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CENTRE FOR MILITARY AND STRATEGIC STUDIES
Calgary Papers
in Military and Strategic Studies
Occasional Paper Number 9, 2013
Latin American Security:

Canadian and International
Perspectives
edited by Monique Greenwood Santos
and Stephen J. Randall
The Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the

University of Calgary promotes excellence in
military and strategic studies. Its members work in
areas including military history, Canadian defence
policy, and international strategic and security
issues. Calgary Papers in Military and Strategic Studies
presents their research to the public.
ABSTRACT: The papers and presentations in this volume were part of an
international conference on Latin American and Caribbean basin security
issues hosted by the Latin American Research Centre at the University of
Calgary in May, 2013. Focusing on Canadian security policies in the region,
the conference went beyond traditional notions of security and focused
on a range of human security issues: the impact of insecurity on violence
against women, the role of illegal armed groups, organized crime, guerrilla
insurgencies, youth gangs, and the impact which armed conflict has on the
physical environment. The findings of this conference suggest that, with
increased private sector investment in the region combined, growing trade
ties have implications for the image of Canada in the region and neces-
sitate a close and effective working relationship between government and
the private sector to ensure that international standards pertaining to the
environment and human rights are observed.
C E N T R E F O R M I L I TA R Y
AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

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Latin American Security: Canadian and International Perspectives

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Calgary Papers
Volume 1 (2007): Canada in Kandahar
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Dr. Aaron Plamondon
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Dr. Robert Bergen
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Latin American Research Centre and
the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies
Calgary Papers
Occasional Paper Number #9, 2013
Latin American Security: Canadian and

