco Morazn andthe somewhat less noble birthplace of Juan Ramn MattaBallesteros. In March 2011 a sophisticated cocaine kitchen(drug lab) was discovered in the area of Cerro Negro, Omoa,Honduras. Other kitchens, cocaine-to-go shops and fast-cocaine stalls continue their underground life, generatingjobs and infrastructure in villages and towns that rejoice inappreciation.

Drug towns are easily identifiable. In the lead is ElParaso, the once-forgotten corner for cattle rustlers, nowfrequented by Miss Honduras and fashionable musicalgroups, the richest municipality in the extremely rural

department of Copn. Its young mayor, Alexander Ardn,drives a shiny armored Lexus to inaugurate a cobbled street,surrounded by 20 burly bodyguards. All of his projects startwith providential donations of hundreds of thousands oflempiras. Im king of the town, he proclaims to thebewilderment of journalists, while assuring them thatCopns fortunes come from cattle-raising and milkproduction: white liquid, not white powder, he insists, hasbrought development to the municipality.

That powder falls like manna from heaven and is turnedinto roads, churches, shopping centers, gigantic malls, hotelsand parks in a Honduras where the migrants poverty-dollarsand the cocaine dealers drug-dollars intermingle and are

mutually reinforcing: remittances are spent on drugs, drug-dollars finance migration to los Yunay (the US). Menacingstreets, mended streets... Eight decades of growing bananasin the most compliant of banana republics could not achievea tenth of what cocaine is doing today.


8/19

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48envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

The cocaine is high and plentiful and Morazn isntwatching. The narco-jets come and go from the internationalairports with or without credentials, patiently watched bythe authorities whose zeal in catching cocaine shipmentsleaves the DEA officials very unimpressed. There was a lotof talk about the jet that landed at Toncontn internationalairport on February 24, 2006, supposedly bringing Chapo

Guzmn, a manForbes lists as one of the 500 wealthiest inthe world and experts say is protected by the mayor of ElParaso; hes a regular visitor to the Bay Islands and theMayan ruins in Copn. While Luis Santos, bishop of Copn,courageously reported police chiefs colluding with drugtraffickers, the judiciary freed Mamalicha, a drug boss whoboasts of international protection.

cocaine and crack. Lets evaluate the similar findings of twoanthropologists who were admitted into the far reaches ofCaribbean mangroves and the capitals damaged asphalt.

In 2003, Philip A. Dennis published Cocaine in MiskituVillages, a provocative article that explained how moneygenerated from cocaine trafficking was used in Sandy Bay, aNorthern Caribbean seaboard community of Miskitu people,

to build houses, schools and churches and buy motor boats ina self-directed development project, albeit at a high cost inviolence. In Globalization and Development Seen from Below(envo, March 2004), Dennis Rodgers explained that in asmall Managua neighborhood the drug dealers work pyramidincludes a drug trafficker, various pushers and stashers and19 mules. The mules, located at the lowest stratum of thepyramid, were able to earn between $350 and $600 a month.Income generated from the drug sub-system was significantand its flow multiplied to feed other subsystems, usuallythrough buying taxis and offering employment to neighbor-hood youths as drivers.

Drug dealing has brought life to depressed and drowsyneighborhoods. It has pulled families and whole communi-ties out of stagnation. With populations of between 13% (ElSalvador) and 32% (Nicaragua) living on less than two dollarsa day, it isnt surprising that drug dealing is becoming a veryappealing activity in rural villages as much as in the cities.Bluefields is controlled by drug traffickers: schools, parksand even the State. The regional prosecuting attorney hadto be urgently and secretly removed because the local mafiadidnt like him coming and sticking his nose in theirbusinesses.

When drugs come from the sea...Moiss Arana, mayor of Bluefields in 2003, made somestatements toenvo in August 2003 that clarify the scope ofdrug dealing and its effects: You must bear in mind thatgiven the unemployment and poverty levels in Bluefields,drugs allow many people to survive, although naturally theyalso cause rapid social decomposition. When you attend ameeting and listen to what people say, explaining that theone reason they are eating is that they sell drugs, it becomeshard to pinpoint the borders between morality, immorality,amorality and double standards. How did we get to thispoint? Who can we go to, who can we complain to, toadequately address these realities?

Arana found that the advent of drugs merged with localculture: Some years ago, people of the Caribbean Coast, inboth the north and the south, began to come upon the cratedsacks of drugs Colombian traffickers threw into the sea fromtheir boats [when they were being followed by Interpol].

