Breaking Analysis: LatAm Militaries Are Already Fighting Cartels, But Trump Wants More

Deborah: Thanks for joining us. I’m Deborah Bonello, the managing editor at InSight Crime, and I’m joined today by our co-director, Jerry McDermott. Now, Jerry, today we’re looking at the Shield of the Americas Summit that took place over the weekend between US President Donald Trump and a number of leaders, although not all from Latin America. Trump told attendees that the only way to defeat organized crime, drug trafficking cartels, and transnational gangs is by using the military, and that the US would be joining forces with countries in the region to do so. So first off, Jerry, these sound like strong words, but is there anything new there?

Jerry: Hi, Deb. Well, look, let’s unpack some of this. President Trump called this a brand new military coalition and I’m not sure that’s true. Southcom, that’s the US Southern Command, that’s responsible for the Western Hemisphere, has been working with pretty much every nation in the region for decades to a greater or lesser extent. So, that’s not really new. We’re knocking the hell out of them where we can and we’re going to do it heavier. The strikes on the go-fast boats continue, that’s certainly knocking the hell out of the crews, and we’re talking more than 150 people have been killed in the strikes now. And it’s no doubt hitting the transport networks that provide the go-fast services, but knocking the hell out of transnational organized crime, that hasn’t yet happened. But what is new is, and I’ll quote this again, “just as we formed a coalition to eradicate ISIS in the Middle East, we must now do the same thing to eradicate the cartels at home.” This is new in the sense that this is further evidence of the fusion between the war on terror and the war on drugs. Now. President Trump started this right from the get go. He put, if you remember, I think it was six Mexican groups on the list of foreign terrorist organizations that the US has in the first weeks of him taking office. So this is new and this is perhaps the most novel aspect of what’s increasingly called the “Dunroe Doctrine,” as far as Latin America and organized crime is concerned.

Deborah: So has a militarized approach to fighting the drug trade worked in the past and has anything changed that might make it more successful today?

Jerry: Let’s look at the historic war on drugs and the use of the military. Has it had any effect? Really not. If you look even in the medium term, let alone the long term. And let’s pick out some recent examples. Let’s go a bit further back to Mexico, where you’re based, you’ll know the story well. In 2006, Felipe Calderon is the president and he launches the military against the Mexican cartels. And it evolved into what became described as a criminal insurgency, where the cartels armed up, tooled up, and responded in kind. Let’s take that to today. You’ve been doing a lot of work on the killing of El Mencho, the former head of the Jalisco Cartel. The Jalisco Cartel is the perfect example of what happens when you militarize the approach. Jalisco travel around in armored vehicles. They’ve shot down helicopters. They routinely deploy with 0.5 rifles able to punch through everything. Their guys wear body armor. That is the result of using the military against the cartels. Has it weakened the cartels? Not so far.

Another quote that President Trump said in this meeting, “we need your help. You just have to tell us where they are.” This for me is one of the most telling parts of Washington’s approach. It kind of reveals, or it seems to reveal, an utter lack of understanding of what the criminals are. The criminals are not ISIS. They’re not a uniformed, organized military force. And they don’t present clear targets. They’re civilian organizations. They live amongst the civilian population. Seldom are you going to find an isolated criminal target. If you are deploying the military against them, the risk of collateral damage is inevitable. Let’s take an example of Colombia, where President Gustavo Petro has been using missiles against who are arguably military or quasi-military targets, who are the Colombian rebel and guerrilla groups who are deeply involved in the cocaine trade. He’s bombed guerrilla camps, and he’s found that among the victims are minors, and minors are routinely recruited not just by Colombian guerrillas, but by organized crime groups and gangs around the region. They’re recruited and they’re used by criminal groups. If you’re going to take them on in the military context, you are going to kill minors who have been forcibly recruited. There doesn’t seem to be much of a happy ending as far as an increased use of the military is concerned.

Deborah: Right, and as we’ve seen across the region as well with the militarization of the crackdown against organized crime is that the human rights costs too in Mexico, there are some 200,000 people now missing, frequent reports of extrajudicial killings by the military, and other human rights abuses. There are lots of costs on communities and people living in these countries who are not connected to the drug trade either that have to be taken into account and that we’ve seen as a pattern with the use of the military. But what do you think makes drug cartels change, Jerry?

Jerry: Well, what you’ve just mentioned is really interesting because drug cartels and other criminal structures have always taken on a slightly Robin Hood approach in their areas of influence and presented themselves as the good guys helping out the local communities in the face of government abandonment. Well, if a government takes a “shoot first, ask later” approach, this may actually end up strengthening the cartels in their areas of influence, as heavy-handed government responses target innocent civilians who then turn around and no longer trust in the state. That’s one of the changes that we’ve seen historically with a heavy handed approach. Over the last five decades, we have seen organized crime evolve, not because the business dictates so, but because law enforcement has sought to block them. The easiest and cheapest way to smuggle cocaine into the US is by putting it on an enormous aircraft and flying it into the US. That’s what the Medellín Cartel did in the early days in the 80s. They only stopped doing that when the air route was blocked. What did they do? They switched to a land route via Mexico and then complemented it with containers into US ports. The point is that transnational organized crime evolves around law enforcement obstacles and pressure, and it reacts far quicker than law enforcement can.