International Perspectives
Edited by Monique Greenwood Santos

and Stephen J. Randall
Contents
Preface............................................................................................................. v
Introduction
stephen j. randall......................................................................................... 1
I: Canadian Policy Perspectives
A: Diplomatic and Military Engagement
Building Security, Peace, and Prosperity in Colombia: .
The Role of Canada.
ambassador tim martin...............................................................................13
The Canadian Military and Latin American Security Challenges .
major-general d. michael day................................................................... 23
B: Canadian Private Sector Engagement
Introduction.
stephen j. randall....................................................................................... 27
Challenges of Security Management.
john noyes......................................................................................................31
Petrominerales: Security Management Programs in Colombia.
gary finley.................................................................................................... 35
II: Regional Security, History, and Trends
Those Elusive Common Interests and Objectives: .
The Evolution of the Inter-American Security System.
hal klepak..................................................................................................... 43
Challenges of Collective Action in the Hemisphere.
frank o. mora................................................................................................67
The Persistent Multidimensional Security Dilemma in the .
Caribbean and Requirements for Emergence: Trapped Between
Dependence and Development - A Strategic Deficiency.
brigadier-general anthony wj phillips-spencer................................... 71
Multidimensional Security Perspective.
ambassador adam blackwell.....................................................................81
The Future of Inter-American Relations .
peter hakim . ................................................................................................ 89
iii
III: Civil-Military Relations and Security Policy
Challenges to Institutionalizing Civil-Military Relations in .
the New Democracies of Latin America.
thomas c. bruneau....................................................................................... 99
Militarization of Public Security in Latin America: .
Where Are the Police?.
luca dammert.............................................................................................115
The Armed Forces: An Analysis of the Role of the Forces in .
the Distinction Between Defence and Security.
hector luis saint-pierre............................................................................133
translated from portuguese by monique greenwood santos
Multidimensional Security, Ungoverned Areas and .
Non-State Actors.
bernardo prez salazar............................................................................147
IV: Insurgencies and Organized Crime
The Background and Current Negotiations with FARC.
alfonso lpez caballero...........................................................................169
Corruptive Destabilizing Influences of Powerful Organized .
Crime Groups on Weak Security Institutions in Latin America: .
An Intelligence Perspective on Mexico and Colombia.
greg purdy....................................................................................................173
Organized Crime, Institutions, and Security in Central America.
jos miguel cruz..........................................................................................187
(In)Security in Latin America: Three Policy Options.
pablo policzer and elizabeth pando-burciaga.................................... 207
V: Mexico: Human and National Security
The Anti-Femicide Movement in Ciudad Jurez, Mexico.
zulma y. mndez......................................................................................... 223
The National Security Policies of the Felipe Caldern .
Administration: Toward a Human Security Dimension?.
mara-cristina rosas................................................................................ 233
Contributors ..............................................................................................247
iv
Preface
This publication includes a selection of presentations from the May 2013
Latin American Security Conference hosted by the Latin American Research
Centre at the University of Calgary, jointly with the Centre for Military and
Strategic Studies, the School of Public Policy and the Canadian Defence
and Foreign Affairs Institute. We are very grateful for their collaboration
and support, as we are for the very generous support of the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council and the Defence Engagement Program
of the Department of National Defence. Foreign Affairs and International
Trade Canada very kindly arranged for Canadian Ambassador to Colombia
Tim Martin to deliver the opening keynote address. Several corporations
provided critical financial support for the conference, including Agrium,
Enbridge International, UBS Bank Canada, and Rainmaker. Enbridge
International, Petrominerales, Nexen, CKR Global, Goldcorp, Grantierra,
NortonRose, and Yamana Gold also facilitated the participation of panelists
from their firms.
We were fortunate to have had the participation of several doctoral
student rapporteurs who prepared executive summaries of each of the pre
sentations and discussions which followed the presentations. They included:
Adam Cahill (History), Clayton Dennison (CMSS), Mariana Hipolito A.
Ramos (Political Science), Elizabeth Pando (Political Science), and Brenan
Smith (History).
Overall conference coordination was handled with patience and skill by
Monique Greenwood Santos, Program Coordinator in the Centre. She is also
the co-editor of this volume. The Latin American Research Centre would
also like to thank the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies for its col-
laboration in the publication of the conference proceedings.
Stephen J. Randall
Director, Latin American Research Centre
v
Calgary Papers in Military and Strategic Studies, Occasional Paper No. 9, 2013
Latin American SecurityPages 110
Introduction
Dr. Stephen J. Randall, FRSC,
Director, Latin American Research Centre
T
he papers and presentations in this volume were part of an inter-
national conference on Latin American and Caribbean basin se-
curity issues hosted by the Latin American Research Centre at the
University of Calgary May 2 & 3, 2013. The conference was co-hosted with
the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies and the School of Public Policy
at the University of Calgary, and the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs
Institute, also based in Calgary. The conference received very generous sup-
port from the Defence Engagement Program of the Department of National
Defence, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada,
as well as private sector sponsorship from UBS Bank Canada, Agrium, and
Rainmaker. The Centre is grateful to its co-hosts and its sponsors for mak-
ing it possible to draw together a range of academics and practitioners from
Canada, the United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and
Mexico.
The objectives of the conference were several. The first was to adopt a
very broad approach to what was meant by security. We wanted to include
but go beyond traditional notions of security which focus on the military
and thus give attention to a range of human security issues, whether it be
the impact of insecurity on violence against women, the role of illegal armed
groups, organized crime, guerrilla insurgencies, youth gangs, or the impact
which armed conflict has on the physical environment. A second goal was
to include and learn from academic specialists, government officials, inter-
national agencies, NGOs and members of the business community with
operations in the region. Perhaps inevitably there were gaps. Although issues
relevant to Latin American indigenous groups were identified, there was no
spokesperson from an indigenous community in the region. Nor was there a
representative of organized labour from Latin America, both sectors which
have been impacted by armed conflict in the region. The focus of the confer-
ence was on Hispanic and Portuguese Latin America. Of the English, French,
and Dutch Caribbean only Trinidad and Tobago received appropriate atten-
tion, although that countrys security agenda was set in the larger framework
of CARICOM (Caribbean Community). Since this was a Canadian-based
conference, a third goal was to learn more about the evolution of Canadian
Centre for Military and Strategic Studieshttp://cmss.ucalgary.ca/ 1

introduction
security policies in Latin America, what the policy objectives have been,
where Canada has focused its attention and resources and in what ways
Canada has made an impact.
Conference sessions thus dealt with: the evolving role of the military in
the region; tensions between the ideal and the reality of the militarys func-
tion; the relationship between police forces and military; and the role of non-
state armed groups, whether guerrilla insurgents such as the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), paramilitary groups or narcotics cartels
such as the Zetas in Mexico and Central America, or the youth gangs that
have increased levels of violence from California to Panama. In all presenta-
tions there was an underlying or explicit recognition of the context in which
security must be understood: pervasive poverty and inequality, race and
class conflict, sexism, and for several countries in the region, most signifi-
cantly in Central America, among the highest rates of homicide in the world.
To set the stage for one dimension of the discussions, Hal Klepak
traced the evolution of the inter-American security system from its roots in
the early nineteenth century to the present. He stressed that hemispheric
cooperation has been strongest in periods when the region faced a common
external threat, fascism and Nazism in the 1930s and World War II period,
or Communism during the Cold War, although for many Latin American
countries the United States itself has been seen historically as a threat. In the
absence of an external threat since the end of the Cold War and with waning
U.S. interest and influence in the region, the inter-American security system
has reached its weakest point since prior to World War II. Hector Luis Saint-
Pierre turned our attention to the Latin American military, outlining the
traditional and evolving mission of the armed forces, with a focus on Brazil.
He stressed the philosophical distinction between security and defence. As
with other participants, Saint-Pierre noted the fact that threats are not solely
state to state but rather derive from social, economic, and political challenges.
Saint-Pierre viewed as unfortunate the blurring of lines between areas in
which military forces appropriately belong, which is defence of the state,
and areas in which police are the appropriate institution. Luca Dammert
concentrated her analysis on the evolution of military-police relations in the
region. She outlined the factors which have led governments and civil society
to turn to the military rather than the police to deal with criminal activity,
in particular the general corruption and inefficiency often associated with
police forces and the high degree of personal insecurity felt by many Latin
American citizens in their daily lives. Dammert argued that police reform
has been largely ineffective, and Saint-Pierre cited instances in Brazil where
2
stephen j. randall
the police had undermined the efforts of the military to deal with criminal
activity. Commentator Hendrik Kraay suggested that since the military was
already very actively engaged well beyond its traditional role of defence of
the state, the need was to find ways to minimize their impact.
Canadian Ambassador to Colombia Tim Martin in his opening keynote
address echoed Dammerts stress on the sense of citizen insecurity in the
region. Martin noted that among the factors accounting for Colombias re-
cent success in meeting its security challenges were: a strong and profes-
sional military and police; a coherent and progressive package of social
and economic policies including a victims-based restitution policy; and
international and regional support. Ambassador Adam Blackwell, Secretary
of Multidimensional Security at the Organization of American States (OAS),
reinforced Dammerts data on violent crime, noting the impact that the illicit
economy has had on financing criminal enterprise, with homicide rates and
rates of gun violence increasing. He indicated that some estimates identify
some 900 gangs in Central America alone. Like Dammert he noted the extent
to which citizens feel insecure as the result of the high crime rates. In a paper
prepared subsequent to the conference, Colombian scholar Bernardo Prez
Salazar identified organized crime as one of the critical areas in which multi-
dimensional security in the Americas has not been successful since the adop-
tion in 2003 of the Mexico City Declaration by the Organization of American
States. Prez suggested that the ineffectiveness in dealing with organized
crime has been particularly problematic in areas that he identified as under-
governed, in other words those areas in which weak states have failed to
establish a credible and effective political and military/police presence. Prez
referred to all non-state actors criminalized by the state-centric multidimen-
sional security doctrine. In his paper, he criticized the view that the state
is necessarily the best actor capable of providing governance goods and
services. His paper also dealt critically with development agendas focused
on strengthening state military and policing capacity as the main corner-
stone of state-building. His specific focus was the case of Colombia, where
counterinsurgent, antinarcotic and stabilization doctrine and operations
have been applied for decades with increasing troop density, to no avail.
Thomas C. Bruneau provided an insightful and comprehensive analysis of
the challenges that threaten civilian control of military forces in the new
democracies of Latin America. He outlined a number of the preconditions
that must be established to ensure an effective civil-military relationship, the
most important of which he suggested is that power must reside with elected
civilian decision-makers with military subservient to the civilian power. In
3
introduction
his estimation only Chile and Colombia at present have achieved an effective
institutional structure. Presentations provided analyses of the impact on so-
ciety of the militarization of the war on drugs in Mexico during the Caldern
government. Zulma Y. Mndez demonstrated the correlation between the
intensified military operations in the Ciudad Jurez area and the dramatic
increase in the killing of women. Mara-Cristina Rosas observed the lack of
continuity in the development of a national security strategy in Mexico dur-
ing the last several administrations. She noted that President Vicente Foxs
national security strategy made no reference to narcotics trafficking and the
cartels, whereas the national security strategy of the Caldern government
identified narcotics and organized criminal activity as a national security
threat and federalized as well as militarized the war on drugs, paying
little attention to state and municipal authorities. With Calderns successor,
President Enrique Pea Nieto, the strategy shifted to a policy of Mexico in
Peace with a greater emphasis on protecting human rights and reducing the
high levels of violence.
Several papers and presentations dealt with the challenges posed by
organized crime, paramilitary groups, youth gangs, and the few remain-
ing insurgent groups in the region, the most significant of which is the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the longest standing major
insurgency in Latin America. The Colombian government and FARC have
for some time been engaged in negotiations with a view to a peace accord.
Former Colombian ambassador to Canada and former Colombian peace
commissioner in earlier negotiations with FARC, Alfonso Lpez Caballero,
expressed some degree of optimism about the current negotiations, not-
ing that, in contrast to previous peace negotiations, FARC faces too many
pressures internally and internationally not to negotiate in good faith. At
the same time, he noted the divisiveness in Colombian society and political
circles over the ultimate treatment of FARC in a final settlement, with some
factions perceiving FARC as simply a brutal terrorist organization, opposed
even to negotiations let alone a smooth and liberal transition into civil so-
ciety for FARC insurgents. Ambassador Martin echoed Lpez Caballeros
optimism about the peace negotiations.1 Greg Purdy and Jos Miguel Cruz
offered sobering reflections on organized crime and violence. Purdy stressed
the transnational nature of organized crime and its destabilizing impact.
Like Cruz, Purdy underlined the extent to which pervasive corruption,
whether among military, police, intelligence or civilian officials, has contrib-
uted to the ineffectiveness of government policies. Purdy noted, for instance,
the failure of Colombias intelligence agency DAS as the result of corruption.
4
stephen j. randall
Given the massive levels of wealth generated by organized crime and the
comparatively poorly compensated civilian and military personnel, it was
not surprising that corruption should be so pervasive. As well, as Purdy
pointed out, organized criminal organizations in countries with high rates
of unemployment and inequality can be both sources of employment and
socio-economic levelers. Cruz was pointedly critical of mano dura policies
that have been pursued by most Central American governments in dealing
with organized crime. He cited the increased levels of violence in Central
America when mano dura policies have been pursued. Military and police ag-
gression were matched by aggression from target groups, resulting in a gen-
eral escalation of violence. Cruz distinguished between insurgent groups,
which need to maintain some degree of support from civilian populations,
and organized criminal groups which have little need to do so. He noted, as
well, the effectiveness of state institutions in some countries and their failure
in others, such as the contrast between the situation in and policies pursued
by Nicaragua versus Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. In the case of
Nicaragua the Sandinista governments in the 1980s worked to dismantle il-
legal armed groups and to establish a reasonably credible, independent, and
non-corrupt police force which enjoys the confidence of Nicaraguan civilians.
Ambassador Adam Blackwell concurred with Cruzs assessment, stressing
that the problem of insecurity is not necessarily more security. Mano dura,
he noted, has been tried and found wanting; heavy-handed military and
police tactics and tough crime legislation have not resulted in lower levels
of violence and lower serious crime rates. Rather, he advocated a human-
istic approach, with a focus on crime prevention, alleviating the conditions
which give rise to crime, deterring youth from joining gangs in the first place,
and providing more support for the victims of crime. Like other panelists,
Blackwell also stressed the importance of reducing impunity for those who
commit crimes, including crimes of corruption by officials and crimes of vio-
lence perpetrated by police and military. Without addressing impunity it is
not possible to create a context in which citizens have confidence in the state,
its agencies, and officials.
Pablo Policzer and Elizabeth Pando-Burciaga noted the extent to which
youth gangs, especially in Central America, constitute a threat to security,
the rule of law, and the capacity of states to maintain effective governance.
He identified the important difference between the pandillas and the maras,
the former of which were formed by youth returning to their countries after
the end of the Central American civil wars in the 1980s. The latter were
largely the product of the more than forty-thousand youth gang members
5
introduction
deported to their countries of origin from the United States after 1996. The
estimated numbers of members of such gangs in Central American countries
range from 70,000 to 200,000. Policzer and Pando-Burciaga noted that Central
American countries have responded to youth gangs with three not neces-
sarily mutually exclusive policy options: mano dura, delivery of public goods
(mano extendida), and dialogue. He noted the challenges associated with
direct dialogue: the legitimization of illegal actions and violent offenders;
and the difficulty of dialoguing with often non-hierarchical, decentralized
groups and multiple parties.
Brigadier-General Anthony WJ Phillips-Spencer, Vice Chief of Defence
Staff, Trinidad and Tobago, drew the attention of participants to the parallel
challenges in the Caribbean basin. He emphasized that many of the small
Caribbean island nations suffered not only from the legacy of colonialism
and dependence but also from the lack of resources to deal with high crime
rates and corruption associated with trafficking in narcotics and arms as
well as money laundering and cyber-crime. He added that those problems
are compounded by the fact that institutions are weak and leadership in the
region tends to pursue policies and strategies which are not adequate to at-
tain their goals. He expressed some degree of pessimism about the capacity
of the region to surmount these obstacles without major institutional reforms
and significant external assistance from Canada, the United States, and other
nations along with the private sector and civil society.
Several presenters addressed the issue of multinational cooperation, and
their assessments were not uniformly positive. Former U.S. Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense, Frank O. Mora, noted that the last time a large number
of countries in the hemisphere reached a major regional agreement was a
decade ago with the 2003 Mexico City Declaration on security. Mora noted
the resistance to U.S. initiatives in the region, for instance in response to pro-
posals for the way in which militaries respond to natural disasters. Mora had
little positive to say about the effectiveness of either the OAS or CARICOM,
both of which he identified as chattering organizations which promote
idealistic agreements but leave them largely unfunded and ineffective. Part
of the problem, he noted, is the weakness of state institutions and of many
of the states themselves, lacking the strength and authority to make effective
multilateral commitments and leaving multilateral challenges to the small
number of stronger states to address. Another part of the problem, in his
view, is the continuing resilience of narrow conceptions of sovereignty which
make it difficult to reach meaningful multilateral agreements and commit-
ments at a time when the challenges that confront the region are challenges
6
stephen j. randall
without borders. For Mora there is a need to develop a new framework or

