analyst Ricardo Soberón is international specialist on drug policy, security and borders. Director of the Center for Drug Research and Human Rights (www.ciddh.com).
the millions
The international drug trade generates profits annually close to 400,000 million dollars, about 8 percent of world trade, according to the first World Drug Report UN Together. GREAT BENEFITS
• The benefits to be gained from the illicit drug industry are such that they barely make a dent in seizures of the product on its way to the market, says the United Nations study. "During the nineties, is calculated to have intercepted about one-third of the cocaine trafficked, despite which the industry has continued to prosper," he adds.
• The Board for Narcotics Control United Nations estimates that would need to intervene at least 75 percent of caches to significantly reduce the benefits of the drug.
LOCAL PANORAMA
According to figures DEVIDA, money laundering in Peru would generate an amount of $ 4.393 billion [thousand million], of which $ 3.593 million would be the drug, and only $ 103 million corruption of officials.
Latin American countries are increasingly engaged in the geopolitics of drugs, either by the unbridled violence, institutional corruption or simple inefficiency of the responsible agencies to suppress.
Increasingly, the crime associated with illegal business grows in quantity and quality, just as is true the 50 th anniversary of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, and next year marks 100 years of the Opium Convention of 1912. Apparently, it has mutated form designed to evade the controls on that historic occasion. It is therefore very important to re-draw the theoretical and actual facts that determine the composition of the phenomenon, so that they can adequately feed future public policies.
For purposes of this article, we will include under this concept, all components that comprise this circuit illegal economic and community actors involved in it, or its repression. Crops routes, traffic scenarios and collection of the most important. The second decade of the century, are some patterns that are outlining the new elements that make up this global phenomenon in the context of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, the Andean region and Southern Cone. They are:
1 The rural Third World societies have found ways to adapt to the times of globalization in the XXI century, joining the free market circuit participating through their incorporation into illegal agricultural economies, such is the If no less than 300,000 farmers in the South American Andes to participate as suppliers of raw material coke (200.000 ha), Poppy (1.500 ha) and marijuana (not less than 1.000 ha), which provides for regional and international markets. Increasingly, the Amazon basin will be confronted with a progressive and disorderly colonization fueled by the illicit economic activities which will not only lead to its rapid destruction, but the progressive involvement of their ancestral rural societies in the vortex associated with the crime.
relationships between poverty, marginalization, conflict and drug trafficking, after 25 years of discussion and debate are more than obvious (1). As an example, despite the "Plan Colombia" (2000-2005) and the severe beating of the Colombian FARC by successive governments, by failing to address the problems of land concentration and the existence of local mafias, has prevented the structural problems that enable and facilitate the existence of the FARC as a distinct alternative, among the peasantry.
Something similar can be said, occurs in Peru. In 1980 came the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso and after 20 years of a bloody internal war, its leader, Abimael Guzman was captured. 18 years later, Peru is undergoing a period of sustained economic growth, financial stability, which is felt particularly in the narrow strip of the coast of Peru (Lima, Trujillo, Arequipa and Piura), while indigenous and native Andean Sierra and the Selva Alta, respectively, remain well below levels in terms of human development.
Interestingly, the two main coca-producing valleys associated with drug trafficking, survive the two sides of the Shining Path that maintain their confrontation with the neoliberal state represented by the government of Alejandro Toledo (2001/2006) and Alan García (2006 / 2011). This war remains encapsulated, while the social and economic conditions that brought it intact. Also, policies based on eradication of illicit crops compulsive, while not addressing structural problems of rural poverty, they are useless and harmful. Behold a huge challenge for the next government.
2 The continuing fragmentation / segmentation of each of its phases, is a variable that characterize the drug trade in the coming years. Since the cultivation of prohibited plants to export their final products, not only distracts the state's efforts to ban, but allows increased participation in the illegal circuit, socially vulnerable groups that are excluded from the global economic model (youth, migrants women, provincial).
is the case with the thousands of South American migrants on their way developed north are blackmailed or threatened, by trafficking groups, to demand the transfer of small amounts of drugs in their bodies. For years, transit Drug small turn out to be the most efficient and less costly for organized crime, using huge amounts of manpower and diverting scarce resources away from state control.
criminal inability of States to focus attention on the complex organized crime, tends to raise prison overcrowding with the most vulnerable actors, as evidenced by the growth of the prison population for drug offenses (especially women) (2 .) Thus, through the operation of indiscriminate repression of the police, the prison industry is going to benefit from increased spending on infrastructure construction of prisons. This new scenario
sociological economy of drugs, including more geographical areas are excluded from the presence of the States and modernity, both in urban areas (slums in all capitals and major cities), and in rural areas distant (especially in border areas like the Amazon rain forest). Thus, the major centers of urban development and modernity in the continent, are surrounded by vast plains of poverty, lawlessness and violence.
is the case of communes in Medellín, the favela of Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, the slums of Buenos Aires, the satellite city of El Alto in Bolivia, or young neighborhoods port of Callao in Peru, where face specific criminal interests, given the limited ability of police and military. Not so far as to reach the idea of \u200b\u200bfailed states, the "liberated areas" of state authority in Latin America grow in the presence of hundreds of firms, small posters, gangs and other criminal organizations of small size, associated illicit drug trafficking.
3 Declining international economic cooperation in Europe, U.S. and international agencies, is becoming more noticeable, unless specific initiatives such as Merida and Colombia, causing the starvation of formal organizations such as CICAD (3) or the UNODC (4 .) This leaves no real possibilities of alternative development efforts in the Amazon piedmont.
Ultimately, this situation represents the final fracture of the so called Vienna Consensus worked in the framework of international anti-narcotics treaties from 1912, 1961, 1971 and 1988. This requires national governments to commit financial resources or scarce, leaving the local strategies actions subject to more symbolic and less efficient.
In this context, it is clear that Latin American countries should review our model, paradigms, strategies, policies and laws on drugs, on the basis of what is possible, verifiable and measurable. We must put an end to "senseless war" spread from the North to return to our roots, our problems of poverty and exclusion associated with the use and production of illicit substances. This happens also to redefine the terms of trade and international negotiations with Europe, Asia and America.
4 The Drug consumption patterns are unpredictable for the younger generation youth, while government policies are safe in their preventive capacity and / or deterrent. On the other hand, new generations of Latin Americans are in the midst of a model that encourages consumption exacerbated in light of the wide range of psychoactive substances available capacity in the markets: the price down and quality will continue to rise, it seems to be a trend indisputable.
institutional incoherence States, against the uncontrolled use of alcohol and snuff its effect in the niche of illicit substances, whether naturally occurring or synthetic origin such as. Increasingly, the abuse of illicit drugs shows alarming numbers in the Southern Cone and under certain mega-cities of South America.
5 With regard to money laundering, we are in a situation where economic expansion in some developing economies, such as periods of crisis themselves, and less identifiable allow the existence of multiple mechanisms that allow the flow of dirty capital or suspects. The washing procedures have grown as provided for in the FATF. Thus we have the presence of secret offshore companies, unregistered, which provide services considered secret in spaces called secrecy in tax havens (5). Today, legal activities such as construction, tourism, export sector, are penetrated by drug trafficking.
So these are the five main characteristics which define the new forms that the drug trade in Latin American territories. This requires that new bodies such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), take them into account when discussing the new strategies and policies to address these complex problems. Ricardo Soberón
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