With populations of between 13% (El

Salvador) and 32% (Nicaragua) living

on less than two dollars a day, it isnt

surprising that drug dealing is

becoming a very appealing activity in

rural villages as much as in the cities

Retail drug sales on the rise in Nicaragua

The link with Nicaragua exploded again in August 2004.Honduran police found an arsenal in drug boss Pedro GarcaMontes mansion in El Zamorano that Al-Qaeda would envy:

two M-16 rifles, 18 Fal light automatic rifles, four AK-47swith 18 magazines, 21 machine guns, 10 anti-aircraft rocketlaunchers, two 60-caliber anti-aircraft machineguns and one50-caliber anti-aircraft machinegun capable of destroyingaircraft and tanks. The artifacts came from Nicaragua andwere destined for the Colombian FARC, in an exchange ofweapons for cocaine.

A former Nicaraguan National Police drug directorestimated that there are about 10,000 retail drug outlets inNicaragua. In a talk withenvo in December of last year,Roberto Orozco, Nicaraguan expert on security issues, saidthat 60-65% of the Nicaraguan population maintains itsfamily economy with illegal activities and the majority of

those in Nicaraguas informal sector are involved in illegaleconomic activities.

Drug dealing is one of the most important because itscustomary to pay local collaborators in kind and not in coin,thus increasing both regional sales and the consumption of


9/19

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49august 2011

Upon reaching the shore, these packages were very wellreceived, especially by the Miskitu, who believe that allthat comes from the sea, all that comes from the rivers, allthat comes from water, is a gift from God. And as Gods gift,drugs were welcomed. They still are. There are Coastcommunities where the minister, the judge and the eldersreceive the drugs that come to them from the waters, divvy

them up and then sell them. Overnight, the poorest of shacksbecome beautiful residences. And everyone knows whatshappened.

A new drug vocabulary is spreading by word of mouth inthe communities on Nicaraguas Caribbean Coast. Playeros:beachcombers who go out, night after night, hoping to find asack of drugs. Costear: the activity of walking the beach atnight, ceaselessly searching for the white treasure that willone day smile at them from a sand bank. White lobster: apackage of cocaine that a favorable high tide or perhaps acalm sea deposits on the beach. The person favored by thebenevolence of the gods will sell the package for US$4,000to a small Costa Rican cartel specializing in supplyingtourists. With this small fortune he could open a little bar,one of the many in small coast towns without drinking waterthat can offer their customers bottles of Chivas Regal, Malibu,Cointreau, Napoleon brandy

Small cartels, kitchens and cooksCocaine travels from the coast to Managua. The first drugboss who prospered in the barrio studied by gang expertDennis Rodgers moved the drugs through family connectionson the Caribbean Coast. Drug outlets flourish in the RepartoSchickneighborhood, as in many other poor Managua barrios.

Everyone knows where they are, from the local police patrolsto the wannabe-cool boys from the rich neighborhoods of LasColinas and Santo Domingo who are among their mostaddicted clientele. Police raids are almost exclusively aservice that police of various ranks offer the drug boss-associate to take their rivals out of circulation. Once a littlecartelas people usually call themhas been broken, othersimmediately crop up. Its very easy and very profitable tocook a little cocaine and produce crack: a piece of crack,skillfully cut, can generate C$500 (US$22) in an afternoonand there are more than enough mules to place it.

Nicaragua, the only country in Central America and oneof the few in the Americas, without a financial intelligence

unit, has also been identified as a producer and distributorof methamphetamine. No one does a thorough search. Thestarched rules of the Superintendence of Banks are expectedto do it, but they strain out mosquitoes and let camels passthrough. Money launderers have paved the way, as have the

crack cooks; chefs cook up crack in their kitchens day andnight and send it out with their scullions, under the verynoses of the hunters of little cartels.

There are Coast communities where

the minister, the judge and the eldersreceive the drugs that come to them

from the waters, divvy them up and

then sell them. Overnight, the poorest

of shacks become beautiful

residences. And everyone knows

whats happened

The power of narco-philanthropy

This hardly comprehensive inventory of quantities and areasat least makes it possible to infer the growing economic andsocial legitimacy of the drug world, confronted by the cynicismof the DEA, an unpopular institution that is now demandingan urgent check to the trafficking it tolerated in the 1980sthrough hot feelings for the cold war. The legitimacy growsbecause drugs are actually creating the employment (stable,but risky) that politicians promise over loudspeakers thenforget about once the switch is turned off.

