Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Edited by
Gary Prevost, Harry E. Vanden,
Carlos Oliva Campos, and
Luis Fernando Ayerbe
us national security concerns in latin america and the caribbean
Copyright © Gary Prevost, Harry E. Vanden, Carlos Oliva Campos,
and Luis Fernando Ayerbe, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-37951-1
1 Introduction 1
Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden
2 From the US Department of State, USAID, and
Washington-Based Think Tanks: The Search for
Ungoverned Spaces in South America 9
Luiza R. Mateo and Aline P. dos Santos
3 The United States and the Security Agenda in the Caribbean
Basin after 9/11 41
Carlos Oliva Campos
4 The Militarization of Mexico-US Relations: Ungovernable
Areas and a Failed State? 61
Jaime A. Preciado Coronado and Angel L. Florido Alejo
5 Maras, Contragoverned Spaces, and Sovereignty 81
Harry E. Vanden
6 Central America: Ungoverned Spaces and the National Security
Policy of the United States 93
Ignacio Medina Núñez
7 Security Issues on the Mexico-Guatemala Border and Their
Relationship to the New National Security Policy of the
United States 113
Daniel Villafuerte Solís
8 Old Wine in New Wineskins: Incorporating the “Ungoverned
Spaces” Concept into Plan Colombia 143
John C. Dugas
vi l Contents
Bibliography 189
About the Authors 203
Index 207
Illustrations
Maps
4.1 Index of failed states, 2011 70
4.2 Drug trafficking routes in Mexico 72
4.3 Mexican drug cartels and their area of influence 73
4.4 Casualties associated to delinquency due to presumed rivalry,
2007–2010 73
Tables
2.1 Subcategories of ungoverned areas 12
2.2 The fragility framework 30
2.3 USAID programs to South America (2010/2011) 33
5.1 US ICE removals: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras 86
6.1 Central America: Population 95
6.2 HDI 2010–2011 in Central America and Mexico 96
6.3 Central America: Average income per capita in 2009 97
6.4 Fund for Peace failed state index 100
6.5 Military and police assistance from the United States to
Central America 2008–2013 107
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden
T
he concepts of “ungoverned spaces” and “failed states” where the
limited presence of the state is seen as a challenge to global secu-
rity have generated a rich intellectual debate in recent years. In
this edited volume, scholars from Latin America and the United States
will analyze how the US foreign-policy making circles have applied
the concepts to the creation of new US security initiatives in the Latin
American region during the post September 11, 2001 era. The concept
of failed states is not a new one, having entered US political thinking
in the early 1990s, but the September 11, 2001 events focused attention
on the failure of the Afghan state to prevent the operation of Al-Qaeda
on its territory. The situation in Afghanistan, and subsequent growing
concern about states perceived to be similar, only intensified concern
about the role of failed states in harboring or aiding armed groups with
the intent to harm the interests of the United States. This outlook was
codified in the US National Security Strategy of 2002, which declared,
“America is now threatened less by conquering states than by failing
ones.”
While the failed state concept has remained central to US war mak-
ing strategy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the center of US atten-
tion in the last decade, it has been broadened to include the entire world
including Latin America. The list of countries judged to be in dan-
ger has grown to encompass states as diverse as Colombia, East Timor,
Indonesia, North Korea, Cote d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, and
Sudan. The extension to Latin America has been significant because
it has meant that during the past 12 years US policy in the Western
Hemisphere has shifted away from the primarily economic emphasis
of the 1990s, the era of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
project, back to a security focus reminiscent of the Cold War era. The
last decade has witnessed a significant increase in US military presence
in the region highlighted by the relaunching of the Caribbean-based
Fourth Fleet, the militarization of drug fighting efforts in Mexico,
and the establishment of several new military bases in Colombia, the
staunchest US ally in the region. While not based solely on the failed
state or “contested spaces” rhetoric, the shift has in part utilized that
rhetoric to justify the renewed military focus in spite of any concrete
evidence that terror plots aimed at the US homeland have been created
in Latin America. It is the author’s perspective that the renewed US
security focus in Latin America has little to do with real fears of terror
attacks emanating from the region and more to do with defending long-
standing political and economic interests in the region in the face of
progressive political movements in the region that have come to power
in recent years with an agenda of challenging traditional US hegemony
in the region.
Beginning in 1998 with the election of populist Hugo Chavez to
the presidency of Venezuela, there has been a clear Leftward trend
in Latin American politics that continues all the way to the present.
Most scholars analyze the trend as occurring in response to the failure
of neoliberal economic policies, known as the Washington Consensus,
that were pursued by Latin American governments in the 1980s and
1990s acting in close concert with the governments in Washington
and the international financial institutions such as the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund. Because the incoming Left govern-
ments in a range of countries including Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia,
Uruguay, Paraguay, and Ecuador saw the United States as at least part
of their problems, the leaders pursued policies that in one manner
or another sought greater independence from the United States. This
newly independent stance was most immediately recognized when
between 2003 and 2005 Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela blocked the
completion of the FTA A project that had been the centerpiece of the
US policy in the region since its launch in 1994 by the US president
William Clinton. The defeat of the FTA A has been followed by a series
of initiatives aimed at Latin American political and economic integra-
tion independent of the United States that has included the Bolivarian
Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, the Union of South American
Nations, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean
Introduction l 3
followed in the post September 11, 2001 era by the added rhetoric of
failed states and the “war on terror.” In his chapter on Colombia, long
time Colombia expert John Dugas from Kalamazoo College analyzes
how the United States has shifted its rhetoric on Colombia over time
while maintaining its basic strategy of supporting the Colombian gov-
ernment in its 50-year war against revolutionary guerillas, primarily
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). As Dugas also
details, the Colombian government has remained the United States’
most important strategic partner in South America throughout the last
decade as other neighbors like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia distanced
themselves from US security initiatives. The largest blow to US plans
in the Andean region came when the Ecuadorian government of Rafael
Correa refused to renew the US base at Manta that had been established
at the beginning of the new century with a previous US administration.
The loss of the Ecuador base prompted the United States to lean even
more on Colombia for additional bases there, a request that so far has
not been met by the Colombians.
In addition to the Mexico and the Andean regions, a major focus of
US security policy in recent years has been in Central America and the
Caribbean Basin. New initiatives have been pursued on both a bilateral
and regional basis. In the last three years, two important regional agree-
ments have been sponsored by the United States, the Central American
Security Initiative (CASI) and the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative
(CBSI). Each agreement is modeled after the Mérida Initiative with
Mexico and provides more than US$1 billion in new funding for coop-
eration in the legal, policy, and military fields between the US govern-
ments and the governments of the Central American and Caribbean
area. These regional agreements compliment bilateral initiatives made
by the United States to several governments in the region, most nota-
bly Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, and Costa Rica. As sev-
eral of the authors in our volume describe, the rhetoric of ungoverned
spaces and failed states figure prominently in the justification for these
initiatives together with the war on drugs. As Harry Vanden discusses
in his chapter on drug gangs in El Salvador and Guatemala, US author-
ities, with rhetoric similar to that of Mexico argue that the power and
scope of these gangs, most originating from the United States, have
resulted in spaces in San Salvador and Guatemala City controlled not
by the local authorities but by the drug gangs. Most importantly, this
analysis allows the US government to propose to the local governments
of Guatemala and El Salvador increased police and military aid (rather
than economic aid to attack the roots of the problem) falling under
Introduction l 7
demonstrates how the United States using the failed state framework,
justified control over long-term recovery efforts and even the supervi-
sion of the immediate postearthquake election where the US authori-
ties blocked the participations of progressive candidate Jean Bertrande
Aristide on the grounds that his return to power could result in Haiti
retreating to the failed state status.
CHAPTER 2
Introduction
The theme of “ungoverned areas” is connected to that of the so-called
new threats, which, as defined by the late 1980s, cover such diverse sub-
jects as terrorism, drug trafficking, illegal migration, organized crime,
and handling of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or of nuclear
arsenals. Similarly, this approach touches upon discussions on failed
states, weak states, and effective governance. The purpose of this chap-
ter is to understand the nature of the “zones of low governability” once
they have taken on relevance in discussions of international security and
have had particular impact on the foreign policy of the United States.
Recognition of the fact that the lack of governance in remote, border
regions, or even in urban complexes out of the reach of state authority,
facilitated pernicious threat exploration and threatened international
stability has become especially acute for American perceptions after
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Thus, the time frame of
the analysis in this chapter has been delimited to George W. Bush’s
two terms (2001–2008) and to part of Barack Obama’s administration
(2009–early 2013), privileging the approaches of four players in US for-
eign policy: the president and his advisers; the US Department of State
Ungoverned areas Potential safe haven Weak or failed states that performs none
(comprehensive) of their governance functions effectively in
a given area, freeing illicit actors to pursue
threatening activities
Undergoverned Potential safe haven States that perform only some of their
areas (partial) governance functions effectively, either in
a particular area or throughout its territory
(e.g., groups that exploit the gaps in law
enforcement)
Misgoverned (or Potential haven States, or some significant faction of
ill-governed) areas sponsored by the state states, that exercise limited governance,
freeing illicit actors to pursue threatening
activities (e.g., material support to drug
cartels, genocidal militias, or terrorists)
Contested areas Conflict zones and States that do not perform some or all
situations of of their governance functions in a given
competition for area, that come to be controlled by parallel
governance authorities providing basic social services
Exploitable areas Potential haven, States that perform all or most governance
functional or virtual functions effectively, but illicit actors are
able to exploit social networks and legal
and social norms.
the international community would have the duty to free these people
from uncertainty and poverty, working through foreign aid and bilat-
eral and multilateral pressure so that governments act on behalf of their
citizens, encouraging economic freedom and fighting diseases (such as
AIDS).
There is a further concern expressed by the American government
with Rogue States 4 and their terrorist “clients” yearning access to WMD.
In the 2002 NSS, there is a clear emphasis on the African continent and
its fragile states5 and on the need for border control and resolution of
ethnic and religious strife to avoid further civil wars. According to the
document, governance could be enhanced by state reforms and empow-
erment of subnational governments, consolidating democracy and sov-
ereignty on the continent.
The absence of governance is also alluded to in the treatment of
Afghanistan, for which the promotion of humanitarian, political, eco-
nomic, and security assistance is vital in order to stop it from being a
safe haven for Al-Qaeda. Complimentarily, NDS indicates the necessity
to limit the strategic options of the enemy “preventing the exploita-
tion by terrorists organizations of large, ungoverned spaces and border
areas” (NDS, 2005: 13). In line with the 2002 NSS, this report from the
Defense Department proposes to engage in intelligence partnerships
and operations of stabilization postconflict, in order to assist states in
the resumption of control over nongoverned territories.
While the 2002 NSS document was more concerned with defining
terrorism and US action, the 2006 one focused on the importance of the
political regime. Thus, the promotion of democracy has been repeatedly
stated as a pillar of American security in the attempt to “help to create
a world of democratic, well governed states that can meet the needs of
their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international
system” (NSS, 2006: 6).
Besides mentioning the term “ungoverned area” four times, the doc-
ument placed effective sovereignty (border protection, law enforcement,
and combating corruption) as critical to building effective democracy.
The issues of failed states and low governability appear again associated
with the provision of safe havens for terrorist activity. 6 Thus, inhibit-
ing the access of these groups to operational havens is a central strategy
in the fight against Al-Qaeda, which according with the Department
of Defense, was already present in 80 countries: “They exploit poorly
governed areas of the world, taking sanctuary where states lack capac-
ity or the will to police themselves” (QDR, 2006: 21). The American
From the US Department of State l 17
Weak and impoverished states and ungoverned areas are not only a threat
to their people and a burden on regional economies, but are also sus-
ceptible to exploitation by terrorists, tyrants, and international crimi-
nals. We will work to bolster threatened states, provide relief from crises,
and build capacity in developing states to increase their progress. (NSS,
2006: 33)
In 2010, President Barack Obama published his first NSS that, in the
introduction, classifies failed states as a source of global instability
and threat. When referring to the fight against Al-Qaeda, the docu-
ment insists on its neutralization through the promotion of opportu-
nity and hope in vulnerable countries, preventing the emergence of
potential safe havens7 for recruiting, training, and operationalizing
terrorist cells. Counterterrorism was linked to the ability to overcome
the political, economic, and social deficits, providing basic needs in
states “at risk” with weak government performance: “Where govern-
ments are incapable of meeting theirs citizens’ basic needs and fulfill-
ing their responsibilities to provide security within their borders, the
consequences are often global and may directly threaten the American
people” (NSS, 2010: 26).
In addition, the National Military Strategy (NMS) of 2011 reveals the
threats coming from the international routes for piracy and illicit traf-
ficking, which could serve as havens for “violent extremism.” Countries
like Somalia and Yemen are especially worrisome because “states with
weak, failing and corrupt governments will increasingly be used as a
safe haven for an expanding array of non-state actors that breed conflict
and endanger stability, particularly in Africa and broader Middle East”
(NMS, 2011: 4).
There is an emphasis on the importance of strengthening states’
capacities in matters of security, social welfare, and postenvironmental
18 l Luiza R. Mateo and Aline P. dos Santos
The threat of terrorist attack remained low for most countries. Overall,
governments took modest steps to improve their counterterrorism (CT)
capabilities and tighten border security, but corruption, weak govern-
ment institutions, ineffective or lacking interagency cooperation, weak
or non-existent legislation, and reluctance to allocate sufficient resources
limited the progress of many. (USDS, 2006: 155)
In this line, research by the CSIS focus on the failed states, privileg-
ing Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan. In South America, only Colombia receives
special attention, inside a historical framework and the evaluation of
the results of Plan Colombia (DeShazo, Forman, & McLean, 2009).
The R AND Corporation goes further by conceptually defining
the term “ungoverned areas,” creating a methodology of analysis and
including the Colombia-Venezuela border in its case studies. According
to the think tank, the border is used as a haven for the Colombian
guerrillas and as a route for the traffic of drugs and weapons. Also,
another concern for analysts is underdevelopment and ethnic diversity
in the region, where around 80 distinct indigenous groups live (Rabasa
et al., 2007: 243–276). Besides the Colombian border, another concern
of the US government in South America is the undercontrolled move-
ment of people and illicit goods in the Triple Frontier between Brazil
(Iguazu Falls), Argentina (Puerto Iguazu), and Paraguay (Ciudad Del
Este). Official documents released by Wikileaks indicate, in a diplo-
matic dialogue between Brasilia and Washington (2008), that in the
Triple Frontier there is “weak border control, smuggling, drug traffick-
ing, easy access to weapons and false documents, circulation of counter-
feit products and flows of money without any control” (Folha, 2010).
The Brookings Institution and the Hudson Institute have focused
on the urban sprawl and its implications for public safety, environ-
mental degradation, and the spread of diseases. Brainard (2008), of
the Brooking Institution, identifies the expansion of international
assistance as essential to the continuance of South American develop-
ment, and even claims that this is a way to spread American values
and strengthen democracy. Concurrently, researchers at the Hudson
Institute (Daremblum, 2009) indicate the following as regional risk fac-
tors: Venezuela under the leadership of Hugo Chávez, and the political
situation in the favelas of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and
Caracas. On this lack of governance, Cirino states,
the Americas. The priorities for the continent are the consolidation of
democracy (free elections, strengthened institutions, and reduction of
corruption), increased prosperity, and access to opportunity (education,
health, and environment). The protection of national states would be
linked to the fight against terrorism, organized crime, and the traffic of
persons and illicit goods.
With regard to transnational crime, the United States firmly stands
for the continuance of its war on the production, transport, and sale of
narcotics. There is a perception that, in the fight against drug traffick-
ing, the Americas occupy a prominent place (USDS, 2007: 15). The
Andean region produces much of the cocaine sold in the world, while
Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico are routes for its redistri-
bution, which finds its largest destination in the US domestic market.
Narcotics trafficking also works as a catalyst of insecurity because it
degrades the consumer, fosters crime, illegal arms trading, and money
laundering networks. Narco-dollars corrupt the police, political, and
judicial systems of Latin America, resulting in a growing spiral in the
crisis of legitimacy and governance.
Parts of these problems are identified in the Strategic Plan as obsta-
cles to the attainment of American political and security goals at the
beginning of the third millennium (USDS, 2007: 17):
instability that extreme poverty breeds. Improving the most basic human
conditions not only ref lects our values, it enhances our security. Left
unmet these conditions lead too often to conf lict, instability, and failed
states. (2010: 3)
The goals set for Latin America and the Caribbean constitute four main
aspects: to support the goals of the Summit of the Americas,14 to pro-
mote social and economic opportunities, to ensure the safety of citizens,
and to consolidate effective governance (USAID, 2011a). As is the case
with the USDS, USAID has no program with nominal reference to
the ungoverned areas. Indirectly, however, there are many themes cov-
ering issues of governance: democratization of the political processes,
rule of law, fighting corruption, and socioeconomic inclusion. Having
in mind the previous discussion on how factors of social vulnerability
and an authority vacuum may be exploited by illicit actors, threaten-
ing American security, it seems clear that the contribution that would
accrue from improvement in the political, legal, economic, and social
fields would protect people against exploitation from criminals and
terrorists.
