"Primum non nocere... (First, do no harm)"
Beginning of the Hippocratic Oath
Anti-drug policies have their origin in the desire to protect human welfare: The international community, concerned about the impact of drugs on public health, began to prohibit a series of substances and establish measures to suppress their production, distribution and abuse. Ever since, the illicit drug economy has grown exponentially, and the strategy for combatting it has escalated to full-scale war.
This book aims to demonstrate that drug policies, as currently implemented, with their highly repressive nature, cause more problems than they solve in Latin America. In political and social terms, the collateral damage from drug trafficking and the drug war have become key factors in impeding the consolidation of democracy in the region. Moreover, in many countries, that damage has given rise to, or strengthened, countercurrents trying to create new authoritarian regimes. Steps taken in the name of safeguarding public health are violating basic principles of this field as summarized in the first premise of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm..".
Drugs and Democracy
In order to study this situation, a team of researchers was formed in 1996, under the auspices of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and "Acción Andina", as part of the "Drugs and Democracy" project. The team, composed of journalists and academics from 16 countries in Latin America - not all of whom appear in this book - held a series of meetings, which provided a forum for intensive ongoing debate. The challenge of the joint study has been to evaluate the impact of drug trafficking and the drug war, as relatively new factors in the complex dynamic of social and political processes in Latin America.
Rather than carrying out an isolated academic exercise, we want to contribute to the formation of policies that can lead to changes in the current situation. Without holding that the "drug" factor is the main cause of these problems, we do see in the present manifestation of the phenomenon, one of the key obstacles to change. This obstacle is subject, however, to action by the international community, and can be removed if the international community has the courage to review its policies. We advocate change on the basis of a critical evaluation that takes into account the ominous consequences - most of them unintentional - of present drug policies in terms of democratic development.
In 1997, we published various collections of articles and case studies carried out by the team. Two of these reflect the principal focus of the research project: Democracy, Human Rights and Militarism in the War on Drugs in Latin America , which received the Simón Bolívar Award for print journalism from the Latin American Parliament, and Crime in Uniform: Corruption and Impunity in Latin America.
The Obstructed Transition
In particular, the project has sought to evaluate the drug factor's influence on demilitarization and the building of democracy in Latin America. We have approached this from two angles: on the one hand, the destabilization resulting from the illicit economy itself, and on the other, the remilitarization caused by the escalation of the drug war. We began with the image of a fragile democratic state caught in this crossfire, which complicated the transition to democracy. After two years of study, we present in this book our conclusions, which raise serious doubts about the real existence of processes of demilitarization and democracy building in Latin America, and about two separate lines of fire.
Clearly, a transition has taken place that put an end to the era of military dictatorships, in a long process that began with the 1983 presidential elections in Argentina and culminated with the coup that toppled Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay in 1989. That same year saw new peace negotiations in Central America which led to the end of armed conflict in the region. At the same time, the fall of the Berlin Wall, symbolically marking the end of the Cold War, allowed Latin America to consolidate - at least at the ideological level- this transition. These changes represent significant steps, especially in the areas of human rights, civil liberties and political reconciliation. We question, however, their inability to fulfill the great expectations they awakened, which have remained unmet in the 1990s, the period on which this book is focused.
The forces working against transition and democratic stability have various roots. Some of them, as Adriana Rossi indicates in her chapter in reference to the era of dictatorships, ""emerge from a past that refuses to die, demonstrating the vitality of old structures and their links with new powers"." Rossi concludes that: ""The State of Law is being turned into an empty shell, in which the functions and institutions that guarantee democracy continue to exist structurally; rather than fulfilling their constitutional mandates, however, they are placed at the service of interests that have nothing to do with a democratic society, removing any constitutional guarantee and making impunity the rule for civil coexistence, in a process of contamination and breakdown of democratic principles. (...) If two decades ago, in Latin America, the destruction of democracy was due to the violent imposition of de facto governments, now it seems to be due to a hollowing out of its organs"."
New models of authoritarianism are arising in the region, converging with a series of processes and factors. Illegal economic interests have embedded themselves in power structures, in some countries forming elements of a parallel state which undermine democracy. State reforms that seek greater efficiency through structural adjustment lead, in practice, to a concentration of power. The definition of drug trafficking as a threat to national security relegitimizes a domestic role for the military. The public outcry for drasticmeasures to deal with a lack of civil security serves as a pretext for imposing repressive laws and policies. In the words of Mario Maldonado (Chapter 3): ""While intellectuals keep looking for democratic principles among the ruins left by the collapse of recent history, ordinary Guatemalans are faced with the rise of ‘Narcolandia', the state within the state"."
