Democracias bajo fuego

Drogas y poder en América Latina

Martin Jelsma

and others

May 1998

Democracias bajo fuego illustrates that the current repressive drug policies create more damage than that they produce solutions in Latin America.

One of the most interesting - and complete - investigations on drugs and power in Latin America to be found to date El Tiempo, Bogotá, Colombia.

Democracias bajo fuego (Democracies under Fire) illustrates that the current repressive drug policies create more damage than that they produce solutions in Latin America.

The collateral damage, generated by both drug trafficking as well as the 'war on drugs', are mayor impediments for the process of democratisation on the continent.

This 370-page study aproaches the problem from two sides: on the one hand the destabilizing effect of an illicit economy; and on the other the re-militarization caused by the escalating drug war.

Introduction by Martin Jelsma and Theo Roncken

Democracies under Fire
- Organized Crime
  - Mexico: a narco-democracy? by Carlos Fazio
  - Brazil: drug trafficking, state and civil society, by Jayme Brener
- Authoritarianism
  - Argentina: the obscure intrigue of power, by Adriana Rossi
- Between War and Peace
  - Colombia: use and abuse of the War on Drugs, by Ricardo Vargas Meza
  - Central America: war after the war, by Mario Maldonado
- Impunity
  - Power, offence and impunity in Latin America, by Gloria Rose Marie de Achá
Sovereignty under Fire
- War on Drugs
  - Their own worst Enemy: Washington's War on Drugs in Latin America, by Coletta Youngers & Peter Zirnite
  - Conflict of interests: The CIA in the War on Drugs, by Frank Smyth
- Bilateral Agenda
  - The Bolivian enigma: bilateralize the bilateral agenda, by Theo Roncken
  - Mexico in the imperial orbit, by Carlos Fazio
- Integration and Transmilitarization
  - Security and sovereignty, by Samuel Blixen

Conclusions and proposals

Book's review in Terra Viva

Publisher:

TNI/Acción Andina/Ediciones de Brecha, Montevideo (Uruguay)

Martin Jelsma

TNI Drugs and Democracy Programme Coordinator

Martin Jelsma is a political scientist who has specialised in Latin America and international drugs policy. In 2005, he received the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship, which stated that Jelsma "is increasingly recognized as one of, if not the, outstanding strategists in terms of how international institutions deal with drugs and drug policy."

In 1995 he initiated and has since co-oordinated TNI's Drugs & Democracy Programme which focuses on drugs and conflict studies with a focus on the Andean/Amazon region, Burma/Myanmar and Afghanistan, and on the analysis and dialogues around international drug policy making processes (with a special focus on the UN drug control system). Martin is a regular speaker at international policy conferences and advises various NGOs and government officials on developments in the drugs field. He is co-editor of the TNI Drugs & Conflict debate papers and the Drug Policy Briefing series.