set of institutions capable of addressing these complex problems, but he
did not express optimism that such a framework would emerge in the near
future. Peter Hakim, President Emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue ex-
pressed equally pessimistic sentiments about the value and performance of
multinational institutions and the quality of multilateral delegations. Hakim
echoed Moras analysis that such collective commitments as the 2001 Inter-
American Democratic Charter have not been effective in defending democ-
racy, citing the recent examples of Venezuela and Paraguay. He suggested
that there is not even a clear consensus about what constitutes democratic
norms, making it virtually impossible for the OAS to do more than engage in
endless debates and send fact-finding missions when disputes arise.2 Hakim
also noted the fragmented nature of economic relations in the hemisphere,
with the region divided into camps. He noted that eleven countries have free
trade agreements with Canada, the United States, and the European Union.
Brazil has resisted overtures from North America and instead leads the
seven-country Mercosur.
The concluding session at the conference was a roundtable with senior
security officials and representatives of Canadian companies active in Latin
America. The session was intended to explore the concrete and practical se-
curity challenges companies operating in the region face, how they respond
to those challenges, and how they interact with their host communities. The
conference was fortunate to have on the panel a number of individuals with
Canadian police and intelligence operations experience as well as company
officials responsible for corporate security, corporate social responsibility,
and international business development.
As noted earlier, one objective of the conference was to explore aspects
of Canadian security policies and engagement in Latin America. Having for
most of the Cold War years distanced itself from the region as a U.S. sphere of
influence, Canada and its governments have been far more active in security,
political and socio-economic development since joining the Organization of
American States. Elections Canada has played an important role in helping
to draft electoral laws and monitoring elections along with other regional
and international agencies. Canadian military forces participated in ONUCA
(UN Observation Group in Central America, 1989-92) and ONUSAL (UN
Observation Group in El Salvador, 1991-92). The former operation was pri-
marily a verification and peace observation mission, in particular focused on
the demobilization of the U.S.-backed Contras. The latter began primarily as
a human rights monitoring mission but expanded into involvement with the
7
introduction
demobilization of certain military and police units which had been identi-
fied with severe human rights violations. In 2006 the Department of Foreign
Affairs and International Trade established a Secretariat for the Americas
Strategy announced by the Conservative government. In 2007 during a
Latin American tour Prime Minister Stephen Harper identified the Americas
as a policy priority and called for a re-engagement with the Americas. In
Santiago, Chile, the Prime Minister identified three broad areas of policy
focus: strengthening and promoting freedom, democracy and human rights,
and the rule of law; building strong, sustainable economies; and meeting
security challenges, including environmental and health risks. In the 2007
Speech from the Throne the Harper government made a clear commitment
to strengthening the Canadian security capacity.3 Canadian military, policy,
and intelligence agencies have been increasingly active in the Caribbean and
Latin America in the past decade. Canadian forces were from the outset part
of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), and Canadian police
forces, especially the RCMP, have worked closely with their counterparts in
the Caribbean and Latin America. The Canadian Security and Intelligence
Service has officers placed in several key Latin American capitals.4 Canada
has been an active participant in the Defense Ministerials of the Americas,
hosting the 2008 meetings in Banff, Alberta. Canada also sent a strong dele-
gation to the Central American Security Conference in Guatemala in 2011,
including a small civil society delegation. Canadian naval forces have also
participated in the U.S.-led multinational Joint Interagency Task Force oper-
ating out of Key West engaged in narcotics interdiction in the Caribbean.
In 2011, for instance, HMCS St. Johns participated in the recovery from a
semi-submersible of a cargo of cocaine with a street value of US$180 million.
The task force involves eight Latin American countries, plus the Netherlands,
France, Spain, and Canada.Canadian Major-General D. Michael Day out-
lined for the conference participants some of the significant and basic issues
relevant to the Canadian strategy for engagement in the Americas. He identi-
fied the current Canadian defence practices and the role of the Department
of National Defence and Canadian Forces in the region. He contended that
Canadas approach needed to be hemispheric and global in scope since the
challenges are global, not just regional in nature, and he noted that some of
the lessons learned about combating narco-terrorism in Afghanistan could
be applied in dealing with comparable issues in the Western Hemisphere. He
stressed that Canadian security policy in the Caribbean and Latin America
had to be developed within a climate of budgetary restraint. He noted the
broad definition of what is considered a security challenge, including nat-
8
stephen j. randall
ural disasters, illegal migration flows, border security, transnational crime