Militarization and Hemispheric Security
Various country studies presented here deal with increasing military involvement in counternarcotic tasks. Samuel Blixen places this topic in a regional context, beginning his analysis with the observation that: ""the ghost of the old National Security doctrine hovers once again over Latin America"," this time in the form of a ""doctrine of hemispheric security, based on a strategy of militarization of the drug war"." Different chapters clearly confirm this trend toward militarization and transnationalization of counternarcotics efforts in the hemisphere. This helps to reinforce and
relegitimize a domestic role for the armed forces and militarized police forces, and is strongly backed by US officials, as is explained in the section by Coletta Youngers and Peter Zirnite: ""US international drug policy threatens to reverse regional trends toward democratization, demilitarization and greater protection for human rights. Finally, the drug war provides an on-the-ground role in the region for the US military expanded intelligence-gathering and surveillance activities, evoking concerns about national sovereignty and possibilities for greater US intervention among countries throughout the
hemisphere"."
In implementing these strategies, the focus was first on the Andean region, because it is the principal source of coca and cocaine production. Theo Roncken comments in his analysis of the bilateral agenda in recent Bolivian history: ""The Andean governments sought and achieved greater international backing for alternative development plans, but at the same time Paz Zamora felt obliged to accept the entry of the military into the drug war. In 1990, this was the condition for the United States to provide US$40.3 million"." Although repression in Bolivian coca and cocaine production zones is primarily the task of militarized police units, the effect of this conditioning is clear: ""External requirements force the Bolivian state toward a more and more authoritarian model"."
Ricardo Vargas presents the most extreme and bloodiest example of this process. Colombia, ""wavering between apology for war and the choreography of peace"," never really took part in the transition of the 1980s, and is now suffering a new escalation of serious violence, fuelled by a combination of anti-drug strategy and counterinsurgency war. Vargas' conclusion leaves no doubt: ""The international community must promote a paradigm change in the ‘drug war,' since the present model aggravates internal armed conflict and stimulates the internationalization of conflicts that are directly or indirectly related to production of raw materials for manufacturing psychoactive substances, increasing the cost of a strategy whose failure has already been proven"."
There are great differences in the receptivity and degree of participation of Latin American countries in the militarization of the drug war. These are analysed by Samuel Blixen who identifies ""serious obstacles to a strategy that aims to militarize the drug war in the framework of a regional security doctrine and formation of a transnational army. The factors working to counter this strategy are associated with the experience of the very military institutions that supported dictatorships, the development of democratic processes, and the emerging phenomenon of regional economic integration"." The armies of the Mercosur countries, in particular, resist the identification of drug trafficking as the greatest threat to regional security, and are therefore unwilling to become involved in military counternarcotics tasks. This opposition reflects the contradictions between the processes of forming sub-regional free-trade blocs (CARICOM, the Central American System of Integration, the Andean Pact and Mercosur) and the "fast-track" strategy for hemispheric integration promoted by the United States, whose first step is NAFTA. Blixen concludes that: ""For Mercosur, the definition of security priorities excludes, for now, participation in US continental security projects, giving priority instead to regional cooperation, in the same way that, in the economic sphere, the governments prioritize the consolidation of the regional bloc over its participation in the Free Trade Area of the Americas"."
In his chapter on Brazil, Jayme Brener says: ""Until now, despite constant pressure from the United States, the Brazilian armed forces have refused to take part in ‘police' combat against drug trafficking. Even so, military tactical and intelligence support in the drug war is increasing"." Brazil's position is slowly succumbing to pressures from the United States. In the case of Argentina, there are clear indications of internal contradictions: While President Carlos Menem signed an extra-NATO military alliance with the United States, whose main objective is fighting drugs and terrorism, top military officials continue to resist a redefinition of their role in this direction.
Only recently, Central America has become involved in this play of interests, and the United States seems to be encountering less opposition there. In Guatemala, which has suffered greatly to finally arrive at an historic point, where true demilitarization is possible, Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú has denounced the first steps in turning over to the military what are essentially police tasks. Menchú calls these moves ""counterproductive in the progress toward democracy. The Army exercises power in parts of the country where other state institutions do not exist, and where, in the last 35 years, it has had complete control over the population, with its system of military commissioners and other mechanisms of domination, that officially were eliminated through the peace negotiations"." Likewise, another early human rights champion, Frank La Rue, judges that: ""the government yields to the temptation to repress again by using the Army, which carries out public security tasks that are not its role. They also want to turn the drug war over to the military. This makes the problem of remilitarization more serious and undermines the democratization process"."
With regard to the militarization process in Mexico, Carlos Fazio remembers the words of Pentagon chief William Perry at the end of 1995, ""who stated, before top Mexican Army officials, that there were strong political and economic ties between the United States and Mexico, but a ‘third link' was missing. Since then, at Washington's urging, the healthy distance between the two countries' military forces began to shrink"." This was summarized in testimony before Congress in 1998 about Mexico's counternarcotics efforts: ""Beginning in 1995, the President of Mexico expanded the role of the Mexican military in counternarcotics activities. The Mexican military, in addition to eradicating marihuana and opium poppy, has also taken over some law enforcement functions. For example, airmobile special forces units have been used to search for drug kingpins and to detain captured drug traffickers until they can be handed over to civilian law-enforcement agencies. (...) Since fiscal year 1996, the Department of Defense (DOD) has provided the Mexican military with $76 million worth of equipment, training and spare parts. The Mexican military has used this equipment to improve its counternarcotics efforts"." Fazio offers evidence that this equipment also has found its way into counterinsurgency operations in Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca. The "third link", according to Fazio, ""the link that was needed to close the circle of dependence"," seems to have been established.
Crime in Uniform
As we have pointed out the project also sought to identify threats to democracy-building that arise from the reinforcement of organized crime, the effect of drugs on politics and the economy, and related corruption, State involvement and impunity. Based on a series of detailed case studies (some of which were presented in "Crime in Uniform", 1997), we hope to clarify some details of the "modus operandi" of corruption in national security and judicial institutions. Our conclusions call into question the image of "a state apparatus besieged by criminals who seek protection for their vile acts". Instead, they suggest the existence of much more complex dynamics and more intimate relations between criminal and state structures, in which uniformed officers are completely integrated into the operational level of the illegal economy. Beyond widespread bribery - the lowest level of corruption - there is evidence of uniformed officers' involvement at higher levels, from the protection of illicit drug trafficking to direct participation in the logistics
of the business. One factor that appears in all the studies is impunity, which perpetuates itself, as well as the mechanisms which permit this involvement. Rose Marie de Achá has devoted a chapter to this topic, because ""analysis of impunity in public structures shows the strong link that exists between the state's exercising of power and illegality. It also denotes more clearly the fragility of Latin American democracies and the level of conflict that results when the interests of those in power do not coincide with the interests and needs of the public. (...) When news about crimes committed by authorities,
officials and others who enjoy the protection of state power are considered as isolated events, it is difficult to understand the extent and root of the problem. But when the most frequent events are reviewed and analysed integrally - taking into account that many others are hidden or ignored - the magnitude is such that it calls into question the state's very foundations. The phenomenon of impunity, which perpetuates criminal conduct, underscores in the first place the urgent need for State structures to conform themselves to compliance with the law"." In her chapter about Argentina, Adriana Rossi presents a current example of the existence of a gray area where power and illegality intermingle: ""The intertwined network of economic interests, many of which have a clearly illegal origin; the maintenance of a power structure in which these businesses are wedded to political power; the existence of criminal networks that promote these within the military and security forces themselves; a complacent judicial system; and a Congress dominated by the ruling powers, lead one to think that a parallel state with its own laws exists, and tends to replace the legitimate state"."
In Brazil, according to Jayme Brener, ""drugs today are an inseparable part of the economy of entire regions. (...) It is not possible, however, to speak of the ‘narcotization' of the state apparatus. There is no evidence of a link between public power and drug trafficking at the national level; rather, it is focused in specific places. The situation might have been different if former President Fernando Collor de Mello had not resigned in 1992. There is more and more evidence of links between Paulo Cesar Farías, Collor's former campaign manager, and Italian Mafia groups, as well as Colombian cartels"." These observations implicitly express a criticism of recent attempts in various Latin American countries to constitutionally broaden the possibility of presidential re-election, which, according to Rossi, ""allows the perpetuation of groups in power, whose exclusive interest is their own reproduction"."
Referring to the hypothesis of Mexican sociologist Luis Astorga - who has studied drug trafficking structures in his country - Carlos Fazio points to the existence of a ""structural interdependence among certain institutions, social agents in various fields, and traffickers; although the latter appear to be the responsible parties, the genetic source of the original sin"." Astorga questions the image of criminal organizations corrupting the state, and describes the origin of the so-called cartels as ""an endogenous development, from within the very structures of power, not an exogenous one that is parallel and external"." Drug kingpins ""are not completely autonomous individuals, nor are they stronger than the political power that has created, cultivated, exalted, protected, tolerated and used them for its own ends, then discarded and subdued them with no trouble when their time has come"." Although the situation in Mexico has its own characteristics, various chapters of this book corroborate this analysis.