In this sense, USAID seeks to deepen the ties between state and civil
society. According to Gleason et al. (2011), this process results in obtain-
ing governmental legitimacy, which is the main component for effective
state building (the capacity to perform political, economic, security,
and welfare functions). The former international assistance director,
Henrietta Fore, points out that the ultimate goal of foreign assistance
is that the favored nations can sustain the projects and advance autono-
mously (USDS, 2007: 6).
In 2005, USAID launched a document titled “Fragile States Strategy,”
which provides valuable parallels with the debate about ungoverned
areas. State fragility is recognized in cases of failed, failing, or recover-
ing states. Vulnerable states are those unable or unwilling to adequately
provide security and basic services to significant portions of their pop-
ulation, or those where governmental legitimacy is in question. This
includes states that have failed or are recovering from crisis (USAID,
2005a: 9).
According to the World Bank, fragile states grow at a rate that is
only one-third of the global average, have one-third of the per capita
income, 50 percent more debt/GDP, and are twice as poor in relation to
the average countries (Wyler, 2008: 13). The expected time for fragile
states to outgrow this limbo is 56 years, underscoring the importance of
programs that can boost their development.
30 l Luiza R. Mateo and Aline P. dos Santos
Effectiveness Legitimacy
Security Military and police services Military and police services that are
that secure borders and limit provided reasonably, equitably, and
crime without major violation of human rights
Political Political institutions and Political processes, norms, and leaders that
processes that adequately ensure are acceptable to the citizenry
response to citizen needs
Economic Economic and financial Economic institutions, financial services,
institutions and infrastructure and income-generating opportunities
that support economic growth that are widely accessible and reasonably
(including jobs), adapt to transparent, particularly related to access
economic change, and manage to and governance of natural resources
natural resources
Social Provision of basic services Tolerance of diverse customs, cultures, and
that generally meet demand, beliefs
including that of vulnerable
and minority groups
Bolivia Integral development Covering all 9 Bolivian states 52.158 About 30% share for each
Health program
Sustainable growth and environment
Brazil Environment 10 in the Northern region 22.589 Environment: 59%
Health 7 in the Northeast region Health: 26%
Energy 9 in the Southeast region
Employment 4 in the Central-West region
3 in the Southern region
Colombia a Environment 227.236
Democracy and human rights
Vulnerable populations
Security and productivity
Ecuador Alternative development Mainly in the Northern and 26.000 b
Democracy Southern borders
Economic growth
Environment
People with disability
Human trafficking
Guyana Democracy 24.000c
Economic growth
Health
Threshold program
continued
Table 2.3 Continued
Country Programs Geographic distribution of the Investments % share of programs
programs (US$ millions)
Notes:
a
It is among the 20 countries that most received funds in 2010.
b
Approximate value based on 2009.
c
Approximate value based on 2008.
Source: USAID, 2011b.
From the US Department of State l 35
Final Remarks
The incorporation of the term “ungoverned area” by the American
political arenas is relatively new and has been linked to correlates such
as good governance and state fragility or failure. This approach points
to a series of threats to international stability that bring to the US for-
eign policy agenda the challenge of expanding its room for maneuver in
the domestic affairs of other states. For US foreign policy, the goal is to
promote the model of democratic states, with market economies and the
capacity to meet the basic needs of their populations in order to obtain
stability in the international system.
From this, debates emerge concerning which treatment should be
given to remote, border, or urban complex areas that are not controlled
by a state authority in accordance with American standards. Such inter-
ests permeated the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack
Obama, which characterizes them as permanent issues in the US agenda.
It is precisely to support such interests that new classifications are incor-
porated in the characterization of global threats. According to Lamb
(2008: 3), safe haven and ungoverned area are “terms of convenience,”
36 l Luiza R. Mateo and Aline P. dos Santos
just as terrorist group, spoiler to peace, and illicit actors, id est, they are
political expressions, created out of the need to circumscribe and name
the enemies, guiding US foreign policy.
In this view, the idea of ungoverned areas appears in the NSSs, in
reports about terrorism, in the Strategic Plan and in the documents
delineating US foreign assistance. Equipped with this interpretation,
the US government opens the way to act precisely on the sources of
systemic instability, especially by illicit actors connected to crime and
terror. It is worth noting, also, the role of the centers of US strategic
thinking in the consolidation of the term “ungoverned area.” Despite
different approaches to the issue of governance, specifically in South
America, the think tanks listed here reinforce the perception embodied
in American foreign policy, that the diffuse threats of the twenty-first
century are connected to the difficulty in exercising state authority in
fragile states and territories.
In this sense, we could observe in the geographical scope of South
America how foreign assistance contributes to the consolidation of
national security objectives—through programs of assistance to vulner-
able populations and the strengthening of governmental capacities. The
activities of the USDS and the USAID in South America are directed at
reducing the risk of state failure and lack of territorial control. We thus
observed the focus of USAID programs in overcoming the institutional
deficit, both in terms of democratic consolidation (e.g., to fight corrup-
tion and reform the judicial system) and in what concerns the lack of
infrastructure tied to socioeconomic problems.
As direct consequences, we point out growing US influence in the
internal affairs of South American, Central American, and Caribbean
countries, and the use of international assistance as a diplomatic tool
capable of meeting part of its strategic objectives related to “effective”
sovereignty. Although diffuse, the implementation of strategic objectives
and projects of foreign assistance to ungoverned areas end up becom-
ing important, for they involve a demand that interconnects economic,
political, and social questions. Thus, their operationalization depends
on US cooperation with individuals, civil society, and governments in
both bilateral and multilateral spheres.
Notes
1. For more detailed information, articles by international analysts, case studies,
and an interactive map, see, www.foreignpolicy.com/failedstates.
From the US Department of State l 37
2. We adopt here the definition given by Lamb (2008: 7), according to which
governance means “the delivery of security, judicial, legal, regulatory, intel-
ligence, economic, administrative, social, and political goods and public ser-
vices, and the institutions through which they are delivered.”
3. Still according to Lamb (2008: 7), illicit actors would be nonstate groups or
individuals who use or incite armed violence for political or private gains, so as
to threaten the United States and its allies.
4. The main Rogue States according to the document would be Iran, Iraq, and
North Korea.
5. The 2002 NSS points to the fragility of the sub-Saharan region and to countries
with great regional impact such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
6. In a critical assessment, Nasser states that the territorialization of global ter-
rorism observed a practical criterion: “In this way, it has effected a strategy
that placed the phenomenon of transnational terrorism within the borders of
the state, making it possible for a military action in the conventional molds”
(2009: 115–116). A clear result of this policy was the deployment of US troops
to Iraq and Afghanistan under the slogan of “War on Terror.”
7. The document admits that Al-Qaeda acts in safe havens in Somalia, Yemen,
and the African regions of Maghreb e Sahel.
8. In the last Quadrennial Defense Review, the Western Hemisphere appears,
along with Asia and Africa, as a sanctuary for crime due to the presence of
nonstate actors engaged with drug trafficking and terrorism. The report
points out the “increasing challenges and threats emanating from the ter-
ritories of weak and failing states” (QDR, 2010: 12).
9. As a rule, these reports are published at the beginning of the year follow-
ing the one under examination, so when we refer to the 2001 Patterns of
Global Terrorism, we deal with a work published by the USDS in 2002.
10. We emphasize that none of the documents of this subdivision of the USDS
presents the methodology used to justify their conclusions.
11. The 2011 budget had a 2.8 percent increase (US$4.9 billion) compared to the
fiscal year 2010, of which US$3.6 billion are committed to the frontline states:
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. The International Affairs Budget comprises
only 1.4 percent of the total US budget, representing only one-sixth (1.7%) of
the amount destined to national security, or 7.4 percent of the defense budget,
which in 2011 was estimated at US$708 billion (Clinton, 2010: 2).
12. Compared to the 2010 budget justification, there was a budgetary increase of
US$9.2 million required for the 2011 fiscal year.
13. There are 31 diplomatic posts (9 in the United States and 22 abroad). Among
the Latin American countries, those that demand higher cost of diplomatic
operation are Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela (CBJ,
2010a: 261–262).
14. The Summit of the Americas was established in 1994, and it provided for the
meeting of the American states (except Cuba) in order to promote democracy,
free trade, and sustainable development.
38 l Luiza R. Mateo and Aline P. dos Santos
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From the US Department of State l 39
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40 l Luiza R. Mateo and Aline P. dos Santos
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pdf.
CHAPTER 3
Introduction
In the history of US relations with Latin America and the Caribbean,
the issue of national security has always been a key one on bilateral
agendas. Inter-American history also reflects how the Caribbean Basin,1
under different denominations as “Southern border,” “Southern stra-
tegic perimeter,” among others, has been trapped under higher levels
of subordination in terms of security perceptions and policies of the
United States, as compared with South America.
In geopolitical terms, the United States has paid particular attention
to the Caribbean Basin since the early nineteenth century, as one of
the scenarios where the need for a naval power to control the destiny of
events in the area was based (Rodríguez Beruff, 2000: 28). The twenti-
eth century would seal this “special relationship” with the construction
of the waterway of the Panama Canal and the definition of the strategic
communication routes with Europe during the two world wars.
Moreover, the most serious threat to US national security before
September 11, 2001, was also within the Caribbean Basin, with the
start of the strategic alliance between Cuba and the Soviet Union from
the early sixties of last century. We all remember as peak time the “mis-
sile crisis” of October 1962, which put humanity on the brink of a
nuclear conflict, and ended when Soviets and Americans negotiated the
withdrawal of the nuclear missiles installed on the island without the
presence of the Cuban authorities.
After the collapse of the USSR and the overcoming of the theaters
of war in Central America, there was speculation about the loss of the
strategic importance of the Caribbean Basin and rejection of the opera-
tional validity of the interoceanic and Atlantic routes, determining geo-
political factors for the area (Griffith, 1997: 76). The dramatic events of
September 11, 2001, discarded any remaining doubts and marked the
definite approach to the Caribbean Basin as part of the return to the old
doctrines on US national security (Rosas, 2006: 47). Following the ideas
expressed by this author, that return implied
●● Drug trafficking
●● Arms trafficking, without ruling out those of mass destruction or
at least the components to build them
●● Organized crime
●● Money laundering
●● Human trafficking
●● Illegal immigration
●● Transport of nuclear waste
●● International networks of robbery, kidnapping, and smuggling of
vehicles
●● Natural disasters
The United States and the Security Agenda l 43
●● Political corruption
●● Insurgent terrorism in Colombia
●● Continuity of the conflict with the socialist government of Cuba,
included as terrorist country in the Black List of the Department
of State
●● Haiti, a failed state
●● Venezuela, an example of “radical populism” in the area
●● Rise of drug trafficking networks in Mexico
●● Prison for terrorists, real and assumed, at the Guantanamo Naval
Base, Cuba
violent activities. These gangs are very often, though not always, associ-
ated with a specific territory and their relations with the community
can be both threatening and protective, easily shifting from one role to
another. (Rodgers, 2007)
Due to their control over certain territories, these gangs are involved
in all types of crimes, so they mix with drug and arms dealers, human
traffickers, government corruption, international gangs of car thefts,
and kidnappings, as well as with an uncontrolled illegal migration, very
vulnerable to this huge criminal universe.
The issue of the maras reflects opposing opinions. While it is true
that Central American gangs have taken over important territorial
areas within those nations, José Luis Rocha, making a critical analy-
sis of the issue, says that the links of gangs and organized crime net-
works have been overstated, and that associating their origins solely to
deportations from the United States has also criminalized migration
(Rocha, 2006: 2).
Moreover, the maras have not only been criminalized, but have also
raised speculation about understanding them as a new type of insur-
gency in Central America. Post 9/11, with the comprehensive global
review of all probable threats that hung over the United States, the
concerns about the maras became stronger. The New York Times and
some specialized publications such as Strategic Studies Institute and
Foreign Affairs, published articles whose common denominator was
how maras had become a threat to US national security. Terms such as
“new Central American insurgency” and “threat to Central America”
were used (Bruneau, 2005). Such epithets were officially coined in April
2005, with a public statement by Anne Aguilera, anti-narcotics affairs
officer of the Department of State (Rodgers, 2007).
The issue of the maras has many edges for analysis. While, on the
one hand, the United States returned these gang members to their
countries of origin, on the other, it should be asked whether they were
already gang members when they entered US territory, or whether their
intention was to accompany or help their families start a new life, which
they never could. Therefore, another perspective of analysis would start
by wondering what options they had in the United States so as not to
become criminals, thus opening another hypothesis: rather than deport-
ing, the United States “exported” the problem to Central America, to
countries where governance has not been actually achieved, due to the
effects of the wars in the eighties and the prevailing critical socioeco-
nomic situation.
The United States and the Security Agenda l 47
The maras are like a guerrilla force to demobilize that did not achieve
their political objectives. They are without any idea on how to reinte-
grate socially; a process of reduction of the armed forces that included
purging of troops accused of war crimes, many of them without crimi-
nal charges and selling their military skills to the most diverse causes;
the harmful force with which the gang members of Los Angeles were
deported, and their logical rejection to any establishment; a labor mar-
ket extremely depressed, like the economies of their countries where the
easiest way was to get involved in drugs, arms, people, and stolen cars
trafficking; in short, societies where there were more job offers on the
side of drug trafficking and organized crime, and where security was
more appreciated within a gang than believing in authorities disavowed
by the prevailing high levels of corruption.
The neoliberal governments were responsible for worsening this tragic
situation, fulfilling one of the main requirements of the Washington
Consensus, the drastic reduction of state management to further hand-
cuffing any governance. The diagnosis can be seen in this comment by
Craig Deare:
the global scenario in which the United States defends its national secu-
rity today.
The bibliography consulted is mainly focused in countries and regions
outside the Western Hemisphere, such as Afghanistan and Somalia or
the Middle East, but the definition of the threats can be applied to the
transnational actors in the Caribbean Basin due to their similarities.
Thus, for example, it recognizes the existence of “ungoverned spaces”
in Mexico controlled by the drug cartels in the north, south, and parts
of the Gulf States; in territories within Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Honduras under the control of gangs; and in Colombia, the areas in the
hands of the guerrilla groups and drug traffickers.
Well qualified by Anne Clunan, the concept of “ungoverned space”
is false and misleading, due to the multiple interpretations that it entails
(Clunan, 2010: 17). In this sense, following the reasoning of this author,
it should encompass all those social, political, and economic spheres
in which the state does not exercise “effective sovereignty,” does not
maintain any control, does it poorly, or is in dispute with another state
or actors.
But the area of the Caribbean Basin presents other issues in which
the sovereignty of the states shows different degrees: limited, null, or
in dispute. The problem is concerned with borders, with numerous
cases in litigation. According to Manuel Orozco, “the current bound-
ary disputes or in process can be explained by a range of issues usually
associated with undetermined boundaries, transboundary movements,
political opportunism, or unfinished agreements that lead to changes in
the position of a border” (Orozco, 2001).
Among the many borderline cases to mention, the Mexican southern
border with Guatemala and Belize stands out, noted for its extreme
“porosity,” a term that became fashionable since 9/11 referring to the
vulnerability of Canada’s and Mexico’s borders with the United States
(Jiménez and MacDonald, 2006: 550). Mexico’s southern border with
Guatemala and Belize offers multiple access points for drug trafficking,
being an area where criminal groups, arms, people, and car traffickers
operate, among other illegal activities.
Another case in point is the Nicaragua–Costa Rica border, on the San
Juan River, an area that has led to a long bilateral conflict. Although
international arbitration recently ruled in favor of Nicaragua, recogniz-
ing its right to dredge the river, military tensions are latent due to bilat-
eral tensions raised by border development projects, confusing armed
incidents and the uncontrollable crossing of drug traffickers.