Cocaine drops like morning dew on the Central Americaneconomies and its ability to permeate territories and

localities is still expanding. If you see a mansion on thebeach against a backdrop of coconut trees, you arent inMalibu: Welcome to Pearl Lagoon. If you stand openmouthedbefore a municipal building looking like something midwaybetween the Parthenon and the Capitol, with a heliport anddigital cameras and built at a cost of 12 million lempiras,youre in El Paraso, municipality of Copn, Honduras, which,despite its scant 18,000 inhabitants, laughs at the depart-mental capitals humble municipal building in Santa Rosade Copn, which administers to more than 52,000 souls alongwith their respective mortal bodies.

Narco-philanthropy is picking up where the welfareState was forced to leave off, remedying the decrepitude of

public works ministries and municipal governments. Cocaineis paving highways where there were previously only narrowpaths, giving medicines to those who cant pay for them,offering transport to remote towns and complying with allthe Catholic works of mercy. When a Nicaraguan


10/19

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50envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

anthropologist was researching his thesis on the Garfunasof Nicaraguas Caribbean Coast in 1992, his journey betweenBluefields and the Garfuna village of Orinoco took 4 hours.Today this journey takes only a little more than an hourbecause a local drug boss has put a boat with two 250-horsepower outboard motors at the service of both the drugtrade and local people.

strategy raises their glocal (global and local) situation toits maximum expression: to ensure the transnational natureof their business, they must cultivate local insertion, be verystrongly grounded.

Emplacements on the Caribbean Coast and goodrelations with local seafarers, who know how to move in calmor stormy waters, are vital for business. Relationships with

fishermen from San Andrs and the Central AmericanCaribbean Coast have opened the way for shipments. Whenlocal people are indispensable for moving merchandise,entrepreneurial strategies must be applied to the hilt. Hencethe phenomena such as El Paraso and the either obvious orsurreptitious investments in coast towns and grassrootsneighborhoods.

As an example, Roberto Orozco recounts that the entirecommunity of Walpasiksa, in Nicaraguas Caribbean are,supports Colombian drug traffickers. A drug traffickersnotebook was found containing lists of people in thecommunity who receive a monthly allowance for offeringlogistical support and ensuring security: C$3-5,000 (US$133-$222) each. The list includes the Moravian Churchpastor.

Another example: in one sector of Managuas RepartoSchick complex of neighborhoods, the local drug baronemployed local boys and bought them cases of beer, neverdrugs. Indio Viejo, a neighborhood drug dealer studied byBritish anthropologist Dennis Rodgers, used to give hisworkers vacations in Montelimar, Barcels luxurious resorton the Nicaraguan Pacific Coast. The Black Disciples druggang from Chicago recorded in their books such essentialexpenses as parties and community activities thrown by thegang. Emulating the practices of Pablo Escobar in the

municipality of Envigado, Guatemalan drug traffickersimproved the roads and built schools, health centers, sportscomplexes and elegant clubs.

They admire them,

thank them, love them

Narco-philanthropy can be traced back to the origins of thecocaine boom. Bowden details how Pablo Escobar began tospend millions in improving the citys infrastructure, farmore concerned about the poor in the overcrowded slumsthan the government had ever been. He donated money andpressured his associates to fork over millions to pave the

roads and erect new power lines, in addition to making soccerfields throughout the region. He set up skating rinks, handedout money on his public appearances and later began anurban housing project for the homeless calledBarrio PabloEscobar: a place where those who until then had inhabited

Narco-investments,

narco-salaries, narco-schools...

Narco-philanthropy has been the cornerstone of the narco-industrys expansion. The banana companies could turn ablind eye to the peoples they cannibalized. Once theirbusiness was concluded, they declared a region hopeless,packed up their tents and went elsewhere with their musicand their personal belongings. They even took their railroadtracks. This they did several times in Trujillo and onHonduras small islands. A few forgotten railroad sleepers

between Sonaguera and Trujillo attest to the passage of theTrujillo Railroad Company.The Pellas family in Nicaragua can ignore its former

workers, suffering kidney failure due to the pesticides usedon the plantations, who have been living next to ManaguasCathedral in improvised black plastic tents protesting foryears. According to the Nicaraguan Association of PeopleAffected by Chronic Kidney Disease from 2005 to the presenttime, 3,437 people have died and 8,037 are on record asaffected. Drug traffickers, in contrast, cant ignore the townssituated along their routes. Business depends on them.

