Drug-traffick gangs find new home in some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in Americas

[Derechos]

BATTLEFIELDS aside, the countries known as “the northern triangle” of the Central American isthmus form what is now the most violent region on earth. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, along with Jamaica and Venezuela, suffer the world’s highest murder rates (see map). The first two are bloodier now than they were during their civil wars in the 1980s.

Organised crime is now the main cause of the bloodshed. Central America forms a bridge between Colombia, the world’s biggest cocaine producer, and Mexico, which is the staging post for the world’s biggest market for the drug—the United States. As pressure has mounted on the mobs, first in Colombia and now in Mexico, Central America has attracted more traffic. Ten years ago it had fewer cocaine seizures than either Mexico or the Caribbean; by 2008 it accounted for three times more than both combined. Over the same period the murder rate rose across the region, doubling in some countries.

“Central America is entering an extraordinarily critical phase” in which its peace and security are threatened by “the onslaught of the drug-trafficking organisations”, an official from the International Narcotics Control Board, a United Nations agency, warned this month.

Much of the blame lies with the arrival of the Mexican mafias, mainly the Zetas and the Sinaloa “cartel”. The assassination of Honduras’s top anti-drugs official in 2009 seems to have been a Sinaloa hit. Zeta training-camps and recruitment banners have sprung up in Guatemala. The Mexican mobs are also contracting out their work, taking advantage of Central America’s competitive narco-labour market. They recruit trained hitmen from the pool of soldiers laid off by several countries’ armies, slashed since the end of the civil wars 20 years ago. Guatemala has cut its army’s nominal strength by two-thirds since 1996. Now former members of its notorious Kaibiles special forces are said to have close links with the Zetas, themselves a former Mexican special-forces unit.

http://www.economist.com/node/17963313?story_id=17963313&fsrc=rss

[naaman fletcher]

1. they should all just legalize it. nt

[Peace Patriot]

2. Well, just lard more money on the DEA, the Pentagon, the FBI, Homeland Security and on

...all the militaries, police and prison systems here, and in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.

Billions more. Billions and billions more. For weapons, helicopters, high tech "interoperability" systems, drones, ships to prowl the Caribbean, U.S. military bases, uniforms, bullets, guns, bombs, salaries, pensions, medical benefits, satellite surveillance...

Billions and billions and BILLIONS more.

That'll solve it.

You heard it from the Economist. BE SCARED. And you can bloody well forget schools, health care, roads, hospitals, Social Security. Gotta kill all those killers NOW, to keep you safe for homelessness and joblessness and starvation.

:puke: