Latin American Drugs & links

[Jedburgh]

Military Review, Jul-Aug 07: The Maras: A Menace to the Americas

....Although the mara problem in Central America mainly affects Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, the region’s other countries should not consider themselves immune: most of the conditions that have given rise to the maras’ appearance in the region’s northern triangle are also present in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Sooner rather than later, these countries will experience similar problems. The mara threat is a serious one. Not controlling it increases risks to the social and democratic stability of the region and has consequences for Mexico and the United States, our neighbors to the north....

[Jedburgh]

...just for some additional background material on the subject, here are some decent gang assessments published by USAID last year:

Rising crime is threatening democratic development and slowing economic growth across Central America and Mexico. Gang activity has transcended the borders of Central America, Mexico, and the United States and evolved into a transnational concern that demands a coordinated, multi-national response to effectively combat increasingly sophisticated criminal gang networks.

Recognizing that gang activity is a complex, multi-faceted and transnational phenomenon, the USAID Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean Office of Regional Sustainable Development (LAC/RSD) initiated the Central America and Mexico Gang Assessment in 2005 to study the phenomenon and propose solutions in five countries—El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

Central America and Mexico Gang Assessment - Full Report April 2006

[Jedburgh]

Reuters, 18 Jul 07: U.S. Offers Funds to Fight Central America Gangs

The United States pledged $4 million on Wednesday to help Central American governments draft a regional security strategy to fight violent youth street gangs and drug trafficking.

Thomas Shannon, U.S. assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, made the cash pledge while in Guatemala to sign an agreement with the Central American Integration System (SICA) to improve intelligence sharing and policing.....

DoS, 18 Jul 07: Combating Criminal Gangs from Central America and Mexico

Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas A. Shannon, Jr. today announced the Strategy to Combat Criminal Gangs from Central America and Mexico. Under this comprehensive strategy, the United States will work with partner countries to combat transnational and other gangs that commit crimes in Central America, Mexico, and the United States through both prevention and enforcement. It will help prevent youth from entering gangs and strengthen the fight against gang-related violence and other crimes. This strategy is one component of a larger regional security plan that was discussed by President George W. Bush, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger Perdomo, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon and now is under development by the Central American countries.....

[Jedburgh]

CRS, 4 Dec 09: Gangs in Central America

....Several U.S. agencies have been actively engaged on both the law enforcement and preventive side of dealing with Central American gangs. The National Security Council (NSC) created an inter-agency task force to develop a comprehensive, three year strategy to deal with international gang activity. The strategy, which is now being implemented, states that the U.S. government will pursue coordinated antigang activities through five broad areas: diplomacy, repatriation, law enforcement, capacity enhancement, and prevention.

In the 110th Congress, immigration legislation has been introduced – H.R. 1645 (Gutierrez), S. 330 (Isakson), and S. 1348 (Reid) – that includes provisions to increase cooperation among U.S., Mexican, and Central American officials in the tracking of gang activity and in the handling of deported gang members. The House passed version of the FY2008 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill (H.R. 2764; H.Rept. 110-197) would provide $8 million to the State Department to combat criminal youth gangs, an increase of $3 million from the Administration’s request. In Central America, that funding would support a regional anti-gang initiative aimed at prevention, police training, and judicial reform. On July 31, 2007, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved H.Res. 564 (Engel) recognizing that violence poses an increasingly serious threat to peace and stability in Central America and supporting expanded cooperation between the United States and Central America to combat crime and violence....

[Jedburgh]

SSI, 15 Jan 08: A Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty: Gangs and Other Illicit Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) in Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, and Brazil.

....The purposes of this monograph are to (1) introduce the gang phenomenon as a major nonstate player and a serious threat in the global and regional security arenas;( 2) examine the gang phenomenon in Central America in general and in El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, and Brazil more specifically; and (3) summarize the key points and lessons and make brief recommendations. These cases demonstrate the analytical commonalities of various types of gang activities as they contribute to the instabilities that lead to the erosion of national security, nation-state sovereignty, the processes of state failure, and the struggle between democratic and criminal values.....

Complete 67 page paper at the link.

[Jedburgh]

Small Arms Survey, 30 May 09: Gangs of Central America: Causes, Costs, and Interventions

....Although gangs have long been a feature of Central American societies, they have come to the fore in the region in an unprecedented manner since the early 1990s. Estimates of the total proportion of contemporary regional violence attributable to gangs vary widely—from 10 to 60 per cent—as they have been accused of a whole slew of crimes and delinquency, ranging from mugging, theft, and intimidation to rape, assault, and drug dealing. There have even been attempts to linkthem to revolution and global terrorism. A 2005 US Army War College publication, for example, contends that Central American gangs constitute a ‘new urban insurgency’ that has as ultimate objective ‘to depose or control the governments of targeted countries’ through ‘coups d’street’ . Along similar lines, Anne Aguilera, head of the Central America office of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs branch of the US State Department, asserted in an interview published in the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica on 8 April 2005 that gangs were ‘the greatest problem for national security at this time in Central America’. Although gangs are unquestionably a significant contemporary concern in the region, such sensationalist pronouncements suggest that they remain profoundly misunderstood. The purpose of this Occasional Paper is to debunk some of these myths and present a balanced assessment of the causes, costs, and interventions relating to Central American gang violence....

[bourbon]

FYI: Samuel Logan's (of ISN) narrative non-fiction work This Is For The Mara Salvatrucha is being published in July.

This is a true story of Brenda Paz's last three years of life as a member of the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

She was a young member of the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, who became a federal informant before she was killed after running away from witness protection. This book uncovers little known truths about the MS-13, one of America's most violent street gangs, and reveals how the street life can be alluring to even well loved kids like Brenda.

This narrative also takes a close look at the the realities of living inside the United States as part of a Latino immigrant community, underscoring the challenges with policing these communities and the fluidity of illegal movement across the US-Mexico border.

SWJ contributor John Sullivan's endorsement is quoted in the promotional material:

"Logan captures the ethos and lethal brutality of Mara Salvatrucha in his groundbreaking case study...The insight presented here adds depth to the discussion of the maras and the networked nature of gangs, their members and cliques in a way that facilitates an understanding of contemporary transnational gangs."

- John Sullivan, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism, and originator of third generation gang theory.