50 l Carlos Oliva Campos
As fragile or failed states there have been listed those states that: cause
waves of immigration; incur in or permit the violation of human rights;
cause humanitarian disasters; protect or are unable to control state,
semi-private and non-state violence, drug trafficking and terrorism; vio-
late or are not strict in the exercise of enforcing the law and the “rule of
law”; are unable to cope with epidemics and pandemics; have difficulty
in controlling their territories and providing security to its citizens; are
The United States and the Security Agenda l 51
unable to keep the domestic legal order; lose the monopoly of legitimate
violence; are unable to provide public services; prevent social cohesion;
lack institutional strength in the administration of justice; lack institu-
tional legitimacy in any of its public powers; have collapsed as a result of
internal wars, genocide and natural disasters; are likely to secession; lack
democratic legitimacy and accountability; and are economically, politi-
cally and socially weak to overcome poverty and social exclusion. (Reyes,
2008: 48)
In the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has been taken as a “test case” coun-
try by the international community. Unfortunately, the treatment of
the problem has also stemmed from military approaches, a fact reflected
in the US interventions in 1994, 2004, and most recently in 2010, fol-
lowing a devastating earthquake that killed about 300,000 people.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the World Trade Center
were the parentheses for enclosing a long transition period. During that
period, we, who are dedicated to foreign policy as a way of life, seek a
theory or a general conceptual framework that would describe the new
threats and the appropriate response that should be given. There were
those who asserted that nations and their military forces were no lon-
ger relevant, that only the global markets linked by new technologies
accounted for. Others foresaw a future dominated by ethnic conf licts.
And some even thought that in the future, the power of the U.S. armed
forces would primarily be used in the control of civil conf licts and
humanitarian assistance. (Rice, 2002)
Since the nineties, the Southern Command plays a prominent role in the
counternarcotic strategy towards Latin America. Successive commanders
ensured the role of the Southern Command in the strategy: a bigger bud-
get, more bases and radars, and fewer restrictions from the Department
of State. In turn, together with the Southern Command headquarters
in Miami, other military posts offered their services, thus constituting
valuable assets for its external projection: The Southern Army (Fort Sam
Houston, Texas), the Twelfth Air Force (Davis-Monthan Air Force Base,
Arizona), the Southern Naval Force Command (Mayport Naval Base,
The United States and the Security Agenda l 53
The second stage opened with the events of 9/11, which led to the
recovery of the strategic dimension the basin had never lost. On a
regional-global perspective, the Caribbean Basin was reinstated in the
geostrategic maps of air and sea routes connecting the United States
with Europe, the Atlantic route, beside the role played by the inter-
oceanic corridor of Panama, all serving major military operations to
come. Moreover, the military bases in the area (Honduras, El Salvador,
Panama, Colombia), the refueling points, and monitoring radars in
Aruba, Curacao, Trinidad and Tobago, and US Virgin Islands, were
basic supports for the military forces to be deployed in these routes.
By then, the Southern Command had already accumulated enough
experience in fighting drug trafficking by the interception of ships and
aircrafts, aimed at penetrating the US territory from Colombia, Peru,
and Bolivia through the Caribbean Sea, or across Central America and
Mexico.
Between 2001 and 2005, while the first years of the antiterrorist
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the most significant security issues in the
Caribbean Basin were Haiti and Colombia. Haiti, after the breakup of
the country’s precarious democracy in 2004 and the establishment, by
mandate of the Security Council of the United Nations, of an interna-
tional military contingent, eventually came under the denomination
of United Nations Mission for Stabilization in Haiti (MINUSTAH).
Interesting about this endeavor is that besides the United States, France,
and other foreign military forces, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay
have been actively involved, thus establishing a strong Latin American
presence in the responsibility for finding solutions to the crisis of gov-
ernance affecting this country.
The Colombian case has been a strategic objective of the United
States in the region since President Ronald Reagan decreed the fight
against drug trafficking in the eighties. With the controversial Plan
Colombia 2 adopted only a year before the 9/11 attacks, the country
became a strategic priority in the Western Hemisphere, not only by
increasing the amounts of military assistance granted by Washington,
but also by the expansion of direct US presence as part of the escalating
war on drugs. Although during the period 2001–2005, both countries
54 l Carlos Oliva Campos
made progress in the destruction of poppy and heroin, they did not
achieve the expected results in the eradication of coca and marijuana,
which were relocated by growers to more intricate areas.
In the same period, progress in the war on drugs went from the
release of funds and sending of advisers, to authorizing covert opera-
tions to catch drug lords and extradite them to the United States for
trial. Moreover, while making the inventory of threats to US national
security in the region, particular attention was also paid to the politi-
cal changes that were occurring. Remember how the then chief of
Southern Command, General James T. Hill, mentioned the “radical
populism,” focusing on the process in Venezuela led by Hugo Chavez
(US SOUTHCOM, 2004).
The fact that Latin America and the Caribbean were not a priority
of US foreign policy after 9/11 attacks should not lead to the error of
thinking of a lack of policies regarding them. Latin America and the
Caribbean have a permanent place in the global matrix of US foreign
policy. It would therefore be more appropriate to say that after 9/11
attacks, US relations with the Western Hemisphere were based on a
set of specialized policies implemented by different government agen-
cies, and on the face-to-face treatment developed by experts within the
Department of State. In this context, the strengthening of military and
security views facilitated the Southern Command to assume the leading
role pursued.
Moreover, the emerging new political reality in Latin America con-
tributed to resizing of the Southern Command. The progressive elec-
toral victory of political projects, either interparty agreements or by
force of popular action, marked a shift to the Left wing in the region,
and opened a new spectrum of threats to meet and face from the pre-
dominantly military approaches post–9/11 attacks (Oliva Campos,
2009: 65–92).
The year 2006 opened a third stage in the relations between the
Southern Command and the countries of the Western Hemisphere. The
distinctive feature, which exacerbated the already complex scenario of
the Caribbean Basin, was the overflow of violence in Mexico. It all sug-
gests that the conflict broke out when the different drug cartels began
to fight each other for controlling larger internal spaces. The spiral of
violence has led to the death of tens of thousands of people—it comes
up to 50,000—the vast majority not linked to drug trafficking. The
conflict faced the cartels with state governments and their police forces,
with the federal government and, finally, due to its incompetence, with
the armed forces.
The United States and the Security Agenda l 55
At the same time, with the evident failure of the project Free Trade
Area of the Americas (FTAA), due to the strong opposition from key
countries in the region such as Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela, the US
strategy was restated from its original multilateral approach to finding
bilateral free trade agreements with selected countries.
Under this new scenario, the United States chose to clearly define
and protect its security perimeter at the southern border by signing
the Central American Free Trade Agreement plus Dominican Republic
(CAFTA), and launching the Mérida Initiative, the first of other proj-
ects to come.3
In this context, the report made by the Southern Command for the
year 2007, led by Admiral Stavridis, was of great significance. When
analyzing the document, it is interesting to notice the interpretation
offered by the Southern Command in respect to the management of
US relations with the region by combining the use of hard power with
soft power,4 and the call to address the security problems with a multi-
dimensional approach (US SOUTHCOM, 2007). The new role did not
go unnoticed to analysts. According to Craig Deare,
Eager to be more effective in its missions and more efficient with its
limited resources, the Southern Command is leading the task of inte-
grating the actions of several U.S. agencies, including the Departments
of State, Justice, Energy and National Security as well as the CIA, FBI,
DEA and USAID. At first glance, this seems quite reasonable, given that
many challenges in the region are multidimensional and transnational
and their solution requires an institutional effort. The problem is not
what is being done, but the entity that is leading the “battle.” (Deare,
2008: 30–31)
of the Fourth Fleet, based in Mayport, Florida, as the event with more
media coverage. In fact, there was also an increase in various military
exercises coordinated with different countries of the region (Ceceña
et al., 2010: 89–99) with lesser media coverage, although it was known
they were essential for implementing future military operations. The
domestic complement of such operations comes through military advi-
sory and the inclusion of the armed forces of the region in different
training programs (Lindsay-Poland, 2011).
The implementation of the new operational philosophy was expe-
dited in January 2010. The strong earthquake in Haiti allowed the
Southern Command to carry out a military operation in accordance
with the plans designed for the area. The unfortunate event led to
strong criticism from countries like Cuba and Venezuela, whose
emphasis was on humanitarian aid, particularly the Cuban medical
brigades. However, the United States hold their own actions by justi-
fying the military presence to stabilize the internal situation and pro-
moting the selective medical aid they offered, as stated in the report
offered by General Douglas Fraser, head of Southern Command (US
SOUTHCOM, 2010).
From another perspective, the Unified Response operation repre-
sented a disproportionate deployment of troops in a country in which
MINUSTAH was already established. In any case, support should have
been with police contingents, an essential aid to cope with the resulting
chaotic social situation. In practice, US troops set out to control com-
munications and infrastructure that were still operational, specifically,
the international airport area. This was meant to control all interna-
tional aid coming into the country. The operation officially continued
until June that year.
The departure of US troops coincided with the release of the Security
Initiative for the Caribbean by the US government, with a proposed
initial contribution of US$124 million for the defense expenses of the
island community (Joint Statement of Secretary Clinton, 2010).
Finally, in accordance with the future developments that may result,
attention must be paid to a long paragraph on Iran’s relations in the
Western Hemisphere, as part of the annual report presented by General
Fraser, head of Southern Command, in March 2011. The text concludes
with the following definition:
and that our existing partnerships remain strong and functioning well.
(US SOUTHCOM, 2011)
Summarizing
The Caribbean Basin has an undeniable strategic importance to the
United States, reshaped from war to post–Cold War. This dimension
became more relevant in the international arena after the attacks of
September 11, 2001. Due to the presence of important transnational
actors established within the current global security agenda, such
as networks of drug traffickers and the gangs of Central American
Northern Triangle, in addition to other factors mentioned, the
Caribbean Basin has a high Western Hemispheric priority level for
the United States.
The trend toward conf lict scenarios is evident not only for the coun-
tries of the Caribbean Basin, but also for the rest of Latin America,
because after the alleged absence of a US Western Hemispheric strategy
and the unresolved definition of the expected new relationship with the
region, there are hidden policies that favor military options—Southern
Command—supported by a return of the armed forces to leading roles.
Such policies have in practice been supported by the Department of
State bodies, such as the US Agency for International Development
(USAID) and certain agencies within the “intelligence community”
that face the real and perceived threats to US national security in the
region.
58 l Carlos Oliva Campos
Notes
1. The Caribbean Basin comprises all island territories in the Caribbean Sea,
the Caribbean side of Mexico, Central American countries up to Panama,
and Colombia and Venezuela.
2. Plan Colombia was signed in 2000 by President William Clinton and his
Colombian counterpart, Andres Pastrana. The stated aim of the agreement
was to achieve peace in Columbia through a combination of socioeconomic
development and a crackdown on the production and trafficking of drugs.
In reality, the emphasis from the US side has been the militarization of the
US-Colombian relationship.
3. Also known as Plan Mérida or Plan Mexico, it is an international treaty
on security, signed by the United States and Mexico. Its main objective is
the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime. The main reason
for this initiative lies on the fact that the Mexican territory has become
a corridor for drugs into the United States, acknowledged by President
Felipe Calderón. Due to its relevance, it comprises the departments of State,
Justice and Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI), and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), as
well as the main governmental bodies of Mexico. The aid offered by the
United States amounts to US$1.6 billion, although by the end of 2009, the
United States had only expended US$65 million to the Central American
countries plus Dominican Republic and Haiti.
4. For Nye, soft power is based on the capacity of the United States to inf lu-
ence other states by way of its democratic and cultural values and its ideol-
ogy. See, Nye, Joseph, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of the American
Power, 1990; and Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, 2004.
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geopolítica y los viejos conflictos. In Anuario 2009. Seguridad regional en
América Latina y El Caribe, Op. Cit. p. 1.
Oliva Camposw, Carlos (2009). Estados Unidos y América Latina a principios del
siglo XXI, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad nacional de Costa Rica.
Orozco, Manuel (2001). Conflictos fronterizos en América Central: tendencias
pasadas y sucesos actuales. Pensamiento Propio, Revista bilingue de Ciencias
60 l Carlos Oliva Campos
Introduction
The militarization of relations between Mexico and the United States
has advanced the aspirations of both countries to control violence and
armed conflict, particularly in relation to drug trafficking, under
agreements involving the armed forces, police strategies, and a shared
national security doctrine. Strategies for counterterrorism and combat-
ing organized crime converge in a way that favors military action over
political remedies, and the counterterrorism doctrine inherent to the
US security strategy is intensifying the militarization of domestic poli-
cies in Mexico.
The “war” against organized crime declared by President Felipe
Calderón at the beginning of his term, which accumulated a death toll
of more than 65,000 victims between 2006 and the first quarter of
2012, has been inspired by security and defense agendas established
unilaterally by the United States. These agendas subordinate develop-
ment issues to US plans for inter-American geopolitical dominance and
violate the sovereign rights of Mexico, as they seek to promote a rela-
tionship between security, defense, and development, which depends on
the implementation of a police state.
Sogge (2010) illustrates the limits and implications of the debate sur-
rounding the failed state, because “at stake is the possible erosion of
gains made in international politics: respect for self-determination,
sovereign autonomy and collective self-esteem. But today’s talk about
‘failing states’ puts those achievements in question. It recasts sovereign
countries as frontier territories that must be policed.” This is a very dis-
turbing risk, which exacerbates the militarization of Mexican-American
bilateral relations.
Symbology
Alert
Warning
Moderated
Sustainable
groups. Finally, one can assess the degree of involvement of social play-
ers (Fund for Peace, 2011).
According to these criteria, Mexico is ranked ninety-fourth out of
177 countries (see map 4.1 where the scale descends from ungovernabil-
ity to governability) and is classified in the “warning” category since, in
the view of specialists; its risk level has increased in recent years. In the
region of North America and the Caribbean, Mexico lies almost in the
middle between Canada (168 of 177) and Haiti (5 of 177), a country
considered unstable.
Data from the Fund for Peace, shows high-risk ratings, in an increas-
ing scale where 10 is the maximum value, are associated with Mexico’s
uneven economic development (7.7) and the security apparatus (7.9).
For Leobardo S á nchez (2011), “the major risks [for Mexico] are the weak
justice system and an inefficient police-military force. These risks have
Militarization of Mexico-US Relations l 71
Casualties
1727–10134
659–1727
200–659
130–200
13–130
Notes
1. This content was originally published by SINEMBARGO.MX at the fol-
lowing Web address: http://www.sinembargo.mx/07–08–2012/325318.
2. Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity can be accessed at the follow-
ing Web address: http://www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan/?p=2726&utm_
source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cara
vanForPeace2012+%28Caravan+For+Peace+2012%29.
78 l Jaime A. Preciado Coronado and Angel L. Florido Alejo
Works Cited
Aguilar Camín, Héctor (2012, March 22). América Latina: ejércitos policías.
Milenio (Mexico). Retrieved on March 24, 2012, from https://www.milenio
.com/cdb/doc/impreso/9133490/node.
Barrios, Miguel Ángel (2012). La nueva política de defensa de los EE.UU y la
UNASUR. Retrieved on March 27, 2012, from the ALAI website, http://alainet.
org/rss.phtml.
Castells, Manuel (2009). Comunicación y poder. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Cisneros, José Luis (2011). El discurso político para justificar la llamada guerra
contra el crimen organizado. In José Luis Cisneros, Everardo Carballo, and Juan
Manuel (eds.), Violencia, crimen organizado y Estado mexicano. Mexico City:
UAM-Xochimilco. pp. 19–50.
The Fund for Peace (2011). The failed states index, 2011. Retrieved on March 24,
2012, from http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/?q=fsi.
González Amador, Roberto (2011, April 15). Con Calderón aumenta el gasto mili-
tar; se estancan salud y educación. La Jornada (Mexico). Retrieved on March 24,
2012, from http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/04/15/politica/002n1pol.
Hartung, William D. (2012). The Obama defense plan: Roadmap for continu-
ing global hegemony. Posted on January 16, 2012, on the Americas Program
of the Center for International Policy website: http://www.cipamericas.org
/archives/6170. [Consulted by the authors of this article in Spanish on the same
website under the title, El Plan de Defensa de Obama, Mapa Estratégico para
Conservar la Hegemonía Global. Retrieved from http://www.cipamericas.org/es
/archives/6229.]
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California, Chihuahua, Durango, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Veracruz.
Culiacán: Autonomous University of Sinaloa.
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dad. Retrieved on March 24, 2012, from http://www.orpas.cl/wp-content
/uploads/2011/10/Estado-D%C3%A9biles2.pdf.
Nogué Font, Joan, & Vicente Rufí, Joan (2001). Geopolítica, identidad y global-
ización. Barcelona: Ariel Geografía. pp. 112–113.
Pickard, Miguel (2008). Justificando la militarización de México. Retrieved
on January 25, 2012, from http://barbarosdelnorte.blogspot.com/2011/08/
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36309.