The success of the mafia and other secret societiesdepends on the deterioration of state authorities, police

corruption and communal loyalty founded on the cultivatingof local identity. Drug traffickers are forced to invest in theareas under their control in order to increase their socialcapital. Only by winning local sympathies can they ensuretheir control, permanence and security in a territory. This

Cocaine is paving highways where

there were previously only narrow

paths, giving medicines to those who

cant pay for them, offering transport to

remote towns and complying with all

the Catholic works of mercy


11/19

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51august 2011

shacks alongside the citys garbage dumps could live. Heeven sponsored art exhibitions to raise money for charityand foundedMedelln Sin Tugurios(Medelln without Slums)an organization whose goal was to build urban housing forthe poor. Manuel Castells, the Spanish sociologist, recallsthat Escobar even tried to defend the human rights of hisyouth gangs against the flagrant abuses of the National

Police.Manuel ngel Flix Gallardo, founder of the Guadalajara

cartel, donated money to various universities, contributedmost of the funds needed to build the biggest library in theState of Sinaloa and maintained the Culiacn hospital and apharmacy where medicines were free. This love of the drugbosses for their homelands is confirmed by Andrs Lpez inEl Cartel de los sapos , where he tells of the drug lordUrdinolas funeral in his hometown, in which the fire engineled with the coffin followed by a crowd of three thousandfervent admirers: The whole town attended the funeral,considering Urdinola a veritable legend; they admired himand they thanked him for bringing them electricity, water,drains, paved roads and, single-handedly, development.

Global companies with local identities

Visiting a region controlled by drug traffickers, the Mexicanjournalist Osorno drew his own conclusions: This was notthe first time I was in Badiraguato. I have been here severaltimes before and its clear to me that many people here lovethe drug traffickers more than the army. Everyone knowsthis. And they also know why: the drug traffickers havealleviated the grinding poverty and official neglect. Mr.Guzmn, as they call Chapo, in addition to having been born

here in La Tuna, is today the visible face of the Sinaloa cartel,the company to which thousands of Badiraguato peasantssell their marihuana and opium poppy crops.

According to Osorno, narco-philanthropy follows a purelyself-interested logic: If a trafficker wants to have a longcareer, he must appear to be philanthropic, at least with thepeople in his community, because otherwise, instead of beingthe man, he could be classed as a common murderer orsmuggler. But Castells found that the drug traffickers socialand infrastructural investments in their native regions andtowns are symptomatic of the roots they share with others:Drug traffickers attachment to their native country andregions is more than a strategic calculation. They were/are

deeply rooted in their regional cultures, traditions andsocieties. Not only have they shared their wealth with theircities and invested a considerable part (but not most) oftheir fortunes in their country, but they have also restoredlocal cultures, rebuilt rural life and vigorously reaffirmed

their religious convictions and faith in local saints andmiracles

However transnational their operations, agents andstrategies have become, the drug traffickers retain theirethnic, cultural and territorial bases: This is their strength.Criminal networks are probably ahead of multinationalcompanies in their decisive ability to combine cultural

identity and global business.

Drug related social entropy and violence:

From scamp to hit-man

Narco-philanthropy has provoked understandable suspicion.Gabriel Garca Mrquez laments its effects: Years ago drugtraffickers were in style for having an incredible aura. Theyenjoyed complete impunity, and even a certain popularprestige through their charity work in the poor neighborhoodswhere they spent their marginalized childhoods. If anyonewanted to arrest them they could send the cop on the beat togo look for them. But much of Colombian society viewedthem with curiosity and an interest that seemed too muchlike complacency. This acceptance is now happening inCentral America, where drug bosses walk side by side withpoliticians and hold sway in elite clubs.

Narco-philanthropy strengthens what some call the

social legitimization of drug trafficking activities. And itcomes in the same package as social entropy. Castells warns:Due to its volatility and willingness to accept high risks,criminal capital follows and increases the speculativeturbulence of the financial markets. Thus it has become an

Drug traffickers attachment to their

native country and regions is more than

a strategic calculation. They were/are

deeply rooted in their regional cultures,

traditions and societies. Not only have

they... invested a considerable part of

their fortunes in their country, but they

have also restored local cultures,

rebuilt rural life and vigorously

reaffirmed their religious convictions

and faith in local saints and

miracles


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52envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

important destabilizing force for financial markets andinternational capital. We repeat: in Costa Rica today, thereare analysts who maintain that drug activities have injectedso many dollars into the Costa Rican economy that the valueof the coln against the US dollar is artificially buttressed,incontestably prejudicing exporters.