Today, cocaine is being produced in greater quantities than ever before, and the global networks that manage the business are more disguised and more sophisticated than they ever were. One of the reasons that transnational organized crime is as strong as it is today is that too many governments have looked for quick results and aren’t prepared to do the groundwork, the whole of state, whole of society approach needed to really dismantle criminal structures at their roots. The irony is that Washington was doing this work and had been doing it, gradually building up over a couple of decades, using State Department funding and USAID working in tandem on the ground to weaken criminal structures while strengthening local justice systems, law enforcement, civil society organizations geared to greater transparency, and the exposure of of illegal activity. This was working, not with sexy newspaper-grabbing titles, but gradually it was working. Colombia is one of the best examples of how the state had strengthened itself over decades thanks to US support and has turned itself into the most efficient law enforcement organization in the region. All that amazing work has been undone overnight with President Trump’s new approach.

Deborah: We’ve seen a switch from this combination of soft power, the USAID branches, the outreach and hard power to just seemingly hard power exclusively. Now, there were some regional leaders, Jerry, who were noticeably absent from Trump’s summit. Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum was not there, nor was Brazil’s Lula or Colombia’s President Petro. So what do you take away from that?

Jerry: Well, first of all, there can be no regional strategy against transnational organized crime, particularly the drug trade, without Colombia and Mexico. It’s a nonstarter. Those that did turn up are not major players in any strategy against transnational organized crime. Brazil is the Latin American superpower and extremely important in transnational organized crime, although not necessarily to the US. The PCC, the First Capital Command, is arguably the most powerful transnational organized crime structure in the Western Hemisphere today. So the fact that those three presidents you mentioned weren’t in the room tells us an enormous amount. Those that did turn up turned up not because they are important players in the fight against transnational organized crime, or not the key players. It’s because they are allies of Washington. I’m thinking of Argentina, President Millei, Trinidad and Tobago has very much thrown itself into the US camp. Honduras, whose president was arguably elected with the direct support of Washington. Guyana, that almost exclusively depends on the US for its defense. El Salvador, President Bukele, has long been a favorite and a friend it seems of President Trump. So those that did rock up rocked up for political reasons and not because they are the key players in the fight against transnational organized crime, um, and host the most powerful criminal syndicates. Great photo op,but I am not sure this has really pushed a regional response to transnational organized crime.

Deborah: I’m sure that other regional leaders that were watching that meeting were the leaders of the criminal groups across Latin America, who, like us, watch everything keenly, I’m sure, from everything to political decisions to the latest in artificial intelligence and how to use it. What do you think will be the reaction of transnational criminal organizations to this latest promise from Trump?

Jerry: Let’s wind back to since Trump took office and look at what’s actually happened, not the promises and the propaganda, what’s actually happened. The striking of the go-fast boats definitely happened, and continues to happen. It’s still early days to talk about a change in patterns, but anecdotal evidence that we’ve been gathering so far suggests less use of go-fast, greater use of fishing vessels, yachts, semi-submersibles, and that’s particularly relevant in the trade towards Europe, and of course, container shipping. So yes, that has been a change. Secondly, the deployment of the USS Gerald Ford into the Caribbean and then the snatch of Maduro, this has had a concrete effect in Venezuela. In December, before the snatch of Maduro, we saw a freezing of drug trafficking along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. We got this from our people on the ground. We saw a switch of routes towards the east of Venezuela, that’s in front of Africa and that feeds some of the routes that go via West Africa, and then a push down to Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and northern Brazil. We’re about to publish an article on this as far as Guyana is concerned. But we also saw the camps of Colombian guerrillas, the National Liberation Army, the ELN guerrillas in Venezuela, get dismantled. This was because there was talk of missile strikes.

The Colombian guerrillas immediately reacted, dismantled all their camps, so they weren’t hit by a missile. But the USS Gerald Ford’s gone. The camps may have gone, but the ELN is still firmly entrenched across Venezuela. It’s now just in amongst the civilian population. The point is that nothing that has yet happened under the Trump administration has halted, or even really disrupted the flow of cocaine to the United States or anywhere else. The data from the US doesn’t support President Trump’s claim that maritime traffic to the US has been stopped and that this is strangling the US drug market. Prices today in the US for cocaine, according to the latest data, are amongst the lowest ever. So transnational organized crime is going to adapt to whatever new strategy Washington comes up with. As you say, they’re watching the news as much as we are. They know there is a gap between President Trump’s rhetoric and what actually happens. If you ask me to gaze into the crystal ball, what is going to happen this year with the culmination of what’s happened today and this new announcement, more killings by security forces. More killings by transnational organized crime, responding to military pressure. Less respect for human rights, and less of the crucial, painstaking work of identifying criminal structures at their roots, building cases against them and formulating the kind of whole of state and whole of society approaches needed to really dismantle these criminal networks.

Deborah: Whether we like it or not, there’s never a dull moment when it comes to the current administration in the US and organized crime in Latin America, and the latest really isn’t an exception. Jerry, thanks for joining me. Please keep up with what we’re reporting on here at InSight Crime at insightcrime.org, where we’ve the deepest archive in the world on Latin American organized crime and dynamics. Bye for now.