Drugs & US Law Enforcement (2006-2017)

[slapout9]

NDD, glad to see you posting. I used to post about the successes in Columbia and generally got a lot of flak about it. I am retired LE and have been out of the loop for several years so I really enjoy getting some current ground truth from that area.

[John T. Fishel]

Excellent discussion of the complexity of the Colombian environment. The only point I would quibble with you about is the threat of a coup. Since 1902 Colombia has had only one extra-constitutional change of government and that was in 1954 when General Rojas Pinilla was asked by a large group including members of both political parties who were then engaged in the civil war called La Violencia to seize power. He did. Four years later the parties agreed on the National Front power sharing government that alternated them in power for 20 years but guaranteed constitutional transitions. The Colombian military generally has chosen not to participate as a typical political actor - it is not coup prone.

A note on drug corruption: Good people can easily get caught up in it, especially in Colombia. This includes Americans like COL J. C. Hiett who was MILGP commander, and DEA Agent Rene de la Cova who headed the office in Bogota. Both have done time but some might well suggest that their sentences were mere slaps on the wrist.

[NDD]

Excellent discussion of the complexity of the Colombian environment. The only point I would quibble with you about is the threat of a coup. Since 1902 Colombia has had only one extra-constitutional change of government and that was in 1954 when General Rojas Pinilla was asked by a large group including members of both political parties who were then engaged in the civil war called La Violencia to seize power. He did. Four years later the parties agreed on the National Front power sharing government that alternated them in power for 20 years but guaranteed constitutional transitions. The Colombian military generally has chosen not to participate as a typical political actor - it is not coup prone.

A note on drug corruption: Good people can easily get caught up in it, especially in Colombia. This includes Americans like COL J. C. Hiett who was MILGP commander, and DEA Agent Rene de la Cova who headed the office in Bogota. Both have done time but some might well suggest that their sentences were mere slaps on the wrist.

While what you say is true, the threat of coup is always there in any LATAM country. It runs deeper in some than others, but it is always there. The lack of it in Colombia is, IMO, as much to do with politicians accommodating the military because they know it is there as it is with the military not doing it. Until Uribe, there weren't a lot of Presidents with the huevos to fire a general, much less 3-4 on the same day. But they know he is leading from the front. I doubt they would be that forgiving of a lesser man.

The Rojas Pinilla coup, if you have to have one, wasn't a bad way to do it. His daughter is now in politics, or trying to be.

[John T. Fishel]

Hi NDD--

While you may be correct as to the reason the Colombian military is coup averse, I suspect that it is only one of many reasons. Among those are an internalization by Colombians, civilian and military alike, of the democratic norm of elected government along with greater internalization of the difficult in Spanish concept of the English word "compromise." (Reflected in the National Front.)

As to the rest of LATAM, more complex still. First, there are the countries that have disolved their militaries - Costa Rica, Panama, and Haiti. They face no coup threat although that does not eliminate the threat of other politcal violence, eg Haiti. Costa Rica has internalized democratic norms; it has a democratic political culture. Panama, IMO, is well on its way there as well.

My experience with El Salvador suggests that its military faced its crisis in 1989 with the last major FMLN offensive and its reaction to the murder of the Jesuits ordered by a member of the Tandona resulted in a change of institutional culture that helped the ESAF internalize democratic norms. I have seen similar behavioral and norm change in the Argentine military as a result of its failure as a military in the Falklands/Malvinas war and the revelations of the dirty war.

Where I have not seen this kind of norm change is in Chile, usually upheld as the model Latin American democracy. I would note that Chile and Uruguay shared that same evaluation until the military coups that overthrew their respective civilian governments in 1973 and 1974. I would suggest that your blanket analysis needs to be revised to take account of the changes in the norms of the individual countries and their militaries as well as the change in the norms region wide. The latter are, of course, not as strong in some countries as in others but there has been such a change throughout the region and it is reflected in Guatemala and Peru although not as strongly as Argentina and El Salvador or, even, Colombia.