Violence is the greatest perceived effect of drug-relatedsocial entropy. Picaresque is pass. Its time forsicaresque(derived from sicaro, the Spanish word for hired assassin).Colombian professor Omar Rincn tells us thatsicaresca is anew genre of story dwelling on a fascination for hired guns,truculence and a passion for excess... essayist Guadi Calvoexplains thatsicaresca is the method of young people to hirethemselves out as killers to acquire clothes, a house for theirmother, a fridge, televisions, to set their mother up well.Violence has been analyzed a lot, but poorly and inadequately.Its commonplace to emphasize the violent nature of drugtraffickers. They are presented as inhuman monsters, whichgets us nowhere.

Bowden tries to dig a little deeper, analyzing theircriminal behavior, however selfish or absurd, as sending asocial message. Their acts of violence and the crimes theycommitted were attacks on a removed and oppressive power.The stealth and cunning the men he studied showed ineluding the army and the police were causes to rejoicebecause, from time immemorial, the have been the onlytactics available to the dispossessed.

This is the reason for the success of Camorra and theCosa Nostra: the indifference and immemorial neglect ofthe Italian state. Its the reason for the unprecedentedsuccess of Pietro Mascagnis opera Cavalleria rusticana, basedon a short story by Giovanni Verga. Michael Corleones son

stars in it in the penultimate scene of the film Godfather III,set in Palermos sumptuous Teatro Massimo Opera House,playing out a story of jealousy, honor and revenge betweenSicilian peasants, who came to constitute the mythifying ofthe mafioso ethos.

According to mafia historian John Dickie, honor in thiscontext translates into a sense of professional worth, a systemof values and the symbol of group identity for an organizationthat considers itself above good and evil. This opera portraysthe independence of the villagers system of justice from thestate system, imposed from mainland Italy.

There are drug worlds where there is no State

The mafia and the drug lords dont establish another culture;they build on the informal justice mechanisms legitimizedby custom. Bowden explains that it has always been one ofthe prerogatives of the rich and powerful in rural Colombiato administer their own justice, which represented the basisfor the long and bloody tradition of self defense or privatearmies. Throughout history and geography, from Sicily tothe Valle del Cauca o Tocoa, the tradition of leapfroggingthe State is a legacy of territories where the public sector hashad a skeletal presence. The drug world and its institutionsexpand where the State is absent, penetrated or mistrusted;where the State has failed.

Today, neoliberal privatization places its own stamp onthis tradition: the drug traffickers armies are a terrifyingand extreme version of the privatized personal that goeshand in hand with state contracting. In building on theexisting culture, drug traffickers take it to the extreme:reductio ad absurdum. The record of local relationships withthe State explains the estrangement that can be permutedinto a desire to instrumentalize.

Narco-corruption and the

narco-State that supports itSome of the characters left over from Central Americas narco-cold war have recycled themselves in the most unlikely ways.They have managed to slip through the cracks in the legalsystem and come in through the main door of the State,which sooner or later leads to perdition.

Blandn resurfaced in the mid-nineties as a DEA agentwith an annual salary of US$42,000. He boasts of being theonly immigrant granted permanent US residence to havehad serious crimes proved against him. Toms Borgepublished massive praise for Carlos Salinas de Gortari inSiglo XXIshortly before the Mexican leaders drug servicescame to light and he had to take refuge in Ireland. Wikipedia

describes the drug General Policarpo Paz Garca as the manwho closed Honduran doors to military domination. EdnPastora ran for President of Nicaragua in 1996 and for mayorof Managua in 2004. Three years later, his sworn enemies(an FSLN reinstated in three of the four branches of the

Violence is the greatest perceived

effect of drug-related social entropy.

Picaresque is pass. Its time for

sicaresque (derived from sicaro, the

Spanish word for hired assassin)


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53august 2011

State plus the coercive powers) put him in charge of dredgingthe San Juan River which divides Nicaragua from Costa Ricaand is a vital drug trafficking route.

In the Central American countries, the narco-industryexploits state decrepitude in two ways: by colonizingterritories that are terra ignota for the State, and bymanipulating politicians, exploiting that discovery of the

US banana company magnate and former president ofUnited Fruit Company, Samuel Zemurray: In Honduras amule costs more than a congressman.

Lets start right there, with the countrys step-parents.Legislators and other statesmen are usually only involved inauxiliary work, contributing their political capital from theless risky shadows. But some arent satisfied with this dull,quiet work.

In the cases of Honduran representatives Csar Dazand Armando vila Pancham, they were very glossy andloud. Proven and seasoned drug traffickers, both were caughtwith their hands in the cocaine jar and convicted: the first bya public court and the second by the long arm of drug justice,shot inside the prison where he was serving a 20-year sentenceof gentle state justice.

Drug corruption permeated all levels, from legislatorson up to the police on down. On July 10, 2009, ten policeofficers were arrested on Honduras Caribbean Coasttransporting 142 kilos of cocaine. Ten policemen arentworth tearing out your hair and bathing in ashes over. Thecase was remarkable only because the detainees belonged tothe Anti-drug Operation Group of the new National CriminalInvestigation Directorate. Even more notorious was the caseof the Santa Barbara police chief who, on August 27, 2008,released the alleged head of the Atlantic cartel and ordered

that the weapons his subordinates had seized from the drugboss bodyguards be returned.

Narco-judges and narco-police

In its 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report,the US State Department earmarked Nicaraguas SupremeCourt as one of the most worrying impediments toimplementation of anti-drug operations: money and otherassets confiscated from drug traffickers have been disposedof at the courts discretion, contravening legislation thatstipulates that they should be equally distributed amongstthe National Police, Ministry of Health, National Council

for the Fight Against Drugs, the penitentiary system andvarious NGOs involved with rehabilitating drug addicts.State Department inquiries discovered that these assets arefrequently unaccounted for after being processed and justiceshave kept expensive vehicles for themselves.

The 2007 report noted that judges released captureddrug traffickers and reinstated them with the hundreds ofthousands of dollars they carried in cash, minus an inevitablecommission. The US government penalized these acts bycutting off all direct support to the Supreme Court andinstead giving resources for the struggle against corruptionto the National Police. This alternative must have been

abandoned if a Wikileaks-published cable from the USambassador in Managua, Robert Callahan, to Washington istrue. Referring to Sandinista repression of a demonstrationagainst the 2008 electoral fraud, in which the police didnteven attempt to interfere, Callahan warns against expectingNational Police Chief Aminta Granera to have the power,influence or even desire to change the course of these events,both within and outside the National Police.

Wikileaks also published a cable in which AmbassadorCallahan reported that the FSLN has regularly receivedmoney from international drug trafficking to fund itselectoral campaigns. It is usually as a reward for Sandinistajudges clemency towards drug traffickers caught by thepolice.

And in Nicaragua we cant leave unmentioned theunjustly forgotten case of then-President Arnoldo Alemnsnarco-jet, stolen and brought into Nicaragua without therequisite legal procedures. Alemn, then-Director ofCustoms Services Marco Aurelio Snchez and then-Ministerof Transport and Infrastructure Edgard Quintana, all had ahand in bringing this jet, in which traces of cocaine werelater found, into Nicaragua.

In 2009, the usually pristine Costa Rica reported thedismissal of 40 police officers for involvement in drug

aIn its 2010 International Narcotics

Control Strategy Report, the US State

Department earmarked Nicaraguas

Supreme Court as one of the most

worrying impediments to

implementation of anti-drug

operations: money and other assets

confiscated from drug traffickers have

been disposed of at the courtsdiscretion, contravening legislation


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54envo

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trafficking. In the same year in Guatemala, the NationalPolice director and other senior police officers were arrestedfor collaborating in drug trafficking. Both countries havebeen identified as bases for laundering dollars. Despite thebelated and weak controls with which their legal systemshope to curb this activity, six offshore banks were operatingin Costa Rica until 2008 and there was no supervision of

offshore banks with branches in Guatemala until June 2002.

Pozuelos Villavicencio, who retired from his command inthe Air Force in 1993 but remained active in drug trafficking,takes pride in having a record as clean as a whistle.

It was on stories like these that Castells based hisconclusions: The classical paradigms of dependency anddevelopment have to be reworked to include, as a basic factor,the characteristics of the drug trafficking industry and its

deep penetration into state institutions and socialorganizations. In the absence of a decisive affirmation ofstate power, drug trafficking networks control as many peopleand organizations around them as they need.