and organizations, violence, drug trafficking, and the security of Canadians
abroad. Major-General Day noted the value of Canadian contributions to
peacekeeping and monitoring, education, training, exchange programs, and
partnerships with other agencies and governments in the hemisphere.
Ambassador Martin focused less on Canadas military engagement and
more on its contributions to peace and security programming in Colombia,
where Canada has contributed some $32 million toward improving long term
security by working with institutions that seek to safeguard human rights,
citizens freedoms, and the rule of law. Canada has contributed to the import-
ant Colombian governments land restitution program, to the Organization of
American States support for the demobilization of illegal armed combatants,
to the OAS peace mission (OAS-MAPP), and the project seeking to assist the
victims of violence. Canada has played a particularly important role in sup-
porting the identification and removal of anti-personnel mines in Colombia
and Central America as well as encouraging and supporting the Colombian
governments advisory role in Central American conflict resolution.
The implications for Canadian policy of these security challenges in
Latin America are numerous. It was evident from all presentations, even
those which did not explicitly address Canadian policy, that high levels of
violence in Latin America, organized crime, the lingering guerrilla insurgen-
cies and the various factors which give rise to those phenomena, and chal-
lenges associated with the quality of governance necessitate a higher level
of commitment to the region than has traditionally been the case. Analysts
note that the Americas Strategy has not resulted in any significant increase in
foreign aid to the region, although there has been more focus on the security
agenda by the Canadian government working bilaterally and multilaterally
through the United Nations and the Organization of American States. It was
also observed that the increased private sector investment in the region com-
bined with growing trade ties have implications for the image of Canada in
the region and necessitate a close and effective working relationship between
government and the private sector to ensure that international standards
pertaining to the environment and human rights are observed.
July 2013
9
introduction
Notes
1 Ed. Note. In late May 2013 FARC and among others opposed. In contrast, in
the Colombian government reached 2009 the OAS suspended Honduras
agreement on a number of agrarian for what it argued was the uncon-
issues. stitutional removal of President Jos
Manuel Zelaya.
2 Ed. Note. In June 2012 the Paraguay
legislature removed leftist President 3 Stephen J. Randall, Canadas National
Fernando Lugo from power. The Security Challenges in the Caribbean
United States and OAS Secretary and Latin America, Foreign Policy for
General Insulza opposed the sus- Canadas Tomorrow 7 (Toronto: Cana-
pension of Paraguay from the OAS. dian International Council, June 2010).
Venezuela, then still under President
4 Ed. Note. The conference did not
Hugo Chvez, and the other Bolivar-
address the security issues of Haiti
ian republics sought suspension as did
which remain serious challenges.
eighteen other hemispheric countries.
Canada, the United States, and Mexico
10
I:
Canadian Policy
Perspectives
A:
Diplomatic and
Military Engagement
Building Security, Peace, and

