Central American Gangs: Changing Nature and New Partners
2012; Columbia University; Volume: 66; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0022-197X
Autores Tópico(s)Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance
ResumoThis article will examine the changing roles of Central American gangs within the drug trafficking structures, particularly the Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), operating in the region. This will include the emerging political role of the gangs (Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 as well as Barrio 18), the negotiations between the gangs and Mexican DTOs for joint operational capacity, the interactions between the two sides, and the significant repercussions all this will likely have across the region as the gangs become both better financed and more politically aware and active. This article is based on field research in San Salvador, where the author was able to spend time with some members of the MS-13. It is also informed by his examination of the truce between the gangs and the Salvadoran government, as well as the talks between the gangs and the Sinaloa cartel. (1) ********** Central America's geographic location--between the world's largest cocaine producers in Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru and the world's largest market in the United States--has made it a strategic transit route for illicit drugs for more than three decades. While the region has been of constant interest to transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), in recent years, its importance as a transshipment route has grown dramatically. During the 1990s, only about 30 percent of the cocaine from South America for the U.S. market transited through Central America; current estimates indicate that up to 90 percent now moves through the region. (2) This shift in drug routes, brought on in part by successful U.S. and Caribbean efforts to crimp the sea traffic that funneled illicit drugs into Miami, has coincided with a significant rise in violence in Central America's Northern Triangle: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Most of the violence is attributed to powerful gangs, known as maras or pandillas, which have taken over territory and petty crime activity throughout the region. There is significant debate within the law enforcement, intelligence, and development communities over the true nature of the ties between local gangs and larger TCOs. The recent truce between El Salvador's two main gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Calle 18, brokered by government-sanctioned intermediaries, has brought heightened attention to the phenomenon of Central American gangs, their relationship with TCOs, and the role they are beginning to play in national and local politics. (3) This paper examines the changing nature of the gangs, particularly in El Salvador, their strengthening ties to TCOs, especially the Mexican Sinaloa and Los Zetas drug cartels, their independent human trafficking structures, and finally, the implications these developments have for the arc of transnational criminal activity across Central America, Mexico, and the United States. This paper will also examine the new inroads that gangs have made in becoming recognized political forces through their control of extensive territory in the countries where they operate and their ability to negotiate with the government for concessions and benefits. It is part of a broader trend aptly described by Moises Naim in his seminal book, Illicit, about the unintended consequences of globalization and the growth of transnational organized crime: Ultimately it is the fabric of society that is at stake. Global illicit trade is sinking entire industries while boosting others, ravaging countries and sparking booms, making and breaking political careers, destabilizing some governments and propping up others. At one extreme are countries where the smuggling routes, the hidden factories, the pilfered natural resources, the dirty-money transactions can no longer be distinguished from the official economy and government. But comfortable middle-class lives in wealthy countries are far more connected to trafficking--and to its global effects--than most of us care to imagine. …
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