Why does it happen?

Castells asks why Colombia became such a propitious basefor cocaine production and trade. The reasons are the sameas for Central America: the existence of a marginalizedentrepreneurial class, of upward social mobility at the pointof a bayonet, of a tradition of violence, of a weak State thathas low geographic coverage, of internal wars that havedebilitated us and of vast areas that armed groupslegal orillegalhave controlled for the last 50 years.

Central America still is suffering the after effects of faileddemilitarization processes which, as the German sociologistPeter Waldmann has shown, feed a culture of violence,interacting with its effects and escalating its resonance.Waldmann explains that Colombias culture of violenceand much the same can be said of Central Americais theresult of both historical and contemporary factors: a Statethat fails to monopolize violence, laws that lack socialvalidation and arent applied, drug-world rules that includeeconomic incentives for excessive use of violence and class

tensions in countries where the urban middle class is weaklydeveloped.Something similar in Sicily was a siren song to the Cosa

Nostra. In the rubble of feudalism, as modernity was makingits debut, a whole range of different kinds of men graspedthe opportunity to shoot and stab their way into thedeveloping economy. The incipient modern State tried tohold the monopoly on violence and promised to wage war oncriminals, but the private militias of Sicilys mighty lordsdidnt disappear; they became economically stronger throughsmuggling and extortion, new challenges to state control. Asentrepreneurs of violence, the mafia bosses challenged aState that the Sicilian population felt was detached, distant

and imposed from Rome.All these ingredients produced a breeding ground for

drug trade and consumption. The State is both losing andrenouncing an essential element of its sovereignty andlegitimacy: its ability to impose law and order. As Castells

Since 1990, DEA agents have been

calling Guatemala the warehouse

Narco-military in a narco-State

According to Spanish prosecutor, Carlos Castresana, whoheaded up the International Commission against Impunity

in Guatemala (CICIG) between 2007 and 2010, 60% ofGuatemala is controlled by drug traffickers, mainly Mexican,who recruit Mara Salvatrucha gang members and corruptthe countrys security forces and judiciary.

Although on a visit to Guatemala President Bill Clintonapologized for his governments past complicity with themilitary apparatus that committed war crimes, his ownadministration turned a blind eye to that same apparatusinvolvement in drug trafficking. Clinton also emphasizedthe Colombian guerrillas role in the heyday of cocainetrafficking while choosing to ignore the militarys role.

Since 1990, DEA agents have been calling Guatemalathe warehouse. One of the most active warehousemen was

Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Ochoa Ruiz, outstanding alumnusof the School of the Americas in 1969. According to the DEAand to Texas Observer journalist Frank Smyth in TheUntouchable Narco-State, Ochoa moved half a metric ton ofcocaine from western Guatemala to Tampa, Florida, in 1990.He should have been extradited to the United States but aGuatemalan military court claimed jurisdiction over his caseand he was acquitted for lack of evidence, after the judgewho initially took the case was murdered and the verdictoverturned. In 1997, when Ochoas star was falling, he wasarrested again and sentenced to 14 years in prison for carrying30 kilos of cocaine.

Other high-ranking officers in the Guatemalan army

have been even more active, and reported, but to no avail. Agroup of peasants sent the US embassy a letter describinghow they were expelled from their farms by army colonelswho were building a drug route, but none of the officers wasprosecuted. According to various sources, General Carlos


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55august 2011

noted, The State is not only eluded from without byorganized crime, its disintegrating from within. In additionto criminals ability to bribe or intimidate police, judgesand government officials, there is a more insidious anddevastating insertion: the corruption of democratic politics.The growing needs of political candidates and parties creategolden opportunities for organized crime to offer its support

at critical moments in political campaigns.

Wrong answer: More militarization

Replacing the welfare state with narco-philanthropy, settingup drug routes and crops where the State is an entelechy andbuying and extorting officials leads to what Susan Georgeargues in the Lugano Report: Some future wars will takeplace between traditional states and these new barbarians;the warlords, drug lords and organized gangs of all kindswho are henceforward in competition with the nation state.In some cases, although traditional authorities refuse torecognize the fact, they have already replaced the state, orhave so pe

Central America Primer Jinete Los Narcos Ingles

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Transcript of Central America Primer Jinete Los Narcos Ingles