Prosperity in Colombia: The Role of
Canada
Ambassador Tim Martin, Canadian Ambassador to
Colombia
Introduction
I
t is always a great time to be the Ambassador of Canada in Colombia,
but now more than ever as our Colombian friends are in the process of
moving from a dark past into a bright future. But it is a complex moment,
extremely demanding for the Colombian leadership, and it is a moment with
implications for their Canadian friends in the public and private sectors. It re-
quires putting the victims of Colombias armed conflict at the centre of public
policy. It involves Canadian investments to grow the economy responsibly
and rapidly. It means doing all this in areas where there is still armed conflict
and the presence of the state is inadequate. With the multi-faceted challenges
it faces, one could say Colombia contains many of the security issues con-
fronting the region as a whole. What makes Colombia so instructive is that it
is facing these challenges with three great assets:
a strong and professional military and police;

a coherent and progressive package of social and economic
policies including a victims- based peace policy; and
international and regional support, not least in the fight
against transnational organized crime.
Our relationship with Colombia is vital and dynamic because Canada

and Colombia share many interests. We have a solid and growing relation-
ship that spans all three goals of Canadas engagement in the Americas,
which are:
to increase mutual economic opportunity;

to strengthen security and institutions that safeguard free-
dom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law; and
to foster lasting relationships.

