Left at the Crossroads: Remaking the mob in Latin America

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Globalization might already sound like a stale catchword, but the new interconnected reality it describes still has surprising tricks up its sleeves. So what do you do when you’re a leftish French writer born in Africa and living in South America, with a background in Slavic Studies, a worried fascination for emerging Asian powers, and interests ranging from classical political philosophy to Bollywood film music? Read, travel, wonder. And send scattered dispatches from modernity’s frontlines.

Globalization might already sound like a stale catchword, but the new interconnected reality it describes still has surprising tricks up its sleeves. So what do you do when you’re a leftish French writer born in Africa and living in South America, with a background in Slavic Studies, a worried fascination for emerging Asian powers, and interests ranging from classical political philosophy to Bollywood film music? Read, travel, wonder. And send scattered dispatches from modernity’s frontlines.

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The world of organized crime in Latin America is mutating, gaining strength and relating to people, politicians and police in ever more complex ways.

One expert compares the new Latin American way of crime to a social network such as Facebook. Columbian political scientist Juan Carlos Garzón says organized crime no longer follows the “Godfather model,” a hierarchical structure with unilateral top-down decisions and a rigid framework of rules. 

His “Facebook model” still has hierarchies, but they are more fluid and versatile. It tends to promote temporary platforms and partnerships accessible to a whole range of ad hoc users and associates. All sorts of actors can intervene with multiple agendas, in a strange mix that makes such networks quite difficult to trace and to bring to justice.

The recent police rebellion-cum-probable coup attempt in Ecuador might well be an example of how an intricate relation between police corruption, criminal networks and emerging paramilitary organizations can interact with ambiguous political maneuvering – in this case against a government implementing controversial reforms that may affect some entrenched privileges.

The policemen’s violent protests were ostensibly over career benefits but the government in Quito is still struggling to understand the range of opportunities for graft and shady dealings open to officers. Fears over their elimination may have fueled the revolt and played along with its murky political undercurrents.

After the failed insurrection, a columnist from the pro-government daily newspaper El Telégrafo wrote: “Let’s hope it’s not the beginning of some kind of ‘Mexicanization’ of Ecuador, with the formation of paramilitary organizations that follow the logic of Los Zetas,” referring to a group founded by Mexican special forces deserters and engaged in the drug trade, extortion and other crimes. The Mexico comparison may be grossly overstated, but there is something to it. Such emerging networks and hybrid agendas might prove to be a factor in Latin American politics.

Paradoxically, alongside the rising violence, most Latin American countries have known substantial progress in good governance and civic participation over the past two decades. There are exceptions, but the positive trends and the democratic self-confidence are clearly notable in many countries. Can the parallel upsurge of lawless behavior threaten those progresses?

Speaking of Mexico, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the key to check the upward trend of narco-trafficking-related social disruption is to build “stronger, more resilient communities.” In a market environment, though, there may not be any civic arrangement that can resist the kind of economics sustained by a pool of unemployed young men willing to kill for $200 and a markup that can reach 15,000 percent in the case of cocaine traveling from the Andes to Europe.

At the beginning of 2009, three former presidents from Latin America – Colombia's César Gaviria, Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo – gave a damning verdict: the so called drug war is a miserable failure. Not only did it not stanch production and trade, but it undermined democracy and fragile state institutions. In 2005, Bolivia elected as president a former coca grower who suffered directly from brutal eradication campaigns. Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, whose unemployed and impoverished father was jailed for smuggling drugs to the United States in the seventies, recently declared to the New York Times that “American counternarcotics strategy is completely mistaken.”

In private, and sometimes in selected public forums, one is beginning to hear officials, elected representatives and even some police chiefs allude to the fact that some selective legalization might not be such a bad idea. The issue of depenalization is extremely touchy, and there are plenty of demagogues and fundamentalists ready to fuel moral panic on both sides of the Rio Grande. Nor would it be an easy or painless solution. I remember visiting once the Mangueira samba school in Rio de Janeiro during a public rehearsal before the Carnival. The Brazilian friend who was my guide pointed some of the gunmen roaming the adjacent streets and providing their own security to this event. “I’m all in favor of a well managed legalization,” he said, “but what do you do with those guys? There are thousands of them, and they won’t give up their guns, their lifestyle and their livelihood so easily. Who knows where they might recycle their skills?”

One thing is sure: the level of public confidence in law enforcement agencies is extremely low in most countries in the region. If the criminals succeed in convincing more and more honest citizens that their clout and firepower is the only trustworthy protection they can afford, the future will be very dark indeed.
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Marc Saint-Upéry is a French journalist and political analyst living in Ecuador since 1998. He writes about political philosophy, international relations and development issues for various French and Latin American publications and in the international magazines Le Monde Diplomatique and Nueva Sociedad. He is the author of El Sueño de Bolívar: El Desafío de las izquierdas Sudamericanas (Bolivar’s Dream: the Left’s challenge in South America).

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