On April 30th, Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies completed a long legislative process and approved the proposal of President Calderon against small time trafficking. Across the region, similar proposals have been following, Argentina and Brazil being the main examples. Nevertheless, Plan Colombia continues to be in place and Mexico also accepted to integrate it’s own version with US aid, adding Merida Initiative to its home security strategy. While the war against drugs proves to be a failure, these parallel actions will certainly dent the social picture of Central America.
It is well known by Mexico’s citizens that schizophrenic decisions are an every day deal in the country. Naturally, drug policy is no the exception to the rule. The new Law Against Small Time Trafficking distinguishes between consumers, addicts and criminals, which is already a significant step for the civil society that works on human rights promotion. It also orders nation wide institutions to guide their actions through harm reduction policies and recognizes cultural and ritual use of certain substances.
On the other hand, the Merida Initiative looks at a bilateral cooperation scheme through which the US provides human training and economic resources to continue to fight organized crime. It confronts the fact that up until August of this year, Mexico figured 36,000 offenders were arrested for organized crime, of which 236 ended up in US prisons. It has so far officially secured 50,123 weapons, 21,300 vehicles, and 404 aircrafts for drug trafficking. A total of one billion dollars worth of cocaine and 379 million of marijuana have been seized as well.
How does this affect Central America? After Plan Colombia began and with the increased commerce between Mexico and the United States result of NAFTA, drug traffic shifted to the four states that border the US: Baja California, Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa. Violence there grew significantly as cartels began to fight for controlling traffic routes. It is currently further fueled by arms that cross the border from North to South.
Plan Colombia, as said before, remains. Merida initiative has so far delivered $150 million of the pledged $1.6 billion. Few of that aid has gone to Central America, a region that continues to see little to no governance. An acute economic crisis further deepens the desperation of poor communities for food, employment and education. Meanwhile, cartels North and South of Central America see a captive market for drugs. But current operation bases have called too much international attention and have become utterly violent.
Nor violence or too much attention is good for business, they elevate the risks of the jobs and thus, the end price goes up as well. An easy solution for organized crime is to once again shift commercial routes and relocate to areas that are less restrictive to the business, that are not yet under international scrutiny and that have free trade agreements already working with the most important demand market in the world.
Central America will observe an inconspicuous yet permanent shift of organized crime operation headquarters and ergo, traffic routes will slowly migrate and change. Unless there is an anticipated strategy in the sub-region, this will certainly have impacts in the Central American communities by affecting the economies, employment opportunities and corruption levels of local polices and politicians.
::Aram Barra is the Events Coordinator at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Mexico fesmex.com, the Latin America and Caribbean representative for Youth R.I.S.Eyouthrise.org, the Projects Director at Espolea, Espolea.org,
and the International Correspondent for JarrettHill.com.
::Follow Aram on Twitter @AramBarra
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