The collection of studies leads us to the conclusion that - despite specific local changes in some countries - the drug war has left intact drug trafficking's organizational structures, has spread their influence throughout the continent; and has increased the degree to which they are embedded in power structures. Coletta Youngers and Peter Zirnite cite analysts Eva Bertram and Ken Sharpe, who speak of the "hydra effect:" ""Like the mythical sea serpent that Hercules battled, the drug trade is an evasive enemy: Each time one of the hydra's heads is cut off, two more grow in its place"." One Pentagon official, quoted in the same section, expressed his frustration: ""Scratching gives some short-term relief - which is hard to resist - but it spreads the problem"."
A War Without Logic
Considering the huge ongoing investment required by the drug war, its serious collateral damage to human rights and democracy, and its counterproductive effects in terms of the influence of drugs and their agents on the economy, there seems to be no logic in what Bertram and Sharpe, in their book "Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial" (1996) call: ""the persistence of unworkable policies in the face of overwhelming evidence of their failure. (...) It seemed to be conventional wisdom that the reason force had not worked was that not enough had been applied and that the logical response to failure, therefore, was escalation - not reevaluation"." Partially, the absence of logic can be explained by the existence of other interests behind the drug war. We can mention the obvious crisis in the mission of the military, both in Latin America and the United States, which leads to the need to redefine the enemy and the arena of war, so as to justify their existence, budgets, training and aid programs, arms purchases and the continued existence of military bases, as is the case with the planned conversion of some US military installations in Panama into a "Multilateral Anti-Drug Center".
Redefining the mission with greater emphasis on counternarcotics tasks is especially controversial in the case of the CIA, which has been involved in scandals throughout its history because of alliances with known drug traffickers. Frank Smyth's contribution to this book seriously questions the integrity of the CIA's present counternarcotics program, which is being expanded. Coletta Youngers and Peter Zirnite describe, in their analysis, the growing rivalry among agencies of the US counternarcotics bureaucracy. The authors present the "narco-control complex" as an almost uncontrollable monster. The same chapter points out another motive for the absence of logic in the drug war, which presents a bleak future not only for those who suffer the consequences of remilitarization in Latin America, but for those who seek real solutions to problems connected with drug abuse: ""The political dynamics that shape US policy make a shift toward a more realistic approach to drug control improbable, if not impossible. Driven by the fear of being labelled ‘soft on drugs,' the executive branch and Congress have abandoned the constitutional system of checks and balances designed to guard against the promulgation of misguided policies in favor of partisan competition to stake out the hardest line on drugs, a battle that becomes particularly fierce as elections near". "Until another creature in the political jungle gains the capacity and courage to challenge it, the narco-control complex will continue to squeeze increasingly large sums of money out of Congress, strangle debate on alternative drug-control policies, and crush, under its own weight, all efforts to improve real performance as measured in decreased use of hard-core drugs and drug-related violence"."
In the Crossfire?
In conclusion, the image of Latin American democracy threatened by the "crossfire" of drug trafficking and the drug war does not seem realistic. The various chapters of this book demonstrate that the two lines of fire are too intimately related. Firstly, because of the "endogenous" nature of the development of "organized crime" and its relation to groups in power, which find the new war an arena for satisfying other interests. Secondly, because of new drug laws which perpetuate systems of impunity that tighten the links between the state and illegality. We also point out that it is unwise to underestimate the shadow of a dictatorial past. Former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada put the risks this way: ""When you have a corrupt police chief, you fire him. When you have a corrupt Army chief, he fires you"." Thirdly, because those who are fighting in the frontlines closest to the drug fire are most likely to be burned by it, especially when - in the absence of a clearly defined and evaluated logic - the practice of fighting fire with fire leads to everything except extinguishing the blaze. That is the case in Colombia, where both drug trafficking and the drug war fuel the fire of internal conflict. And finally, because in the end, the source of both fires is the same: the illegality of a market, sought to be extinguished with complete denial of its economic principles and with an obsessive and impotent morality expressed, for instance, in the slogan of the "United Nations General Assembly Special Session to Counter the World Drug Problem Together" (June 1998): ""A Drug Free World - We can do it!"" As Ricardo Soberón points out in the chapter about Peru: ""The drug war is extraordinarily complex when seen as a health problem, and becomes even more so when treated as a problem of regional security"." The first step should be a return to logic, confronting the problem on the terrain in which concern first arose: public health.
We must learn from our experiences and seriously evaluate everything that has happened since the establishment of the prohibitionist regime, in order to begin to redefine the anti-drug strategy on the basis of the principle, "Primum non nocere...". Only then will it be possible to promote real change in the destructive dynamic between drugs and power in Latin America and eliminate at least one obstacle to the reconstruction of democracy in the region.