building security, peace, and prosperity in colombia
These goals are at the core of our ongoing partnerships with friendly
countries like Colombia as we work together towards a more prosperous,
secure and democratic hemisphere. Our relationship with Colombia is one
that we value greatly and that has been important in deepening our engage-
ment in the Americas.
There are two themes I would like to focus on in particular. Firstly, the
Colombian progress we observe in achieving security, human rights, and
economic opportunity for its citizens; and secondly, the role and contribution
of Canada as part of our engagement in the Americas. However, let me note
that insecurity has been very costly for Colombia, and implementing solu-
tions is an urgent matter.
The human rights of Colombians have been badly violated by the armed
conflict which is arguably the biggest challenge for contemporary Colombian
governments. The military confrontation with the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) and with the National Liberation Army (ELN)
are the primary and best known drivers of the armed conflict, though greatly
diminished in strategic terms over the last decade. At the same time, success
in the form of dismantling the countrys paramilitary groups has brought
new challenges with it and the actions of criminal bands, known as BACRIM,
are responsible for many abuses.
The proliferation of an array of emerging BACRIM groups following the
end of the demobilization of the paramilitaries in 2006 remains a major chal-
lenge for President Santos security efforts and the implementation of some
of his flagship policies. Following the demobilization process, these groups
have consolidated their presence in between 10 percent and 20 percent of
the countrys municipalities and have managed to maintain between 2,000
and 3,500 members for the last four years. Their pragmatic nature has also
led them to reach temporary local cooperation pacts with the FARC and the
ELN. Although drug trafficking remains their main source of income, some
of these groups are heavily linked to local delinquent gangs involved in
small scale extortion, retail drug dealing, illegal mining, and contraband. In
some cases, their resilience has become an obstacle for the implementation of
assistance to victims of the armed conflict.
In fact, it is often observed that that there are three dimensions to the
Colombian security challenge: the guerilla, the BACRIM, and common crim-
inality. As a result of its armed conflict, Colombia has among the highest
number of displaced people in the world, at some four million.
Among the most vulnerable groups have been human rights defenders,
those in the vanguard of land restitution for the displaced, and children.
14
tim martin
Also, Colombia has the highest number of landmine victims in the Americas
and the second highest in the world after Afghanistan. In 2012 the country
reported 479 victims, of which fifty-two children were injured and twelve
were killed by landmines.
With respect to labour rights, there have been great advances. As a mat-
ter of fact, our Free Trade Treaty has a side agreement on labour. But there
is much more work to do because Colombia has been qualified as one of the
most dangerous countries in the world for union leaders.
Poverty is also an issue and its reduction is a major concern of Colombian
policy makers. In 2012, 34.1 percent of Colombians were living in poverty and
10.6 percent in extreme poverty. While remarkable progress has been made,
the presence of the Colombian government remains uneven and limited in
certain rural areas, especially those areas affected by armed conflict. As a
result, the Colombian state has not yet fully completed its task to protect and
provide basic services to all Colombians.
It is a work in progress and Canada continues to promote and support
efforts to address the situation. For example, Canada is among the top donors
to the programs of the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees in Colombia and we pay particular attention
to Colombias progress in meeting its human rights commitments such as
UNSC resolution 1612 on Children and Armed Conflict.
Why It Matters to Canada

The kind of insecurity we see in Colombia and its consequences also matter
because of Canadas interest in and commitment to working with partners
towards regional and international security. The fact is, Canada is a country
of the Americas, and this is our home. Insecurity anywhere in the Americas
poses threats to our friends and neighbours across the hemisphere, but also
to Canada and Canadian interests; including tourists, businesses, diaspora
communities, and investors. What happens in the neighbourhood has an
impact on everyone in the neighbourhood.
We have found that working with Colombia, and with our other neigh-
bours in the Americas, to prevent and address crime inside their borders is
beneficial to us all. It enriches their security and also prevents crime from
flowing into other countries. We do this because we recognize the import-
ance of supporting a countrys own efforts and in recognition of the inter-
connectedness of our hemisphere.
It is a truism that durable solutions to security problems cannot be
achieved in the absence of good governance and the rule of law. And here
15
it is very important to recognize progress and momentum, as well as the

potential for Colombian leadership through demonstration in the region.
For example, President Santos has made Colombian accession to the OECD
the first priority in his international agenda. This is not because he wants
Colombia to be on the list of rich countries. He calls it the club of best prac-
tices. This commitment to good governance, at the very top is a key enabler
for all the rest that has to happen.
Colombia is walking the talk and examples abound. Colombia has an
open and liberalized economy. Tax reforms are being implemented to in-
crease formalized employment and competitiveness without changing the
government take. Specialized agencies have been created to reduce poverty
and eliminate extreme poverty, and Colombia has successfully encouraged
responsible foreign investment and improvement in the distribution of
royalties for the benefit of all Colombians. Colombia is also contributing to
international good governance efforts already. It is active in the anti-money
laundering work of the OECD and has, with Canadian support, established a
contact point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
What Colombians and Canadians are discovering is that we have shared
values that cement our relationship and our ability to work together. We
agree that any vision for economic and social development needs practical
expression in sensible public policies, both domestically and internationally.
Moreover, this focus on good public policy is a healthy contrast to other gov-
ernments in the region who prefer ideological and populist approaches.
For this reason, the continued success of Colombia is in our interest,
as is its growing capacity for regional and international leadership. The
Ministerial and Summit of the New Pacific Alliance in Cali, Colombia in May
2013 (of which Canada was an observer) is another good example of this posi-
tive Colombian leadership in our hemisphere. In other words, the success of
Colombia matters, not just to Colombia, not just to Canada, but also to the
region as a whole.
Canadas Contributions to Peace and Security in Colombia