Cheers

John

[NDD]

Hi NDD--

While you may be correct as to the reason the Colombian military is coup averse, I suspect that it is only one of many reasons. Among those are an internalization by Colombians, civilian and military alike, of the democratic norm of elected government along with greater internalization of the difficult in Spanish concept of the English word "compromise." (Reflected in the National Front.)

As to the rest of LATAM, more complex still. First, there are the countries that have disolved their militaries - Costa Rica, Panama, and Haiti. They face no coup threat although that does not eliminate the threat of other politcal violence, eg Haiti. Costa Rica has internalized democratic norms; it has a democratic political culture. Panama, IMO, is well on its way there as well.

My experience with El Salvador suggests that its military faced its crisis in 1989 with the last major FMLN offensive and its reaction to the murder of the Jesuits ordered by a member of the Tandona resulted in a change of institutional culture that helped the ESAF internalize democratic norms. I have seen similar behavioral and norm change in the Argentine military as a result of its failure as a military in the Falklands/Malvinas war and the revelations of the dirty war.

Where I have not seen this kind of norm change is in Chile, usually upheld as the model Latin American democracy. I would note that Chile and Uruguay shared that same evaluation until the military coups that overthrew their respective civilian governments in 1973 and 1974. I would suggest that your blanket analysis needs to be revised to take account of the changes in the norms of the individual countries and their militaries as well as the change in the norms region wide. The latter are, of course, not as strong in some countries as in others but there has been such a change throughout the region and it is reflected in Guatemala and Peru although not as strongly as Argentina and El Salvador or, even, Colombia.

Cheers

John

We can agree to disagree. I will only had that in my opinion this threat of insurgency, I believe exacerbated in some cases by this very changing of the uniform of the military to police (and that's what it is) is often the trigger to the coup or threat of same. And the key issue will probably, once again, be land reform.

[John T. Fishel]

Hi NDD--

I am somewhat confused by your last post. Can you elaborate?

My own sense is that we tend to agree on parts of the picture and disagree over nuances.

Cheers

John

[tequila]

Death Squad Scandal Circles Closer to Uribe - NYTIMES.

President Álvaro Uribe, the Bush administration’s closest ally in Latin America, faces an intensifying scandal after a jailed former commander of paramilitary death squads testified Tuesday that Mr. Uribe’s defense minister had tried to plot with the outlawed private militias to upset the rule of a former president.

Speaking at a closed court hearing in Medellín, Salvatore Mancuso, the former paramilitary warlord, said Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos had met with paramilitary leaders in the mid-1990s to discuss efforts to destabilize the president at the time, Ernesto Samper, according to judicial officials.

Mr. Mancuso also said that Vice President Francisco Santos had met with paramilitary leaders in 1997 to discuss taking their operations to the capital, Bogotá.

...

These revelations followed the disclosure this week of an illegal domestic spying program by the national police force and additional arrests of high-ranking political allies of Mr. Uribe on charges of ties to the paramilitaries.

...

Mr. Uribe tried to contain the newest scandal by forcing 12 generals in the national police to resign Monday over illegal wiretaps of political opponents, government officials and journalists.

Among those whose phones were tapped was Carlos Gaviria, an opposition leader who ran for president against Mr. Uribe last year. “This cannot happen under a democratic government,” Mr. Gaviria said.

The purge of the generals came after the newsmagazine Semana published transcripts of cellphone calls from imprisoned paramilitary leaders in which they orchestrated murders and cocaine deals. It was not clear whether these intercepted phone calls were part of the police surveillance program.

Mr. Santos, the defense minister, said neither he nor Mr. Uribe knew of the police wiretapping operation. Still, the report has hurt the credibility of Mr. Uribe’s government, already suffering from a perception of being soft on the paramilitaries ...

[NDD]

Hi NDD--

I am somewhat confused by your last post. Can you elaborate?

My own sense is that we tend to agree on parts of the picture and disagree over nuances.

Cheers

John

Mostly that coup does not lie under the surface.