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Semanal (Mexico). Retrieved on March 24, 2012, from http://www.msemanal
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Militarization of Mexico-US Relations l 79
Introduction
Today there are more than 100,000 mareros or pandilleros (members of
juvenile gangs) in the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador) and according to several estimates they are
responsible for up to 70 percent of the homicides in these small nations
(see, e.g., Tobar, 2007). At the beginning of 2012, the homicide rates in
El Salvador and Guatemala were on par with or greater than those dur-
ing the civil wars that were suffered by these countries in the seventies,
eighties, and early nineties. In El Salvador, the annual homicide rate was
63 deaths for every 100,000 persons, which is five times greater than
what the World Health Organization considers to be an epidemic. The
mara members also involve themselves in many other types of crimes.
They rape young girls that refuse to be their girlfriends or whose fami-
lies resist their control in the neighborhoods or that go to the police to
give testimony regarding their crimes, they kill other young people who
refuse to join their maras or who resist their control, and they carry
out brutal war against the rival maras, often mutilating or decapitating
their victims. In recent years, their involvement in kidnappings and
drug trafficking business has been growing and increasingly, they are
working with cartels that are using Central America to transfer drugs
headed for the United States. They are confronting the government in
certain territories in Central America and defying governmental power
and sovereignty. Such actions suggest that the nature of the govern-
ment and even the system of international relations is changing. This
reality is well explained by the concept of ungoverned or contragov-
erned spaces, as developed in works such as Clunan and Trinkunas,
Ungoverned Spaces, Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened
Sovereignty (2010). It is further argued that, as highlighted by a US
Defense Department report, threats arise in “ungoverned, under-gov-
erned, misgoverned, or contested physical areas (remote, urban, mari-
time) where illicit actors can organize, plan, raise funds, communicate,
train, and operate in relative security” (Lamb, 2008, as cited in Clunan
and Trinkunas, 2010: 5). This is precisely what the maras are doing in
selected areas of the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador), and some areas inside Nicaragua, and it is
perceived as a security concern by US policy makers.
In a special edition of Small Wars and Insurgencies, edited by Robert
J. Bunker, the same author, in his article “Grand Strategic Overview:
Epochal Change and New Realities for the United States,” observes
that the international system is changing and that several authors note
“transition and change from what we considered the modern state sys-
tem (its origins roughly correlating with the Treaty of Westphalia in
1648) to some form of post-Westphalian (e.g. post nation-state) system
that is still in its early formative stage. With this transition comes the
loss of political authority, monopoly on war making, and the sovereign
lands and rights enjoyed for so many centuries by modern states. This
level of change is grand strategic and epochal in scale and ultimately
witnesses the transition from one dominant political form to another.”
And that “all sorts of power voids are produced by the changing patterns
of human existence and interaction. As these vacuums, gaps, and niches
widen, they are exploited by competing non-state entities—both subna-
tional and supranational—that gain economic, military, political, and
religious standing and, eventually, power” (Bunker, 2011: 728). And
he concludes, “If left unchecked, belligerent and politicized non-state
entities have the potential to continue to evolve into new and undesir-
able state forms organized into criminal-enclaves, cities, statelets, and
potentially even much larger networks of criminal states” (ibid.). This is
precisely what the United States wants to avoid.
And, it is in this context, that the Central American maras are operat-
ing. As a base for their operations, the maras occupy areas in all of the
large cities of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras and they are occupy-
ing more neighborhoods in Managua and some other cities in Nicaragua.
Maras, Contragoverned Spaces l 83
In these areas, the national governments are not able to exercise their
full sovereignty and often times they don’t want—or are afraid—to
confront the maras in these territories. In these areas, it is the maras
and not the government that exercise power. They are who, as Max
Weber and Vladimir Lenin said, have a monopoly on the use of vio-
lence, which suggests that they, not the national or municipal gov-
ernments, are dominant in these territories. Using their capacity for
violence and their associated capacity for coercion, they decide who
has to pay the taxes (“renta” as they say) that they impose and how
much they are going to be. Businesses have to pay, families have to
pay, people have to pay, taxies have to pay, and the busses that operate
within the neighborhood—or pass through the neighborhood—have
to pay. It might be US$5–US$10 a week, or US$50 or more per month
for a business or a family that has the economic means. And to con-
tinue and grow their power, they recruit—with force—many young
men, and sometimes women, to be new members of the mara; these are
their soldiers.
Nation-State as a Concept
In Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 26, 1933, in the Seventh
International Conference of American States, the famous Convention
on the Rights and Duties of States was signed, better known as The
Montevideo Convention of 1933. The convention establishes the defini-
tion of state, as well as its rights and obligations. The most well-known
conceptualization is that of Article 1, which establishes four character-
istic criteria of a state. These have become the standard components of
statehood in public international law. The state as a subject of interna-
tional law must satisfy the following requirements:
1. Permanent population
2. Defined territory
3. Government
4. Capacity to enter into relations with other states1
where the government did not reach before. By the 1990s and in the
early 2000s, the states have definitely overcome what was the ultimate
challenge to their power, the confrontation and territorial control of the
guerilla groups (except in parts of Colombia), in order to establish their
definitive control. But while they did this, there were other groups aris-
ing that were going to confront their governments in the heart of their
power—the capitals and the big cities of their own nations, especially
in the Northern Triangle of Central America.
The new challenges to the power of the state and national sover-
eignty consist of other groups: the gangs or, as they are called in the
Central America, the maras. These groups were formed in the seventies
and the eighties when thousands of people escaped from the violent
civil wars in Central America, leaving societies with prevalent violation
of human rights and a culture of violence. Many of them came to the
United States where they lived in poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles
and other cities. There the young Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and some
Hondurans met American gangs, such as the Crisps and the Bloods, and
other gangs that dominated many of those neighborhoods. As a form
of defense, some of them formed into their own gangs such as the Mara
Salvatrucha (MS or MS 13), or took over what used to be a Mexican
gang, such as the Eighteenth Street Gang or M18. There they learned
the tactics and practices of the American youth gangs, and learned the
culture of violence that was predominant in the neighborhoods where
those gangs operated. And it was there where they learned the concept
of “turf,” their area, their own territory. Each gang has their own blocks,
their area. This was their turf, their area, their operational base, where
they were sovereign in regard to other gangs and neighborhood groups.
And they fought to the death in order to protect it and not allow the
other gang members (i.e., the members of rival gangs), or other people
of the neighborhood, to challenge their power or control.
When their criminal actions in their gangs were documented in
their criminal records, the immigration authorities became aware of
their existence as noncitizens (residents or undocumented arrivals)
who, because of US immigration law could be deported for crimi-
nal convictions. And the gang members’ criminal acts, after they
were judged guilty, were registered in their criminal records. Once
the crimes were registered, it caused the initiation of a deportation
process. And in this manner, thousands of young Salvadoreños,
Hondureños, and Guatemaltecos were deported from the United States
due to their crimes or, alternatively even if they were picked up by the
local authorities for minor infractions such as driving without a valid
86 l Harry E. Vanden
sovereignty and territoriality after the Cold War,” Timothy Luke observes
that such processes confront the traditional state sovereignty that the
governments expect to exercise. “During the past three decades . . . many
contragovernmentalities have attacked the national-statal order, con-
testing the triangular bloc of state power, national populations, and
disciplinary discourses policing the behaviors of civil individuals/civic
collectives inside nationalized territorial containments” (Luke, 1996:
491). He adds, “These agencies have been proliferating more rapidly
since 1989.” Also, “the dissolution of territoriality and degradation of
sovereignty are not confined to Africa or the former Soviet Union” (ibid.,
493). Other areas that he mentions include not only Mexico and Brazil,
but also Guatemala. And among the examples of this nongovernmental-
ity he mentions criminal organizations and gangs: “Asian crime gangs,
Jamaican posses, Haitian toughs, Colombian drug lords and Nigerian
syndicates are all exercising extraordinary levels of quasi-legitimate
coercive and commercial power in hundreds of housing projects, poor
neighborhoods and city halls [even] all over the United States” (Luke,
1996: 493–494).
Max J. Manwaring, in his publication, “A contemporary challenge
to state sovereignty: Gangs and other illicit criminal organizations,”
observes, “A government’s failure to extend a legitimate sovereign pres-
ence throughout its national territory leaves a vacuum in which gangs,
drug cartels, leftists insurgents, the political and narco-right, and the
government itself may all compete for power. In that regard, ample evi-
dence clearly demonstrates that Central American, Mexican, Caribbean
and South American governments’ authority and presence have dimin-
ished over large portions of those regions” (Manwaring, 2007: 9). And
he goes on to note that these territories are governed by gangs and other
actors who operate “where there is an absence or only a partial pres-
ence of state institutions” (ibid.). It should also be noted that the US
Department of Justice recently classified the MS 13 as a transnational
criminal organization (TCO).
And in order to emphasize the challenge to the sovereignty and tra-
ditional government, John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker in the sum-
mary of their article, “Rethinking Insurgency: Criminality, Spirituality,
and Societal Warfare in the Americas” (Sullivan and Bunker, 2011),
observe,
Note
1. See the Montevideo Convention on the Right and Duties of States, 1933,
which states, inter alia, in Article 1, that the state as a person of inter-
national law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent
population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter
into relations with the other states.
92 l Harry E. Vanden
Works Cited
Works cited are drawn from Ilene Frank and Harry E. Vanden, MARAS: Gangs
in Central America. A Bibliography. September 4, 2007, last update August 15,
2011. http://www.box.net/shared/m267o3f1is.
Bodin, Jean (1583). Les six livres de la République. Paris.
Boraz, S. C., & Bruneau, T. C. (2006, November–December). Are the maras over-
whelming governments in Central America? Military Review, 86(6), 36–40.
Available at http://www.ccmr.org/public/library_file_proxy.cfm/lid/5553.
Bunker, Robert J. (2011). Grand strategic overview: Epochal change and new reali-
ties for the United States. Special Issue of Small Wars and Insurgencies, Criminal
Insurgency in Mexico and the Americas 22(5), 728–741.
Clunan, Anne L., & Trinkunas, Harold A. (2010). Ungoverned Spaces, Alternatives
to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty. Stanford, CA: Stanford
Security Studies.
Lamb, Robert D. (2008). Ungoverned Areas and the Threats from Safe Havens.
Final report of the Ungoverned Areas Project. Washington, DC: Office of the
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Department of Defense.
Lakshmanan, Indira A. R. (2006, April 17). Gangs roil Central America. The
Boston Globe, National Edition.
Luke, Timothy W. (1996). Governmentality and contragovernmentality:
Rethinking sovereignty and territoriality after the Cold War. Political Geography,
15(6/7), 491–507.
Manwaring, M. G. (2007). A Contemporary challenge to state sovereignty: Gangs
and other illicit transnational criminal organizations in Central America,
El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, and Brazil. U. S. Army War College, Strategic
Studies Institute. Available at http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/
[Also available at http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA475687&L
ocation=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf; ISBN 1–58487–334–5].
Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, 1933.
Sullivan, John P., & Bunker, Robert J. (2011). Rethinking insurgencies: Criminality,
spirituality, and society welfare in the Americas. Numero especial de Small Wars
and Insurgencies, Criminal Insurgency in Mexico and the Americas, 22(5),
742–763.
CHAPTER 6
Introduction
The primary purpose of this chapter will be to provide a comprehensive
analysis of the Central American region with particular attention to
how it is seen in the twenty-first century by the United States through
its contemporary focus on how ungoverned spaces and failed states rep-
resent a threat to the region’s stability and by implication to the national
security of the United States in the wake of the events of September 11,
2001. This chapter will offer a brief historic context of the rise of the
Central America nations in order to present the current situation in the
twenty-first century in which some territorial and maritime spaces exist
as ungoverned and where some governments almost become failed states.
In this general panorama of Central America, we see that the traditional
influence of the United States comes into play to safeguard its economic
interests and to maintain docile national governments subordinate to its
politics of imperial control. We will pay special attention to the case of
Honduras where the coup d’état in June 2009 broke the constitutional
order to favor a new government submissive to Washington.
Country Population
Guatemala 14,533,035
Honduras 7,601,144
El Salvador 7,185,817
Nicaragua 5,870,577
Costa Rica 4,587,661
Panamá 3,534,410
“Guatemala and Nicaragua are the countries with the lowest Human
Development Index (HDI: Position 131 and 129, respectively), while
Panama and Costa Rica are located in higher positions (58 and 69
respectively)” (CA, 2011: 8). These HDI indicators are in a direct rela-
tion with the poverty situation of the region, which should be noted
when considering each particular country “in terms of poverty, Central
America is one of the regions where the poor in Latin American are
located. It is true that in Latin America the percentage of people in pov-
erty rises to 33.1 percent, but in Central America this percentage rises
to 50.8 percent. The greater percentage of people in poverty is located
in the countries of the CA4, with Honduras at the top (68.9 percent),
followed by Nicaragua (61.9 percent), Guatemala (54.8 percent) and El
Salvador (47.9 percent). Costa Rica and Panama are below the Central
American medium (18.9 percent and 25.8 percent respectively)” (CA,
2011: 5). The facts presented by in Central America in Figures (CA,
2011) are even more alarming in relation to poverty than the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP) in table 6.2 (2010 and 2011).
Panama and especially Costa Rica stand out because of a constant
migration from Nicaragua. The rest of Central America experiences
emigration as poverty, violence, and other factors push people toward
the north (Mexico and the United States) as they look for better oppor-
tunities in more developed countries. The unique solution proposed by
North America has been the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
that has targeted the region through the bilateral treaties with the
United States known as the Central America Free Trade Agreement
(CAFTA). It is about a model of globalization that has swept up over
40 million people in the geographical waist of the America that has
Central America l 97
achieved economic growth, but has not surmounted the region’s prob-
lematic great inequality in the distribution of wealth. Another interest-
ing comparative example is the average income per capita in relation
to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); it offers a great contrast among
the different countries, pointing again at Costa Rica and Panama as
those with greater income while Honduras and Nicaragua have the
lowest; the average annual income per capita in Central America is
US$3,199.20, which is considerably lower that the Latin American aver-
age of US$6,975.60 (see table 6.3).
Finally, we cannot avoid highlighting the deteriorating general secu-
rity and the fact that the Central American region is experiencing a
spiral of violence. As Ruben Aguilar observes, “The most violent region
of the world is Latin America, in particular Central America. In the for-
mer, the median crime rate for every 100,000 inhabitants is 25 and 44
in the latter. In 2006 it was nine in Mexico and in 2011 it reached 18.
The World Health Organization establishes that a rate of ten murders
for every 100,000 inhabitants is considered an epidemic, one of 20 as
a serious situation and above 30 as an extreme. That is the condition of
Central America. Violence is nothing new to the region; it has always
been present, but its growth has been exponential these recent years. In
Honduras there are 82.1 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants; in El
Salvador 66; in Belize 41.7, and 21.6 in Guatemala. The exceptions are
Nicaragua, with just 13.2 and Costa Rica with 11.3 rates that are even
below Mexico, according to the UN” (Aguilar, 2012; emphasis origi-
nal). In this aspect, the most extreme area of Central America is located
in Honduras and El Salvador; however, the case of Nicaragua draws
98 l Ignacio Medina Núñez
Liberation Front (FMLN) was for some years the second political force
in the country until it finally won the 2009 presidential elections with
its candidate Mauricio Funes.
Nonetheless, we should highlight the particular case of Panama: the
traditional Right openly subordinated to the United States after the
invasion of December 20, 1989, governed the country until 2004, when
a Centrist tendency with Martin Torrijos (son of the General Omar
Torrijos, who was able to obtain an important signature on the Torrijos-
Carter treaty over the sovereignty transfer of the canal from the North
Americans to the Panamanians) won the presidential elections; but there
was a new change in the 2009 elections when the business-backed Right
put the new president Ricardo Martinelli in power. He reaffirmed his
association with the neoliberal model and the alliance with the United
States.
Having established the social, political, and economic framework
for the Central American region in the first decade of the twenty-first
century, we can now turn to an analysis of how the region is viewed
in the national security analysis of the United States with particular
emphasis on how it falls within the framework of “ungoverned spaces
and failed states.” As outlined in the introduction to this volume, the
idea of “ungoverned spaces” and “failed states” have been in the broad
lexicon of international relations terminology for many years, but only
in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, did they become cen-
tral to the foreign policy thinking of US authorities. It is important to
place these two concepts in a wider framework of US foreign policy
perspectives.
According to Vanaik (2010), in order to promote the world hege-
mony of the United States, six ideological indicators can be used that
can justify its imperial intervention: “The global war against terrorism,
the weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands, failed states, the
need for compulsory external humanitarian intervention, the need to
change a government in the name of democracy, and the war against
drugs” (Vanaik, 2010: 10; emphasis original). In fact, in relation to the
topic of the failed states, wanting to indicate also the failure of diverse
national states, since the 2005 an index has been carried out by Fund
for Peace and Foreign Policy, where, year by year, nations around the
planet are ranked from the perspective of the failed state, utilizing the
following 12 indicators as variables:
Guatemala 70 79.4
El Salvador 93 74.4
Honduras 75 78.5
Nicaragua 69 79.6
Costa Rica 139 49.7
Panama 132 56.1
Another problem that we will not explain here, but which also should
be noted, is the case of Guatemala-Mexico border, where there is a con-
tinuous migration of Central Americans seeking Mexican territory as
a gateway to reach the United States. This border is the focus of the
chapter by Daniel Villafuerte.
Specially, the cases located in the Caribbean Sea (Honduras-
Nicaragua, Colombia-Honduras-Nicaragua, and Nicaragua–Costa
Rica) are maritime and geographical spaces conducive to drug traffick-
ing not only because of the lack of capacity of national institutions for
their defense but especially because of the lack of exact delimitation of
a maritime boundary. In contrast, in the Pacific Ocean in the Gulf of
Fonseca, there are international institutions that have helped with the
recognition of national sovereignty on several islands there,3 admitting
also the recognition of common rights on the gulf belonging to the
three neighboring countries (El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua),4
in a situation where war and military conflicts between insurgents and
government seem left behind.
Focusing on the three cases in the Caribbean, their status as naviga-
tion space for the distribution of drugs was intensified in the late 1980s
when “Colombia became the center of the finished product and export
base for supplying over 70 percent of the cocaine entering the United
States” (Garcia Hoyos, 2007: 122). The estimates for the overall numbers
follow: “The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
estimates 1,100 tons of annual production of cocaine. All is produced
in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. From that total, about 170 tons of pure
cocaine is seized in the producing countries. That going to foreign mar-
kets is some 930 tons” (Aguilar, 2012). From this, annually about 500
tons are allocated to the United States, the main consumer. “Since 2006,
according to the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency], 90 percent of the
cocaine entering the United States does by way of Mexico—50 percent
Central America l 103
by land from Central America, 30 percent by sea and 10 percent by
air. The predominance of this corridor began in 2000. The Colombian
cartels preferred the Caribbean, used since the late 1970s . . . In 2003,
the proportion was 77 percent through Central America-Mexico and
22 percent through the Caribbean” (Aguilar, 2011). The numbers of the
US International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) for 2012 are
worse: “The United States estimates that approximately 95 percent of
the cocaine leaving South America for the United States moves through
the Mexico and Central America corridor” (INCSR, 2012).
The same is confirmed by the United Nations: according to the
UNODC (2012), the majority of Colombian cocaine is transported
into the United States using land and sea areas of Central America and
Mexico. But the US report is more specific and directly points to the
importance of one country: “Honduras remained a primary transship-
ment point for cocaine destined for the United States in 2011 . . . the
United States estimated that 79 percent of all cocaine smuggling flights
departing South America first land in Honduras” (INCSR, 2012).
Maybe some ideas about the ineffectiveness of some states’ control
over their own territory may apply particularly to Honduras, where
not only the democratic order has been broken with the coup d´état in
June 2009 but mainly because the government is unable to have insti-
tutions capable of guaranteeing a minimum stability, particularly in
some territories that seem ungoverned: “Criminal organizations oper-
ating in Honduras are ruthless, well-armed, well-funded, and logisti-
cally adept.” Conversely, the Honduran government “lacked expertise,
resources, and a complete legal framework to effectively counter the
threat” (INCSR, 2012).
In the case of the Republic of Nicaragua, we also found an important
drug transshipment point for South American cocaine flowing to North
America, and a country that also lacked resources and a lack of control
over state institutions, especially in the East Coast autonomous regions.
The drug, weapons, and money trafficking organizations have come to
establish clandestine laboratories, warehouses, and safe houses, getting
support in many instances from local population groups that offer logis-
tical support, with increasing use of women and children for transpor-
tation. The Nicaraguan police do their work with limited resources, “in
2011, Nicaragua’s civilian and military law enforcement units disrupted
18 DTO [Drug Trafficking Organizations] operations throughout the
country, including operations in the strategically important autono-
mous regions of the Caribbean coast. Security forces dismantled DTO
logistical structures; seized drugs, currency and small arms; destroyed
104 l Ignacio Medina Núñez
In this border conflict, it remains quite clear because of the role played
by the United States that there is no place for a neutral referee especially
because there are different political tendencies in confrontation by two
different kinds of governments: “One simple issue stands out: the two
countries’ alliances. Costa Rica’s government is aligned with U.S. impe-
rialism. Nicaragua is a member of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples
of Our America or ALBA, which includes Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia,
Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and
Antigua and Barbuda. The U.S. State Department considers ALBA hos-
tile to U.S. interests” (Joubert-Ceci, 2010).
Another particular element of permanent conflict that we must add
in the case of the Nicaragua–Costa Rica border is the problem of migra-
tion of varying intensity, which is comparable to other more troubled
cases in the world such as the Mexico-US border or that of Germany-
Turkey or that of the Mediterranean sea between Africa and the south
of Europe. This conflict represents two different realities for the same
neighborhood. In economic development, we have seen the distance
between Nicaragua and Costa Rica in the 2011 HDI caused a massive
symbolic attraction from one side with better standard of living (Costa
Rica) relating to the inhabitants of the Nicaraguan side, which is a more
unstable and poorer country. Since the year 2000, the census of Costa
Rica found 226,374 Nicaraguan origin people inside the national terri-
tory (Castro V., 2002). This is a number that has been rising, reaching
nearly half a million people years later (although some extreme analysts
imagine 800,000 and even 1 million Nicaraguans in Costa Rica): in
spite of any exaggerations, “the analysts and members of the commu-
nity Academic that investigate the migration reckon that in the peak
106 l Ignacio Medina Núñez
of the year in which there are more Nicaraguan people in Costa Rica
(January–May), there should be 400–450 thousand” (Envío, 2006).
Military Assistance
The military assistance to the Central American region can be a good
indicator of the course of North American politics, which now utilizes
two key arguments: first, to maintain the economic covenants of CAFTA
promoting free trade that allows the continuing extraction of natural
resources from the region and selling US manufactured products and,
second, putting great importance in the international arena on the fight
against drug trafficking that, being a real problem, has been handled
with a US strategy that does not diminish US domestic consumption.
Instead, it tries to stop the supply by means of unusual violence through
giving equipment, training, and North American weapons, with most
of the deaths occurring outside of the United States. In the Central
American area, particularly on the Caribbean Coast, the ungoverned
spaces become a good place for the illegal commerce of drugs going to
the United States and Europe. For this reason, there is a special focus
on North American politics:
In the context of new political forces in all Latin America, with the
growth of the drug trafficking, the organized crime and violence, espe-
cially in the three Central American countries (Honduras, El Salvador,
and Guatemala) and Mexico, the North American government is rede-
fining its security politics in Central America. There is not a completely
new politics, but a continuation and redefinition of politics already
in practice, such as (i) Plan Colombia; and (ii) The Mérida Initiative,
both centered on regional security, the battle against terrorism and the
strengthening of the military and security forces. At present, since the
North American administration has spoken about the Central America
Plan when William Brownfield, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, visited the region
in February 16 2012. This Plan would follow on the heals of the Central
America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI).5 (CESPAD, 2012: 9)
Table 6.5 Military and police assistance from the United States to Central America 2008–
2013 (US$ millions)
Source: http://justf.org/All_Grants_Country.
Conclusions
Through contemporary history, we see that Central America, after
almost two centuries of independence, has yet to define with preci-
sion its borders and, besides, various countries—very near to the status
of failed states—are shown to have weak state institutions and diverse
maritime and territorial spaces that are ungoverned. If there are states
without solid institutions and they do not come to control the total-
ity of their territory, the border conflicts, then, are such that they can
cause open disputes or political-military clashes related to the possible
appropriation of natural resources. Such spaces also can be contested for
their strategic value in international drug trafficking, especially if they
are on the Central American route used to transport illegal substances
to the United States. The presence of the neighboring states is respected
not as a possible contribution or the basis for integration action but as
a potential danger that fans the nationalism of the government and
of the nation’s inhabitants. The reality is that such real factors move
the nations away from the integration processes. The US government
plans its intervention perfectly in all this context of national confron-
tation with its own economic interests, which protect such a capitalist
framework through very uneven commercial exchange that continues to
prompt discord among Latin American nations as Rightist tendencies
are supported with enormous resources as they battle against Leftist
governments.
There have been border conflicts that have ended in war as occurred
between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969; there were also military
clashes during the first phase of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua
(1979–1990), when the Nicaraguan counterrevolution supported by the
United States operated from Honduran territory and Costa Rica. There
has also been police involvement in the maritime dispute in the Gulf of
Central America l 109
Notes
1. During mala, the Spanish Colony, this Captaincy General, was also called
the Kingdom of Guatemala, and was divided into five provinces in 1821:
Ciudad Real de Chiapas, Guatemala, San Salvador, Comayagua, and
Nicaragua–Costa Rica. With the exception of Chiapas, which became on
September 14, 1821, the nineteenth state of the Mexican Union through a
popular plebiscite, the rest of the provinces became the Federal Republic of
Central America in 1824.
2. It is about a tendency in Latin America, especially after the results of the
presidential electoral processes of 2005–2008, in which under the same elec-
toral democratic norms we find the rise of Leftist governments. An outlook
of this regional tendency is found in the book of Ignacio Medina Núñez
(2009) Presidential Elections in Latin America: The Ascent of an Heterogeneous
Left, published by elaleph, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3. Nowadays, there is recognition of state sovereignty over most of the islands
in the gulf, but there are some unresolved issues such as the Conejo Island.
4. This was a decision from the International Court of Justice in The Hague in
1992, which was accepted by the three countries: a shared sovereignty over
the waters of the Gulf of Fonseca.
5. The same source says that CARSI project is more ambitious than pure drug
control: the target being “i) Create safe streets for the citizens of the region,
ii) disrupt the movement of criminals and contraband within and between
the Central American countries, iii) support the development of strong gov-
ernment, capable and responsible in Central America; iv) Re-establish effec-
tive state presence and security in communities at risk, and, v) Promoting
higher levels of security coordination and cooperation and the rule of law
among the countries of the region.” As clearly pointed by Robinson Salazar
in various studies, these measures in the real life have led to broader actions:
the assassination of Leftist leaders or leaders of social movements that chal-
lenge state policies, and advising local security forces in the counterinsur-
gency strengthening governments related to the designs of the empire.
Works Cited
Aguilar Valenzuela, Rubén (2012, March 6). Violencia en Centroamérica. En
Animal Político: http://bit.ly/w9swy1.
Aguilar Valenzuela, Rubén (2011, December 13). La ruta de la cocaína a Estados
Unidos. En Animal Político. http://bit.ly/sMB9gX.
CA (2011). Centroamérica en cifras. Datos de seguridad alimentaria nutricio-
nal y agricultura familiar. Diciembre de 2011. Ediciones de la FAO (PESA
Centroamérica), Iniciativa América Latina y Caribe sin hambre, AECID, Unión
Europea, PRESANCA II, PRESISAN, SICA.
Central America l 111
UNODC (2012). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): http:
//www.unodc.org/.
Vanaik, Achin (ed.) (2010). Casus Belli: cómo los Estados Unidos venden la guerra.
Edición del Transnational Institute, eBooks, con el permiso de Interlink
Publishing Group, Massachusetts, Estados Unidos. Ver el capítulo escrito
por Achin: “Terrorismo político y el proyecto imperial estadounidense.”
pp. 100–122.
CHAPTER 7
Introduction
Since the beginning of President Barack Obama’s administration in
2009, a series of summits and agreements have been organized owing
to the concern over violence and security in Central America, particu-
larly in Guatemala. The year 2011 was especially significant regarding
Central American security issues. In April 2011, the creation of two
military bases in Chiapas, a Mexican state bordering Guatemala, was
announced. In May, the Organization of American States (OAS) secre-
tary general issued an alert on the seriousness of criminality prevailing
in Central America and its possibilities to worsen if criminal organi-
zations continued to establish their operations in this region, where
countries are weaker and smaller compared to Mexico and Colombia.
On June 22 and 23, the Central American Security Conference was
held in Guatemala; 110 representatives attended the conference, among
them Spain, the United States, Canada, the OAS, the World Bank, and
the Inter-American Bank figured prominently. These events were not
only significant but also emblematic of a larger picture of wider security
issues.
This article will discuss the strategic significance that the Central
American region has for US homeland security. In a more specific way,
it is the border between Guatemala and Mexico that will be examined.
This border has been declared as an ungovernable area by the US gov-
ernment. It is a region where criminal organizations have been operating
for many years, and it is these operations that are ultimately perceived
as threatening US homeland security. The Mexico-Guatemala border
has witnessed important population displacements due to different
events; one of these was the civil war that occurred in the early 1980s
when people crossed into Mexico to escape repression at the hands
of the Guatemala government. After the peace agreements that were
signed in 1996, a different transnational migratory wave took place in
the area of persons seeking better economic prospects in the United
States. This phenomenon was considered threatening for US home-
land security by the American government. Also, during the past years,
the growth of drug trafficking and weapon smuggling have become
part of this phenomenon, a situation that has created great concerns
in the Mexican and US governments. Right after the September 11,
2001, attacks, Washington, DC, decided to restructure its homeland
security system and the Mexican and Central American governments
were forced to reinforce surveillance all along their borders. The south
border of Mexico and the northern Guatemalan counterpart became an
important issue in the agenda of the American government. However,
this fact contrasts significantly with the weaknesses shown by local
institutions that have been invaded by such criminal organizations and
therefore limits the ability of both Mexico and Guatemala to meet the
expectations of its neighbors to the north.
dealers in the Biosfera Maya Reserve, located in Petén. The press release
mentioned the actions performed by the Guatemalan army in this area;
for example, the destruction of an illegal landing strip that was used
by drug dealers to land light aircraft loaded with cocaine coming from
South America. The infantry captain in charge of the patrol declared to
the news agency that they had been in the jungle for 28 days when they
were able to spot the mentioned landing strip. The colonel in charge
of the “Fuerza de Tarea Interinstitucional del Norte” stated, “This is a
small blow to drug trafficking in terms of money, especially when we
are referring to guys that can afford to set fire to their aircraft right
after downloading their drug cargos . . . what really matters is that we
are destroying their landing strips” (Cuarto Poder, June 4, 2006). This
area was described as ungovernable by the then chief of the US South
Command, General Bantz Craddock.
integration. It is the third country with the biggest inequality in the world
in terms of income distribution and therefore it is a land of contrasts; it
has big natural and cultural resources and approximately 58 percent of
its population lives in poverty. 2
The United States and the Guatemalan government have very close bilat-
eral affairs and they have collaborated in many areas to strengthen the
governmental institutions of Guatemala, in order to develop a technical
capacity. However, in 2010, the security situation continues to worsen.
The permanent incursion of Mexican cartels in the border regions,
including the Zetas, led to a series of violent confrontations among rival
organizations. Guatemala is also being hounded by a group of transna-
tional delinquency, including human and weapons trafficking and an
increase in juvenile gangs.4
are several more reasons that justify its implementation. One of these
is the complex sociopolitical aspect that had turned this large area into
an “ungovernable” region, mainly because of the presence of different
groups: human traffickers, illegal occupants, archaeological looters,
illegal loggers, and more recently, drug traffickers. Several threats have
been identified in the Mayan Biosphere5 by the Guatemalan govern-
ment, among which the following stand out: (1) fires; (2) oil exploration
and exploitation; (3) agriculture; (4) raising livestock; (5) incompatible
infrastructure; (6) irregular (unplanned) human settlements; and (7)
ungovernability. The National Council for Protected Areas (CONAP)
is an organization in charge of the management of the national reserve,
but unfortunately it only has 30 percent of the necessary personnel to
operate and this situation prevents it from stemming the advancement
of deforestation, invasions, and organized crime (refer to Peace Brigades
International, 2007: 6).
On the other hand, in June 2004, President Alfonso Portillo’s admin-
istration signed an agreement with Washington, DC, allowing the US
Navy to send marines to Guatemala. Likewise, in June and July 2004,
the Guatemalan government signed several agreements with the US
government within the framework of the cooperation program called
New Horizons 2004 that solidified security cooperation between the
two governments (Bauer, 2004).
As we shall see further on, the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001, created renewed interest on the part of the US government with
respect to Latin American borders, particularly the border between
Guatemala and Mexico. This happened because the situation of the
northern Guatemalan border is very complex (every border depart-
ment has some specific problems, although they all share some common
issues). As an example of this, we can mention that there is not a solid
presence of the Guatemalan government in the region. For instance,
one of the most complex situations takes place in the department of
Petén, with several problems occurring simultaneously. It is a very big
territory and its total area is approximately 36,000 square kilometers. It
not only has the country’s lowest population density but also has plenti-
ful natural resources—tropical rainforest, oil, biodiversity, and water.
During the civil war, it witnessed a series of battles between the guer-
rilla and the forces of the Guatemalan army.6 In addition, this depart-
ment has been a region where a displaced population, victims of the
civil war, has lived for several years. Another aspect is what can be
called “the agricultural colonization” of its fertile lands, and last but
not least, is the fact that several transnational companies7 are operating
120 l Daniel Villafuerte Solís
consider the right of the lands of the communities and the communal
referendum.
When it comes to the Central American region, for example, the imple-
mentation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR)
was justified post September 11, 2001, as a security issue when in real-
ity it was an economic treaty long advocated by the United States
(Villafuerte, 2006). Its successful passage was a crucial political victory
124 l Daniel Villafuerte Solís
for the Bush administration following the defeat of its broader proposal
for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
The weight of commerce with the small Central American economies
in the American market represents a very poor percentage; that is why
it does not match the excessive interest of the American government in
approving a commercial agreement with the region. Nevertheless, the
US government promoted the idea that the Central American countries
would have big opportunities to become part of the world’s biggest mar-
ket; and by the way, these nations were already taking advantage of the
existing Caribbean Basin Initiative.
In May 2005, a particularly important meeting was held in
Washington, DC, headed by Donald Rumsfeld, the American secre-
tary of defense, and the following presidents: Henrique Bolaños from
Nicaragua; Ricardo Maduro from Honduras; Abel Pacheco from Costa
Rica; Oscar Beger from Guatemala; Antonio Saca from El Salvador; and
Leonel Fernández from the Dominican Republic. During the breakfast
meeting with the Central American and Dominican presidents, the US
defense secretary focused on the high levels of violence, drug trafficking
and extreme poverty that threaten the stability of the isthmus. Also dur-
ing the meeting, Rumsfeld mentioned that Guatemala was a key area of
transit to the North American drug market. The meeting was held as
part of a campaign to promote the Free Trade Treaty between the region
and the United States, in which the secretary of defense urged those
countries that had not ratified the treaty to do so as soon as possible
(Prensa Libre, May 12, 2005).
Another example of the significance of the security issue in the
agenda of the US government is the expansion of North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into the Alliance for Security and Prosperity
Partnership of North America (ASPAN), which was signed in March
2005 by the presidents of Mexico and the United States and the prime
minister of Canada.11 Some years before, in 2002, the US government
had approved the program called Intelligent Borders, which implied
a series of commitments with Mexico regarding border security that
includes the border between Mexico and Guatemala.
The objectives of the ASPAN are to promote the prosperity of each of
the countries, regarding economy, trade, society, and safety. The joint
statement of the presidents says,
our security and our prosperity are mutually dependent and complemen-
tary, and it will ref lect our conviction in freedom, the economic oppor-
tunities and the values, thorough democratic institutions. Likewise, the
Alliance will contribute to consolidate our efforts, the North America
framework, so that we can face the economy and security challenges, and
promote the great potential of our peoples by considering the existing
regional disparities and increasing opportunities for everyone.12
the Mexican attorney general, Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar and the district
attorney, Mariano Herrán Salvati.
The attorney general’s office of Mexico, the secretariat of the Interior
of Mexico, the Mexican Army and the Mexican Navy, the Fiscal and
Federal Police, the secretary of the Treasury, and the secretary of
Communication and Transportation, were all part of the Closing of
the Southern Border operation. The purpose of this operation was to
stop the trafficking of drugs and chemical precursors in Mexican terri-
tory bound for the United States. A few days before the September 11
attacks, the failure of the operation was recognized by the government
and to replace it, the operation called Plan South was put into effect,
later to be incorporated into ASPAN.
From the late 1980s, the drug trafficking issue was an important part
of the security agenda of the US administration but its approach began
to shift after September 11, 2001, from a primary focus on the Andean
region to a strategy that increasingly focused on both the Andean region
and Central America. It used to be said that Guatemala and Belize were
no longer “bridge” countries through which drugs were transported, but
that they had become warehouses where Colombian cocaine was being
stored. A report issued by the Narcotics Affairs Section of the American
embassy in Guatemala in 2002, described that country as follows:
The corruption, the changes of police personnel, the poor leadership and
the lack of resources continue to haunt the police. Since the new admin-
istration inauguration, by the beginning of 2000, four different State
Secretaries have been appointed, seven National Civil Police Directors
(PNC) and eleven directors of the DOAN and SAIA. (NAS, 2002)
Despite the problems that have been referred to, the US government
had the intention to continue actions to fight drug trafficking:
these actions have taken place because of the arrival of Mexican drug
traffickers and to avoid the escape of those responsible for the killing
in the Village Agua Zarca, Santa Ana Huista, and Huehuetenango.”
Subsequently, the journal states, “The Mexican authorities sealed the
municipalities of Frontera Comalapa, La Trinitaria, Las Margaritas,
Motozintla and Maravilla Tenejapa, Mexico, near Agua Zarca” (Prensa
Libre, December 3, 2008; emphasis original). These events, known as
the “narco apuesta,” the narco bet, happened because two Mexican
and Guatemalan criminal groups made a million dollar wager over a
horse race; although the popular versions indicate that the Zetas set
up the other criminal group, qualified opinions consider that this was
a tactic used by this criminal group to gather all people they intend to
victimize.
Another outstanding event took place on December 8, 2010, when
four people were murdered, among which was a woman, presumably a
Mexican citizen. The events happened in the municipality of Nentón,
Department of Huehuetenango. The journal Prensa Libre (December 9,
2000) announced “an armed commando blocked their way and shot
them using AK-47 and M-16 assault rifles, the passengers died inside
the motor vehicle that was destroyed by fire. Witnesses declared that
200 shells were left in the scene.” The attack took place a few kilometers
away from Agua Zarca, where the 2008 killings happened.
Violence in Guatemala has reached historical levels; some say that
the current events are more violent that those during the civil war. This
situation made President Alvaro Colom declare a state of siege in the
Department of Alta Verapaz on December 19, 2010, and eventually
the same happened on May 16, 2011, in Petén (Acuerdo Gubernativo
[Government Agreement] 4—2011); the same could also happen in the
Department of San Marcos.
As a matter of fact, on December 19, 2010, the state of siege was
declared in the border Department of Alta Verapaz. This measure
was issued under the government agreement No. 23—2010 and it was
ratified through the agreement No. 56—2010 by the Congress of the
Republic on January 5, 2011. The action was taken due to the vio-
lence created by organized crime. The journal Prensa Libre refers to
it as follows: “According to investigations, criminal cells of the Zetas
[Drug Cartel], mostly formed by Mexican hit men and Guatemalan
e x-military men have taken over control in the Department of Alta
Verapaz for more than a year and the inhabitants have had an uneasy
life ever since” (Prensa Libre, April 19, 2010). Subsequently, on January
18, 2011, President Colom announced the extension of the state of siege
130 l Daniel Villafuerte Solís
for 30 more days, stating that “the perception of tranquility in the area
has improved, though some processes need to be consolidated. The state
of siege is just part of a much bigger plan” (Prensa Libre, January 19,
2011).
Some months later, under the Government Decree 7—2011, pub-
lished in the official journal on August 18, 2011, the state of alarm14 is
issued in Petén for 30 days, starting on August 16. The justification is
that “there exists a number of serious situations in Petén that endanger
the constitutional order, the governability and the security of the State,
affecting and risking human life and the comprehensive development
of people” (Government of Guatemala, 2011). This measure was put
into effect after the killing of 27 people, what occurred on May 14,
2011, in the country estate called Los Cocos, La Libertad, located in
the north of Petén. Twenty-six of these people were beheaded—among
which there were three minors and two women. This event has been
considered as one of the most terrible massacres since the civil war
ended in 1996.
It is said that the state of alarm was issued by virtue of the persis-
tence of a number of serious events in Petén, and which endangered
the constitutional order, the governability and the security of the state,
affecting and risking human life and the comprehensive development of
people. However, the main reason for this measure was the presence of
drug trafficking, particularly the presence of the group called the Zetas.
On this matter, Cabrera stated,
A curious fact, not very common though, is the decision made by the
Zetas to establish themselves in Poptún,15 a town in the middle of the
jungle, where the Kaibil School is also located, as well as the army train-
ing center where Guatemalan policemen and military men are trained
by American officials. Consequently, the region could easily become the
new scenario of the war between the government and the criminal orga-
nization. The kaibiles are military men trained to kill and survive the
most adverse conditions and they also know the Guatemalan territory.
(Cabrera, 2011)
The hope Central American countries have for a new start after the civil
wars has been overshadowed by a different plague: a stream of crime and
violence that first took over El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and
that currently threatens Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. In order to
understand the significance of this new criminal wave, we have to con-
sider the following: both Spain and Central America have an approxi-
mate population of 40 million people; however, Spain registered 336
murders (that is, less than one per day) in 2006, when Central America
registered 14,257 (that is, almost 44 per day).
El Salvador has the highest murder rate in Latin America (58 per 100,000
inhabitants), and two other Central American countries Guatemala and
Honduras, with murder rates of 45 and 43 per 100,000 inhabitants, respec-
tively, are among the first five in the region. The rate of murders in Central
America is generally 35.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to approxi-
mately 20 per 100,000 in all Latin America. (World Bank, 2011: 1)
Finally, the press release acknowledged that the contributions the Plan
Merida had made “more than 400 million dollars in equipment, train-
ing and programs to strengthen capacities have been given; and the
government of the United States has promised to allocate $500 million
more before the end of 2011” (Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, 2011). This
meeting was attended by the representatives of both security branches;
the following were on the Mexican side: Patricia Espinosa, minister
of foreign affairs; Francisco Blake Mora, secretary of state; Guillermo
Galván, secretary of national defense; Francisco Saynez, secretary of
the navy; Genaro García Luna, secretary of public security. On the
American side, the following incumbents attended the meeting: Hillary
Clinton, secretary of state; Janet Napolitano, secretary of homeland
security; Robert Gates, secretary of defense; Mike Mullen, chairman of
the joint chiefs of staff; John O. Brennan; chairman of the Intelligence
and National Security Alliance; and Eric Holder, US attorney general.
The attendance of the security cabinet of the most powerful country in
the world at this meeting showed the concern and interest the American
government has on these top priority topics; and it also expressed and
influenced the decision of the policies and actions applicable in Mexico
and Central America.
In this context, the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has visited
Guatemala at least twice since she became the secretary of state. The
later visit took place in order to prepare for the International Conference
in Support of the Central America Security Strategy that took place
in Guatemala in June 2011. This conference that ended on June 23,
achieved the allocation of US$2 billion in international cooperation.
This accomplishment was celebrated in official speeches, although
it only represents 33 percent of the millions projected by the Sistema
de Integración Centroamericana (SICA) [Central America Integration
System].16
Some opinions simply consider the accomplishments as a politically cor-
rect effort to overcome strategic failures of historical and structural nature,
regarding the irrefutable levels of impunity in Central America, which in the
case of Guatemala reached 99.75 percent in 2010, the highest percentage on
the region. But the biggest in-depth critic of the achievements accomplished
in the Lecture states,
It is necessary to analyze in detail the fact that the financial and techni-
cal assistance of our “friends” from the international community should
be interpreted as an evolved kind of State neo-interventionism through
the soft power and the fifth power, the oriented democratization and the
financial neocolonialism- dependency on multilateral credit organisms,
134 l Daniel Villafuerte Solís
They did work to recover territory and the intelligence machinery work
was reinforced. The State of Siege in Cobán, Alta Verapaz, for instance,
allowed the capture of members of the Zetas cartel and prevented his
members to walk freely in the streets. By then, their presence had been
spotted in Petén, Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz, Jalapa, Jutiapa, Zacapa,
Quetzaltenango, and Huehuetenango.18 It cannot be said that the struc-
ture has been dismantled, but several blows to their livers, their heads
and their financial parts were given. Still, they are a latent threat. The
Zetas represent the last link in the food chain of organized crime, they
are carrion eaters. They’re a supermarket making business out of kidnap-
ping, extortion, hired killing, robbery, bribery and terrifying the popula-
tion. (Prensa Libre, January 6, 2012)
Notes
1. Regarding this subject, Campuzano said, “El Ceibo is the door between the
state of Tabasco and the department of Petén. There is a path between that
formal crossing point and the village El Naranjo, in the department of Petén;
it is 23 kilometers, with no pavement. Surfacing this path would give impor-
tant results. The new road would allow a more efficient administration in the
border area. With a resulting reduction in criminal activities” (Campuzano,
2004: 185).
2. Retrieved November 30, 2011, from http://www.usaid.gov/gt/espanol/history
.htm.
3. Retrieved November 30, 2011, from http://www.usaid.gov/gt/espanol/
overview.htm.
4. See, International Narcotics Control Startegy Plan, 2011—Guatemala section:
Drugs and chemicals, March 3, 2011, American embassy. Retrieved November
30, 2011, from http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2011/vol1/156360.
htm#guatemala.
5. It is estimated that 2.1 million hectares, which represent a little more than
60 percent of the territory of the department of Petén are protected areas;
there are some important archaeological sites in this location, among which
Tikal, Yaxhá, Ceibal, and the Zotz are found. Petén has had a fast popula-
tion growth, in 1960, the population was estimated as 20,000 inhabitants
and in 2006 there was an estimated population of 600,000 inhabitants (Peace
Brigades International, 2007: 4).
6. An important event in the history of Petén is the massacre called “Dos Erres”
[“Two R’s”]. On December 5, 1982, a military squad of the special forces
of the Guatemalan army arrived in the small village called Dos Erres, La
Libertad, in the northern department of Petén. Three days later, the squad left
leaving behind 250 men, women, boys and girls that had been massacred. (See,
Amnesty International, at http://www.amnesty.org/en/node/8570.)
7. The supplement of the third report on Verification of the Peace Agreements
issued by the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGA),
that covers the period from January to July, 1998, states, “The regional office
of Petén located in Santa Elena and the sub-regional office in Poptún are in
charge of the whole department that has 12 municipalities. It has an exten-
sion of 36,000 km 2 and an approximate population of 500,000 inhabitants.
Petén is the largest department of Guatemala and it represents the third
part of Guatemala’s geographical area. It has a diverse population, mostly
formed by Ladino people in the urban areas; whereas Mayan ethnic groups
live in the country side. Petén witnessed the armed conflict and its territory
took in important groups of displaced people coming from other depart-
ments; nowadays, it has some rootless population, displaced people from
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), as well as ex-members
of the Comités Voluntarios de Defensa Civil [Volunteer Committees of Civil
Security Issues l 137
Defense], as well as other sectors affected by the conflict, one way or another”
(MINIGUA, 1998).
8. There is an approximate population of 29,000 in Istahuacán—information
from 2002—and it has an extension of 184 square kilometers; there are 14,000
inhabitants in Sipacapa and its extension is 152 square kilometers. This is a rela-
tively high population density, especially if we consider that around 90 percent
of the inhabitants live in rural areas. We refer to “survival peasants,” whose
land ownership is less than one hectare; they produce corn, beans, wheat,
barley, coffee, apples, avocados, and peach and in the surroundings there are
pines, holm oaks, oak trees, and cypresses among others (see, COPAE, 2010).
9. See website No a la Mina [Say no to the mine]: http://www.noalamina.
org/mineria-latinoamerica/mineria-guatemala/mem-desiste-de-suspender-
operaciones-en-mina-marlin.
10. For further information see, http://goldcorpoutofguatemala.com.
11. La Alianza para la Seguridad y la Prosperidad de América del Norte [The
Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America] was founded in Waco,
Texas, on March 2, 2005, by Vicente Fox Quesada, president of Mexico; Paul
Martin, prime minister of Canada; and George W. Bush, president of the
United States.
12. ASPAN, 2005, Joint Declaration, from Trejo, 2006: 11.
13. ASPAN, 2005, Security Agenda, from Trejo, 2006: 11.
14. The state of alarm is a flexible form of the state of siege; it guarantees the
necessary constitutional rights to develop an election, which occurs in country
under normal conditions. And it guarantees that the completion of activities
and political rallies that may be part of the election process won’t be affected.
The regulations limit the freedom of action, legal detentions, questionings to
people under arrest and prisoners, freedom of transit, and right of assembly,
as well as the right of carrying weapons. In November 2011, through decree
13–2011 the extension of the state of alarm was declared for 30 days.
