Trump asked Latin America to use military force against drug trafficking. Here are the risks

By Sol Amaya, CNN

Like the Lernaean Hydra of Greek mythology, the serpentine monster that grew two new heads for every one cut off, organized crime in Latin America is proving difficult to defeat with the kind of decapitation strategy apparently favored by President Donald Trump.

For every drug kingpin who falls, several others are willing to succeed him.

A case in point occurred last month when Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho,” was mortally wounded in a Mexican military operation supported by US intelligence.

His death sparked violent retaliation across Mexico, resulting in the deaths of 60 people, the government said, and raising the prospect of a power struggle in his powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known by its Spanish initials as the CJNG.

On March 7, Trump convened a gathering he dubbed the Shield of the Americas Summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida, where a dozen Latin American leaders agreed to form a “military coalition” against organized crime. In a speech to attendees, Trump described it as “a coalition to eradicate the cartels.” (Not invited to the event were the presidents of Colombia and Mexico, two countries that have been confronting cartels for decades and that are traversed by drug-trafficking routes.)

Succession and fragmentation

But analysts consulted by CNN agree that decapitating criminal organizations is unlikely to end the problem of drug trafficking. Besides the availability of candidates to replace the fallen leader, fights to succeed him often create fragmentation and violent struggles, complicating the state’s ability to respond.

“Where there are many groups disputing territory, disputing businesses, that’s where violence is exacerbated and these autonomous units start to form. This is the most dangerous thing,” explained Marcelo Bergman, a sociologist and expert on criminality. “These groups end up fighting among themselves, carrying out executions, extorting, creating panic in societies.”

This occurs not only in Mexican cartels, but also in criminal organizations in several countries in the region. “A very notorious case is Ecuador’s, where several gangs are vying for control of routes, apparently to traffic the cocaine that leaves Colombia and enters Ecuador and then goes out through the Pacific to Mexico and then to the United States,” Bergman said.

In the past year, the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) monitoring group placed Ecuador among the 10 most violent countries in the world, with a large part of its population exposed to the threat of organized crime. Just one example of this situation was the recent discovery of five human heads hanging on the beach of Puerto López, in the province of Manabí.

But Ecuador is not alone in this infamous ranking. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Latin America and the Caribbean — despite accounting for only 9% of the world’s population — are the scene of almost a third of global homicides, and 40% of those deaths are related to organized crime and gangs.

Diversification and use of technology

Another nonprofit, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), reports that criminal groups have diversified from drug trafficking and moved into illegal gold mining, human trafficking, extortion and money laundering.

In the case of El Mencho, for example, the CJNG under his command had branched out into mining, avocado cultivation and even the hotel industry.

Technology has facilitated that diversification and the cartel’s criminal activities, said Felipe Botero Escobar, director of GI-TOC’s Andean Regional Office. He cited the use of drones, artificial intelligence for cyberattacks and human trafficking, and social media to recruit young people.

Borders blur

Many of the region’s criminal groups increasingly “are moving beyond their borders,” Botero Escobar said, “which makes their disruption or dismantling much more difficult.”

The GI-TOC report notes that Balkan mafias, Colombian armed groups and Mexican cartels have formed alliances with local gangs.

Two criminal organizations from Brazil, the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Command (CV), have extended their businesses into Peru and Bolivia, adding new areas for coca cultivation and expanding trafficking routes.

When borders are porous — such as the 364-mile (586-kilometer) frontier that has more than 70 irregular crossings between Colombia and Ecuador — criminal groups replace the state in controlling the area, the GI-TOC says.

The crux of the matter: the infiltration of crime into institutions

Then there is the tendency of organized crime to infect state institutions. In El Mencho’s case, for example, he served as a police officer in Jalisco state in the 1990s — after he had been convicted in the US of conspiracy to distribute heroin in California.

“There is also a strong dynamic of corruption in our region that has facilitated this growth and this expansion of organized crime,” Botero Escobar said.

Prisons as cradles of crime

All the reports and specialists consulted agree on a crucial point: Latin America’s prisons have become, for the most part, centers for the creation of criminal groups. Examples include the Tren de Aragua, the most powerful criminal gang in Venezuela, whose base was originally in the Tocorón prison; Brazil’s Red Command and First Capital Command, and Ecuador’s Los Choneros and Los Lobos. All of these groups were founded or strengthened within the prison system and even run their businesses from behind bars.

Consequently, the region has been the scene of numerous massacres and prison riots. “Prisons have played and continue to play an important role in the consolidation of groups. It is a problem of enormous complexity, little addressed,” Bergman, the sociologist, said.

The GI-TOC report details that all Latin American countries except Suriname have overcrowded prisons. “This tells us a bit about the state’s inability to control its prison systems. And, in the face of this vacuum, it is criminal groups that are controlling and using prisons as a mechanism for recruitment and protected operations,” Botero Escobar of GI-TOC said.

The calm before the hurricane?

Latin American countries that usually do not appear in the rankings of criminal violence could be considered exceptions. But the GI-TOC report raises a warning sign for the Southern Cone, noting that “both Chile and Argentina are approaching the threshold of high criminality.”

Another source of concern in the region is the country once called “Switzerland” of Central America, Costa Rica. In recent years it has begun to establish itself as a key route for drug trafficking.

What can be done

The GI-TOC notes that geopolitical changes such as the increase in Chinese influence, the withdrawal of US support (as for example in Colombia), regulatory gaps, economic precariousness and the tightening of migration policies combine to further complicate the situation.

But not all is lost against this thousand-headed Hydra. “There is a huge focus on how we strengthen the police, the military. However, we are not paying attention to one of the main components: how we fight the corruption that is facilitating the emergence of these criminal groups,” said Botero Escobar. He suggests focusing efforts on reducing the presence of criminal actors integrated into the state and the judicial system.

Another point that the GI-TOC specialist considers fundamental to reducing crime is efficient border control.

“There is another issue that we have identified at the global level that is very relevant in our region, and it is the role of smuggling,” Botero Escobar said. “According to our measurements, where there is high smuggling, there are usually high averages of other criminal markets. Why is this important? Because smuggling becomes a very good way to complete or to close off these criminal ecosystems.”

Bergman, the sociologist and expert on criminality, pointed out another issue that is often absent from proposals to fight organized crime: reducing demand.

“I refer to the last 50 years of history,” he said. “How much have we done as a society, how much have we invested in prosecution and in reducing the supply of drugs? And yet drugs are still here, production keeps growing, consumption keeps growing,” he noted.

“If the business is profitable, it is very difficult to dismantle it.”

In the Greek myth, it is Hercules who manages to put an end to the Hydra. He does not do it alone, but with the help of his nephew, Iolaus, who has the idea of cauterizing the wounds of each head that the hero cuts off to prevent new ones from growing. The last head of the beast is buried under a rock.

In the real world, many countries in Latin America still await solutions that, like Iolaus’ method, help cauterize the wounds and end the expansion of organized crime. Will they succeed?

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