15. It is the second most populated municipality of the department of Petén;
it is located 100 kilometers from the municipality of Flores—the adminis-
trative center. Since 1989, it has housed the special operations force of the
Guatemalan army, known as the kaibiles.
16. It is important to highlight that it refers to offers. Six months after the con-
ference, the resources were not available. In the resolutions of the XXXVIII
Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Central American Integration
System that took place in San Salvador on December 16, 2011, section 13 of
the action plan indicates, “To instruct the Central American Commission on
Security along with SG-SICA to finish the negotiations with the group of fel-
low friends and International Organisms as soon as possible; those negotiations
related to the first eight projects identified by the Security Commission during
its summit on November 10, 2011 and to proceed to their implementations.”
The document can be checked at http://www.sica.int/busqueda/Reuniones.as
px?IDItem=64887&IDCat=21&IdEnt=1&Idm=1&IdmStyle=1. However, the
138 l Daniel Villafuerte Solís
Works Cited
Bauer, Alfonzo (2004). El Plan Maya Jaguar. In Albedrío, Revista Electrónica de
Discusión y Propuesta Social, año 1 [Discussion and Social Proposal Electronic
Magazine], year 1, Guatemala, at http://www.albedrio.org/htm/articulos/a/abp-
001.htm.
Brigadas Internacionales de Paz [Peace Brigades International] (2007, April). Boletín
Especial: El Petén [Special Bulletin, El Petén], proyecto Guatemala [Guatemala
Project], Guatemala.
Cabrera, Fernando (2011). El gran desafío de Guatemala [Guatemala’s Great
Challenge], Radio Nedeland Latinoamérica [Nedeland Radio, Latin America],
at http://www.rnw.nl/espanol/article/el-gran-desaf%C3%ADo-de-guatemala.
Campuzano, Juan José (2004). México y Guatemala: de la vecindad a la asociación,
en: Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior [Mexico and Guatemala: from vecin-
ity to partnership], No. 72, Instituto Matías Romero de Estudios Diplomáticos,
México.
CNN México [CNN Mexico] (2011a). EU desarrolla un plan para mejorar la segu-
ridad en la frontera sur de México [The U.S. Develops a Plan to Improve Security
in the South Border of Mexico], Retrieved December 26, 2011, from http:
//mexico.cnn.com/mundo/2011/04/12/eu-desarrolla-un-plan-para-mejorar-la-
seguridad-en-frontera-sur-de-mexico.
CNN México [CNN Mexico] (2011b). Narco se desplaza a Centroamérica por
éxito en lucha antinarco [Drug Trafficking Goes to Central America Due to
Success of Anti-Drug Fight], Retrieved December 26, 2011, from http://mexico
.cnn.com/nacional/2011/04/11/narco-se-desplaza-a-centroamerica-por-exito-
en-lucha-antinarco-sarukhan.
COPAE (Comisión pastoral Paz y Ecología) [Pastoral Comission: Peace and
Ecology] (2010). It can be consulted in PDF format, at http://goldcorpoutof-
guatemala.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/tercer20informe20anual20del20moni-
toreo.pdf.
Dardón, Jacobo (2002). Caracterización de la Frontera de Guatemala/México,
FLACSO-Guatemala-Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, Guatemala.
El Periódico (2008, December 3). Fuerza binacional tras vinculados con balac-
era en Huehuetenango [Bilateral Force after Those Linked to Shooting in
Huehetenango]. Guatemala.
Security Issues l 139
Introduction
On November 19, 2002, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld met
with other hemispheric defense ministers in Santiago, Chile. Referring
to the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Rumsfeld noted, “When
terrorists are driven out of countries—as they were in Afghanistan—
they often find havens in the world’s many ungoverned regions.” He
went on to argue, “In this hemisphere, narco-terrorists, hostage takers,
and arms smugglers operate in ungoverned areas, using them as bases
from which to destabilize democratic governments” (Rumsfeld, 2002).
This concept of “ungoverned spaces” became a key part of the rhetorical
framework utilized by the Bush administration to advance its post–9/11
foreign policy goals throughout the world. In Latin America, as other
chapters in this volume detail, the concept was employed to justify
policy initiatives in Mexico, Central America, and Haiti. This chap-
ter examines the incorporation of the concept into US foreign policy
toward Colombia, focusing specifically on the preexisting policy initia-
tive known as “Plan Colombia.”
The chapter begins with a discussion of the concept of ungoverned
spaces, underscoring key elements of the concept and its development
in the post–9/11 period. Despite the novelty of the term itself, I argue
that the concept addresses concerns that have long been central to US
foreign policy. The chapter next explores the nature of Plan Colombia,
a foreign policy initiative begun during the final years of the Clinton
administration, with specific focus on the origin, development, and
competing claims made about the impacts of this policy initiative. The
chapter then examines how the ungoverned spaces concept was incorpo-
rated into the rhetoric used to legitimate the preexisting policy, with an
emphasis given to the congressional hearings on Plan Colombia and its
embrace by the US military establishment. The broad argument is that
that the ungoverned spaces concept served primarily as a framing device
used to justify continued support for Plan Colombia. The concluding
reflections note the seeming irony that the concept underscores what
many of the harshest critics of US foreign policy in Colombia have long
maintained—the need to address the absence of effective state institu-
tions throughout Colombian territory. This observation suggests that
the concept might be more flexible than some critics suggest.
drug traffickers, that is, they constitute “a place or situation that enables
illicit actors to operate while avoiding detection or capture . . . where
illicit actors can organize, plan, raise funds, communicate, recruit,
train, and operate in relative security” (Lamb, 2008: 15). Indeed, Robert
Lamb makes central to his definition of “ungoverned areas” the notion
that they are “potential safe havens” (ibid., 13). Lamb goes on to sug-
gest that there are a number of characteristics that would make a safe
haven particularly concerning to US government officials, including
whether it contains illicit actors with transnational links who are capa-
ble of organizing and launching attacks against US interests from the
area; whether it contains vital natural resources (such as oil); whether it
is proximate to the US homeland; and whether there is strong domestic
or international pressure to act (Lamb, 2008: 33–35). Anne Clunan and
Harold Trinkunas note that ungoverned spaces have the potential to
undermine human security (concerned with the physical well-being and
the economic, social, and political rights of the inhabitants of the zone),
national security (concerned with the physical survival, territorial integ-
rity, and continuation of the existing political and economic system of
the state), and international security (concerned with the outbreak of
intrastate or interstate wars that might spread geographically and the
harboring of nonstate actors that might attack other states) (Clunan
and Trinkunas, 2010b: 282–283). Not least, Vanda Felbab-Brown notes
that ungoverned spaces characterized by illicit economic activities (such
as drug trafficking) can pose particular threats to the home state by cre-
ating international political costs for the state, threatening the judicial
system of the country, facilitating disruptive economic effects, creating
environmental threats, and exacerbating security threats to the country
(Felbab-Brown, 2010: 182–183).
Given the perceived dangers of ungoverned spaces, it is not surpris-
ing that US government analysts have sought to clarify the conditions
that facilitate the conversion of such spaces into safe havens for threat-
ening nonstate actors. Thus, in addition to attractive geographic condi-
tions, Lamb suggests that illicit actors will be attracted to ungoverned
spaces that exhibit certain political, civil, and resource characteristics.
Politically, illicit actors will be attracted to areas in which the state
exhibits inadequate political will to confront them, has inadequate
governance capacity to counter them, and/or that contains conflicts or
crises that might provide them with operational benefits (Lamb, 2008:
26–30). Likewise, such actors will be attracted to zones in which the
central government lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the local population,
particularly if the local population has significant political or social
Old Wine in New Wineskins l 147
many of the same concerns. For example, the 1997 National Military
Strategy argues, “Failed and failing states, and conflict that is not
directed against the United States, can also threaten our interests and
the safety of our citizens” (Shalikashvili, 1997: 9). The following year,
the 1998 National Security Strategy (NSS) not only utilizes the failed
state concept but also describes it in a way strikingly similar to the
subsequent ungoverned spaces concept: namely, as states “unable to pro-
vide basic governance, services and opportunities for their populations,
potentially generating internal conflict, humanitarian crises or regional
instability” (Clinton, 1998: 7). Due to the possibility of “mass migra-
tion, civil unrest, famine, mass killings, environmental disasters and
aggression against neighboring states or ethnic groups,” failed states are
perceived as a threat to “U.S. interests and citizens” (ibid.).
Not least, a central concern of the ungoverned spaces concept—
strengthening the capacity of the state in order to establish the effective
exercise of sovereignty by the central government—was also foreshad-
owed in US government documents by discussions of the need for rule
of law, institution building, and good governance. The importance of
establishing the rule of law was mentioned as early as the 1988 annual
Patterns of Global Terrorism Report (US Department of State, 1989:
iv, 24). Likewise, by 1990, the NSS explicitly discussed the need to
strengthen the institutional capabilities of countries in order to confront
drug trafficking: “Our policy is to strengthen the political will and insti-
tutional capability of host-country military, judicial, and law enforce-
ment agencies” (Bush, 1990: 28). This same document also addresses
more directly the notion of institution building: “We seek to . . . pro-
mote the growth of free, democratic political institutions, as . . . an
aid in combating threats to democratic institutions from aggression,
coercion, insurgencies, subversion, terrorism, and illicit drug traffick-
ing” (ibid., 2–3). By 1994, the imperative of promoting good gover-
nance was also addressed in Clinton’s NSS. Specifically, in responding
to the needs of newly democratic states, the strategy announced, “We
must help these nations strengthen the pillars of civil society, improve
their market institutions, and fight corruption and political discontent
through practices of good governance” (Clinton, 1994: 20).
In sum, well before the concept of ungoverned spaces became com-
mon currency, US government officials were already addressing most of
the policy concerns that undergirded it. What the ungoverned spaces
concept did was to provide policy makers with a useful framing device
to bring together many of the existing concerns into a more cohesive
narrative. This is perhaps best illustrated by George W. Bush’s 2006
NSS. Notably, this was the first NSS document to incorporate explicitly
Old Wine in New Wineskins l 151
Second, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States had a sig-
nificant impact on the way the Bush administration perceived the
Colombian conf lict. The distinction between counternarcotics and
counterinsurgency policy began to blur as high-ranking officials began
to interpret the conf lict primarily through the lens of “counterterror-
ism” (Mason, 2010: 344). As the “war on drugs” expanded into the
“war on terror,” drug traffickers, guerrillas, and paramilitaries were all
tagged with the label “narco-terrorist,” a transformation facilitated by
the State Department’s prior designation of all three major nonstate
belligerents (FARC, ELN, and AUC) as “foreign terrorist organiza-
tions.” This change in outlook also facilitated the elimination of the
preexisting prohibition against using security aid for purposes other
than counternarcotics. Specifically, on August 2, 2002, President Bush
signed legislation that allowed all past and present security aid to sup-
port a “unified campaign” against drug trafficking and Colombian
“terrorist organizations” (2002 Supplemental Appropriations Act, Secs.
305 and 601). Soon US Special Forces were on the ground training
Colombian soldiers to defend the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline
(partially owned by US multinational Occidental Petroleum) against
guerrilla attacks and creating a Colombian Special Forces commando
battalion dedicated to killing or capturing top guerrilla and paramili-
tary leaders (Isacson, 2004: 247). Ultimately, Plan Colombia financed
“the delivery of about 90 helicopters, the spraying of 3.2 million acres
of Colombian territory with herbicides, and the training of over 70,000
Colombian military and police personnel” (Haugaard, Isacson, and
Johnson, 2011: 7).
Third, the inauguration of hardliner Álvaro Uribe as president of
Colombia on August 7, 2002, marked a major intensification of the
internal armed conflict in Colombia. Uribe, whose father had been
killed by FARC insurgents, embraced the “narco-terrorist” character-
ization of the guerrillas wholeheartedly and portrayed his administra-
tion as the closest Latin American ally of the United States in its war on
terror. With firm backing from the Bush administration, and bolstered
by Plan Colombia financing, Uribe tripled the military budget, nearly
doubled the size of the security forces, and launched a nationwide anti-
guerrilla offensive, while simultaneously negotiating the demobiliza-
tion of the bulk of the pro-government paramilitary forces (Haugaard,
Isacson, and Johnson, 2011: 6–7; Isacson, 2010).
The overall record of Plan Colombia is decidedly mixed. Its staunch-
est defenders, led by US and Colombian government officials, cite dra-
matic and undeniable declines in levels of homicides, massacres, and
156 l John C. Dugas
become a failed state, and the need to establish the rule of law, good
governance, and stable institutions.
Fears of instability in Colombia were evident throughout the hear-
ings. Senator Arlen Spector put the matter concisely: “I am concerned
about the stability of Colombia” (US Congress Senate Committee on
Appropriations, 2000: 8). Senator Mike DeWine cautioned further that
“instability in the country threatens to destabilize the entire region”
(US Congress Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1999: 9). Jess
T. Ford, an official from the Government Accounting Office, argued
that “Colombia faces continuing challenges associated with its political
and economic instability fostered by its longstanding insurgency and
the need for the police and the military to comply with human rights
standards” (US Congress House Committee on Government Reform,
2000b: 19–20). This instability, in turn, was perceived as related to safe
havens that existed in both Colombia and neighboring countries for
violent actors. Thus, General Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office
of National Drug Control Policy, lamented that “Colombian guerril-
las and paramilitary units have found sanctuary in Panama’s Darien
Province and cross the Colombian-Panamanian border nearly at will”
(US Congress Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1999: 23). Of
even greater concern to some Republican lawmakers was the demili-
tarized zone that had been ceded to the FARC guerrillas during the
ongoing peace negotiations. As Senator Mitch McConnell argued, “We
cannot argue that a push into Southern Colombia will reduce drug pro-
duction, as long as there is a policy of allowing the FARC and traffickers
safe haven in a demilitarized zone (DMZ) the size of Switzerland” (US
Congress Senate Committee on Appropriations, 2000: 2). This con-
cern was echoed by Representative Dan Burton: “We have to go to the
source of the problem in Colombia. The FARC guerrillas have sanctu-
ary down there right now. They can go out and attack and kill people”
(US Congress House Committee on Government Reform, 2000b: 13).
The possibility of state failure or collapse was also underscored in the
congressional hearings on Colombia. For example, Peter Romero, the
acting assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, asserted,
“We need to help the Colombian government succeed. The likely price
of a failure would be further disintegration of the Colombian state”
(US Congress House Committee on International Relations, 1999:
10). Senator Paul Coverdell put the matter in more dire terms: “If you
allow total destabilization of Colombia and the surrounding coun-
tries . . . we could be creating an era of just total collapse” (US Congress
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1999: 12). In a statement
Old Wine in New Wineskins l 159
The FARC, ELN, and AUC operate across the porous borders of
Colombia’s neighbors, and the remote nature of many of these areas
makes them ever more attractive as safe havens. While we are seeing
increased coordination and cooperation among most of Colombia’s
neighbors, some of those countries also lack the resources to maintain
territorial sovereignty in these ungoverned spaces. (US Congress Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations, 2003: 27)
border in which the FARC, the ELN, and the AUC all vie for control in
the absence of a significant state presence (Boraz, 2007: 243–276). Of
particular note is the number of recent graduate theses written by US
military officers at institutes such as the US Army War College (e.g.,
Bourque, 2004; Buckley, 2004; Campsey, 2005; Mejía, 2008; Weiler,
2004) and the Naval Postgraduate School (e.g., Andrade-Garzon,
2008; Farrell, 2007; Pires, 2012; Whittenburg, 2009) that have used
the ungoverned spaces in writing about Plan Colombia. Notably, with
few exceptions (e.g., Burroughs, 2010), these authors utilize the con-
cept uncritically—that is, they proceed as though the concept is both
widely accepted and unproblematic. This in itself is perhaps a useful
indicator of how thoroughly the concept has permeated the military
establishment.
One interesting example of the incorporation of the ungoverned
spaces concept into the analysis of Plan Colombia is seen in the writ-
ings of Gabriel Marcella, a prolific author and (now retired) professor
at the US Army War College. Between 1999 and 2009, Marcella pub-
lished a half dozen monographs analyzing Colombia during the lead-up
to, adoption, and subsequent implementation of Plan Colombia. In
the earliest monographs (Marcella and Schulz, 1999; Marcella, 2001;
Marcella et al., 2001), Marcella employed many of the traditional
concepts noted in this chapter that have long been used with refer-
ence to US foreign policy concerns in Latin America. For example,
in March 1999, prior to the advent of discussions on Plan Colombia,
Marcella argued, “Drug criminals, guerrillas, and paramilitary ‘self-
defense’ organizations are feeding a spiral of violence and corruption
that makes ‘colombianization’ a metaphor for a failing state” (Marcella
and Schulz, 1999: 1). He declared that while “Colombia is nowhere near
the failed state syndrome” (ibid., 24), its “very weakness . . . as a nation-
state threatens international order in the region” (ibid., 6). Moreover,
he underscored “the weakness of the state—its inability to command an
effective presence—in rural areas” (ibid., 14). Not least, he called for a
strategy to “establish legitimate and responsible governmental authority
over territory and population . . . achieved through participatory elec-
tions and then sustained by effective governance” (ibid., 22). Two years
later, after the inauguration of Plan Colombia, Marcella continued to
highlight the same themes without any explicit mention of ungoverned
spaces. Hence, he describes Colombia as being on “the brink of total
failure as a democracy” (Marcella, 2001: 18), and declares that “the
institutional capacity of the state to deal with the problems of gover-
nance and public security is manifestly weak” (ibid., 2). Notably, he
164 l John C. Dugas
Concluding Reflections
Critics of Plan Colombia have long argued, as Representative Jan
Schakowsky did in 2001, that it was “too heavily weighted in helicop-
ters and military hardware, instead of support for civil society, demo-
cratic institutions, and human rights defenders” (US Congress House
Committee on Government Reform, 2001: 6). Normatively, such an
assessment has proven to be correct, as seen retrospectively by some
of the evidence reviewed in this chapter regarding IDPs, impunity for
demobilized paramilitary murderers, and the rise in extrajudicial assas-
sinations committed by Colombian state security forces. Nonetheless,
there is a certain irony in the introduction of the ungoverned spaces
166 l John C. Dugas
realization that only a full state presence, one that goes well beyond the
military to incorporate the state’s civilian institutions, can secure places
like Meta, Guaviare, Caquetá, Cauca, or Putumayo, and integrate them
into Colombia’s civic and economic life in a way that improves living
standards. This realization represented a break with Colombia’s historic
pattern of leaving peripheral areas ungoverned, in the hands of warlords,
or up to the military. (ibid., 4–5)
Old Wine in New Wineskins l 167
Toward the end of the report, the author expresses a fear that high-
level backing for the consolidation plan is waning in both the US and
Colombian governments but “still hold[s] out the possibility that talk of
‘stagnation’ or the decline of Consolidation—or rather, the decline of
the very idea of bringing civilian governance to ungoverned areas—is
misplaced” (ibid., 21).
Perhaps, then, the concept of ungoverned spaces is more flexible
than many of its well-intentioned critics have realized. Just as it has
served as a new wineskin for the old wine of rationalizing vast amounts
of security assistance, so too it might serve as a means for justifying the
expansion of civilian rule and state-provided social services to all citi-
zens. Given the concept’s increasingly widespread usage, a key challenge
to scholars and advocates is to ensure that it is utilized in such ethically
defensible ways.
Notes
1. Strictly speaking, Plan Colombia was a six-year plan that formally con-
cluded at the end of 2005 (Veillette, 2005: 1–2, 12). Most of its financing
came from the broader Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI), supple-
mented by funding from the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program,
the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, and
the Defense Department Counternarcotics Account (Veillette, 2006: 2–6).
Nonetheless, even after Plan Colombia officially ceased to exist, the term
has continued to be used to refer to the ongoing heightened level of US
assistance to Colombia that began in 2000.
2. For specific kidnapping statistics by year, see the online database of the
Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica at http://www.cifrasyconceptos
.com/secuestro/presentacion_reportes.php.
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Mejía, Alberto (2008). Colombia’s national security strategy, a new “COIN”
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NSS (2006, March). The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.
Washington, DC: The White House.
Pires, Nuno M. (2012). Deviant globalization and the unintended consequences
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Old Wine in New Wineskins l 171
Aug. 6, 1999 House Government Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, The Narcotics Threat from 160 No
Reform and Human Resources Colombia
Sep. 29, 1999 House International Western Hemisphere To Receive an Update on Selected 54 No
Relations Regional Issues to Include:
Colombia and U.S. Policy, etc.
Oct. 6, 1999 Senate Foreign Crisis in Colombia: US Support for 70 No
Relations Peace Process and Anti-Drug Efforts
Feb. 15, 2000 House Government Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, The Crisis in Colombia: What Are 225 No
Reform and Human Resources We Facing?
Feb. 22, Senate Finance International Trade (and Senate United States Assistance Options for 177 No
174
Dangerous Mix
Jul. 9, 2003 House Government Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, Disrupting the Market: Strategy, 126 No
Reform and Human Resources Implementation, and Results in
Narcotics Source Countries
Oct. 29, 2003 Senate Foreign Relations Challenges and Successes for U.S. 92 Yes
Policy toward Colombia: Is Plan 1 mention
Colombia Working?
Mar. 2, 2004 House Government Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, Andean Counterdrug Initiative 76 Yes
Reform and Human Resources 2 mentions
Apr. 24, 2004 House Government Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, DOD Counternarcotics: What Is 138 No
Reform and Human Resources Congress Getting for Its Money?
continued
Date Chamber Committee Subcommittee Title of hearing Pages Ungoverned
spaces?
Jun. 17, 2004 House Government The War against Drugs and Thugs: 232 No
Reform A Status Report on Plan Colombia
Successes and Challenges
Mar. 9, 2005 House International Western Hemisphere The State of Democracy in Latin 92 No
Relations America
Apr. 20, 2005 House International Western Hemisphere Gangs and Crime in Latin America 75 No
Relations
May 10, 2005 House Government Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, 2006 DOD Counternarcotics 76 No
Reform and Human Resources Budget: Does It Deliver the
Necessary Support?
176
May 11, 2005 House International Plan Colombia: Major Successes and 106 No
Relations New Challenges
Jul. 27, 2005 House International Western Hemisphere U.S. Diplomacy in Latin America 57 No
Relations
Sept. 28, 2005 House International Western Hemisphere Keeping Democracy on Track: 60 No
Relations Hotspots in Latin America
Mar. 16, 2006 House Armed Services National Defense Authorization 57 Yes
Act for Fiscal Year 2007—Budget 5 mentions
Request from the U.S. Southern
Command
Mar. 30, 2006 House International Western Hemisphere Counternarcotics Strategies in Latin 119 No
Relations America
Jun. 21, 2006 House International Western Hemisphere Democracy in Latin America: 69 No
Relations Successes, Challenges and the
Future
Sep. 21, 2006 House Judiciary; Crime, Terrorism, and Need for European Assistance to 68 No
International Homeland Security (Judiciary); Colombia for the Fight against
Relations Western Hemisphere ( Illicit Drugs
International Relations)
Mar. 1, 2007 House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere Overview of U.S. Policy toward 88 No
Latin America
Apr. 24, 2007 House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere U.S.-Colombia Relations 118 Yes
2 mentions
Jun. 19, 2007 House Foreign Affairs South America and the United 69 No
177
Mar. 18, 2009 House Armed Services Security Developments in the 174 Yes
Areas of Responsibility of the U.S. 1 mention
Southern Command, etc.
Oct. 1, 2009 House Oversight and National Security and Foreign Transnational Drug Enterprises: 85 Noa
Government Affairs Threats to Global Stability and U.S.
Reform National Security from Southwest
Asia, Latin America, and West
Africa
Oct. 15, 2009 House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere Assessing U.S. Drug Policy in the 70 No
178
Americas
Mar. 3, 2010 House Oversight and National Security and Foreign Transnational Drug Enterprises 156 Yes
Government Affairs (Part II): U.S. Perspectives on the 3 mentions
Reform Threats to Global Stability and U.S.
National Security
Notes:
Number of hearings: 40
Number of mentions of “ungoverned spaces”: 15
Number of distinct speakers who utilized “ungoverned spaces” concept: 10 (3 legislators; 4 Department of Defense officials; 2 Department of State officials; and 1 outside
specialist)
Number of hearings with mentions of “ungoverned spaces”: 9
Total pages of hearings: 4983 pages
a
Two mentions were made of “ungoverned spaces” in the hearing, but both were in reference to Africa, not Colombia.
CHAPTER 9
Introduction
The relationship between the United States and Haiti is a long-standing
one stretching back over two centuries to the founding of the two repub-
lics. One nation, the United States, emerged as the dominant power
politically, economically, and militarily in the twentieth century while
Haiti, founded with great hope and expectation, as the world’s first
black republic in 1804, has languished in the last century as the poor-
est country in the Western Hemisphere. This chapter will explore how
the contemporary relationship between the United States and Haiti,
especially in the wake of the devastating earthquake that struck Port-
Au-Prince in January 2010 has been framed by the concept of “failed
states,” that in the wake of the September 11, 2011, attack on the United
States, has held a prominent place in the strategic thinking of the United
States government.1 The concept of failed states is not a new one, hav-
ing entered US political thinking in the early 1990s, but the 9/11 events
focused attention on the failure of the Afghan state to prevent the oper-
ation of Al-Qaeda on its territory. The situation in Afghanistan, and
subsequent growing concern about states perceived to be similar, only
intensified concern about the role of failed states in harboring or aid-
ing terrorism. This outlook was codified in the US National Security
G. Prevost et al. (eds.), US National Security Concerns in Latin
America and the Caribbean
© Gary Prevost, Harry E. Vanden, Carlos Oliva Campos, and Luis
Fernando Ayerbe 2014
180 l Gary Prevost
Haiti’s History
Haiti’s history is known to some for its emergence in 1804 as the first
black republic and one of the first, after the United States, independent
US Response to the Haitian Earthquake l 181
US Response to Earthquake
The character of the US response to the earthquake was primarily a
military one. At its peak, the mission involved a total of 22,000 per-
sonnel; 7,000 based on land and the rest on 15 ships and 58 aircraft,
according to the US military’s Southern Command, which directed the
operation. The US military mission was supplemented on the civilian
side by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which
involved numerous tasks, among them providing temporary shelter and
later permanent housing for those displaced. USAID was also involved
with the Haitian government in restoring basic services such as water
and electricity but those tasks moved slowly because of the enormity
of the task. While the US military mission did carry out some tasks
that the recovery needed, recovery was not the primary mission of the
troops. Operating within the framework of the Pentagon’s failed state
and “ungoverned spaces” concept,5 the overwhelming focus of the mis-
sion was one of security aimed at preventing widespread rioting in
Port-Au-Prince against the surviving assets of the Haitian elites and pre-
venting a flow of refugees to the United States. Most controversially, in
the first week after the quake when saving lives was the highest priority,
the US military took control of Port-Au-Prince’s damaged airport and,
in the eyes of many international relief agencies, gave too much priority
to planes connected solely to the deployment of US troops engaged in
security, not relief operations. The US military contributed a naval hos-
pital ship, the Comfort, that docked off Port-Au-Prince and treated 871
people but this effort was dwarfed by the land medical operations staffed
primarily by Haitians and a range of foreigners, including Cubans that
treated tens of thousands of people. The Obama administration, eager
to build its reputation in Latin America, put the best possible face on
the operation, stressing the large amount of relief supplies distributed by
US forces, but in reality it was a military operation carried out primarily
under considerations for US national security. The reality of this focus
is also underscored by the political framework created in the aftermath
of the earthquake. Using as a justification the severe damage done to the
Haitian government structures and loss of lives among Haitian govern-
ment personnel, the international community led by the United States
set up what amounts to a parallel governing structure for the country
dominated by foreigners. In spring 2010, the Interim Haiti Recovery
Commission (IHRC) was formed to channel assistance to Haiti and
chaired by the then prime minister, Jean-Max Bellrive, and former US
president Bill Clinton. All major recovery projects—officially called
184 l Gary Prevost
of the traditional Haitian ruling elites and the United States and its
allies. However, in spite of a widespread boycott by Aristide support-
ers, Martelly won in a landslide with 68 percent votes. Once in power,
Martelly quickly learned the framework in which the United States and
its allies had engineered his election as an alternative to Aristide and
the Lavalas Party. Just days after assuming office, Martelly, in appar-
ent collaboration with his North American sponsors, nominated neo-
liberal businessman Daniel Gerard Rouzier to be his prime minister but
the more progressive legislature quickly rejected his choice underscor-
ing that as an independent candidate he had no working majority in
the national legislation. His next nominee, former minister of justice,
Bernard Grousse, an equally neoliberal figure was also rejected. Only in
2012 did the new government succeed in completing its administration
in a manner that was acceptable in Washington.
As Haiti struggled to rebuild, the combination of IHRC and the
USAID’s coordinator for Haiti, Thomas Adams, made the main decisions
including Haiti’s adoption of a new constitution in May 2011. Unlike
other new constitutions in the Latin American region of a progressive
character, the Haitian constitution is primarily neoliberal and by allow-
ing Haitian dual citizenship, the main impact of the latter reform is to
allow for a much greater role for the middle-class Haitian diaspora—a
very transparent effort to dilute the influence of the Lavalas Party by
the inevitably more conservative tilt of the Haitian diaspora. The exact
political direction of Haiti and its rebuilding are unclear but its ability
to shape its own destiny remains deeply compromised by the alliance
between the Haitian elites and their North American sponsors.
Notes
1. The growing prominence of the failed state concept was demonstrated
when, in 2010, the United Nations World Development Report created a
fragile state list and the Fund for Peace has been publishing a Failed State
Index since 2004. In 2009, this index listed 60 states as failed or failing.
The official attention of the US government to the concept is embodied in
the Robert Lamb, “Ungoverned areas and threats from safe havens,” final
report of the Ungoverned Areas Project prepared for the Under Secretary
of Defense for Policy, Department of Defense, Washington, DC, January
2008. The report is the product of a US interagency working group devoted
to defining ungoverned spaces and outlining responses to them. The report’s
definition of an ungoverned area is “a place where the state or the central
government is unable or unwilling to extend control, effectively govern,
or inf luence the local population, and where a provincial, local tribal, or
186 l Gary Prevost
Conclusion
Gary Prevost, Carlos Oliva Campos, Luis
Fernando Ayerbe, and Harry E. Vanden
T
he security policy of the United States in the whole of the
Western Hemisphere must be placed in its broad historic per-
spective with attention to the current moment of the twenty-
first century. For two centuries, back to the time of Thomas Jefferson
and James Monroe, leaders in Washington, DC, have viewed the
hemisphere as the natural sphere of influence for the United States,
a place of great economic interest for the United States in terms of
investment, raw materials, and markets. That reality has not changed
over two centuries, only changes over time have been in the ability of
the United States to extend its dominance in the region. The part of
the region closest to the United States—Mexico, Central America, and
the Caribbean—came under US control in the first 30 years of the
twentieth century and remain there in the twenty-first century. That
control remains primarily through regional trade agreements and the
newly launched security initiatives. The United States’ influence in
South America has always been more fluid and it remains so in the early
twenty-first century. The United States has always sought a dominant
role in South America due to its vast resources and markets. In the nine-
teenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, the United
States extended some measure of economic influence throughout South
America but the reality of British and French political and economic
power thwarted US domination. However, in the second half of the
twentieth century, following World War II, the United States expanded
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Editors
Luis Fernando Ayerbe is a professor in the department of economics
and the post-graduate program in international relations at the State
University of Sao Paulo (UNESP). He has also been a visiting researcher
at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard
University and the University of Barcelona. He is the coordinator of the
Institute for Economic and International Studies (IEEI), member of the
Academic Board of the National Institute for Studies on the United States
(INEU), member of the board of directors of the Regional Coordination
for Economic and Social Research (CRIES), and associate member of
the Center of Studies on Contemporary Culture (CEDEC). He was a
visiting scholar at Harvard University and at Barcelona’s Autonomous
University. His book, Los Estados Unidos y la América Latina: la con-
strucción de la hegemonía, has won the “Casa de las Américas” award.
Carlos Oliva Campos teaches philosophy and history at the University
of Havana. He formerly worked as a researcher at the Center for Study
of the Americas and the Center for Study of the United States. For many
years he served as executive director of the Association for the Unity of
Our America, an NGO based in Havana. He has also been a visit-
ing professor at the University of Texas and John Hopkins University.
He is the author, coauthor, and editor of numerous books including
The Bush Doctrine and Latin America and Panamericanism and Neo
PanAmericanism: The View from Latin America (with Gary Prevost); La
situación actual en Cuba: desafíos y alternativas, and Relaciones interna-
cionales en America Central y el Caribe durante los anos 80.
Gary Prevost is professor in the Department of Political Science,
St. John’s University/College of Saint Benedict, Minnesota. He received
his PhD in political science from the University of Minnesota and has
published widely on Latin America and Spain. His books include Politics
204 l About the Authors
Contributors