Over the last six years, Canada has contributed some $32 million in specific
peace and security programming in Colombia. And these projects have gen-
erated very important results. Here are some of the areas where we have
been investing in peace and security.
Since its initiation in 2005, Canada has supported the transitional justice
process initiated by the Government of Colombia with the Peace and Justice
Law. This law gave rise to the demobilization of ex-combatants and the estab-
16
tim martin
lishment of institutions for assistance and reparation of victims of the armed

conflict. Restitution mechanisms have been created including a Center for
Historical Memory, fast-track methods for investigation of conflict-related
crimes and institutions to assist victims.
While only fourteen sentences have been rendered against former com-
batants, on the subject of truth, much has been accomplished. Over 77,000
victims have participated in criminal proceedings against former combat-
ants. For example, demobilized paramilitaries have confessed to a total of
25,757 homicides and 1046 massacres. These are chilling numbers, but estab-
lishing the facts of these cases is critical for Colombia to move on, and for
families to know for certain the fate of missing loved ones.
In June 2011 the Victims and Land Restitution law was approved, thanks
to which 157,800 victims have received reparations. This is a shining example
of the State of Colombia taking responsibility to address the problems of the
armed conflict as it affects the citizens of Colombia.
Many observers of the armed conflict in Colombia say that the issue of
land contains the roots of the conflict and the seeds of peace. Canada was
among the first supporters of Colombias effort to redress massive issues of
dispossession with policies and programs to return land to their rightful
owners. Like so much of Colombias efforts, the high level of policy ambition
corresponds to the great depth of problems the state needs to address. Our
role has been to help the Government of Colombia bring its policies closer to
the client. This has involved the opening of store-front offices around the
country for victims of dispossession to open their files, complete their cases,
and have them forwarded to specialized judges for decision. The first judicial
decision was handed out in October 2012 restituting sixty-five hectares to four-
teen families. The process is accelerating, and there are currently some 34,000
claims registered for 2.2 million hectares of land. The task is daunting, but it
is also inspirational to see Colombian officials rolling up their sleeves to find
ways to make this work and to see Colombian farmers who were displaced
stepping up to claim their rights and re-establish their roots in their land.
Canada was among the first in supporting international verification
of demobilization processes, and our support continues to this day. Here
the unsung hero is the Organization of American States (OAS) Mission to
Support the Peace Process (MAPP), which has been on the ground and do-
ing a low profile, field-based effort that has been critical to the success of
demobilization so far. More than 51,000 combatants have been demobilized.
Much more has to be done and the processes for addressing the challenges
of eventual demobilization of FARC and ELN fighters are yet to be defined.
17
The OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process has not only played an
oversight role, but has also strengthened institutions along the way that will
help sustain the effort in the long run. Our contributions to the OAS MAPP
and to the government entities charged with addressing the needs of victims
of the conflict have been important expressions of Canadian efforts to im-
prove security and to do so for the long-term by working with institutions
that will protect and safeguard citizens freedom, human rights, democracy,
and the rule of law.
A very good news story from 2012 involves work of the OAS and the
Colombian humanitarian de-mining battalion of which Canada is a major
supporter. It is a remarkable example of cooperation in which OAS civil-
ians work with communities to identify mined areas for clearance by the
Colombian military. In this case it is an unarmed and specially uniformed
humanitarian de-mining battalion. The headline of this good news story was
certification of the Municipality of San Carlos as the first mine-free munici-
pality in Colombia. The best news is what demining enabled in terms of the
return of 286 families to their homes, land, and schools.
Of course, the top of mind peace and security issue today is the negotia-
tions to end the armed conflict between the Government of Colombia and
the FARC, the major insurgent group in the country. These are taking place
according to a carefully designed and agreed agenda witnessed by Norway,
Cuba, Chile, and Venezuela. The five issues under discussion are very
specific. They are:
1. Rural development and agrarian reform;

2. Citizen participation and guarantees for political opposition;
3. End of conflict provisions including a cease fire, demobiliza-
tion, disarmament and reintegration;
4. A solution to the issue of illicit drugs; and
5. Victims and reparations.
The specificity is significant. These negotiations are not about all aspects
of Colombian policy, but rather they are about the five agenda items, nor is
there a cease-fire. The Colombian security forces continue their efforts to se-
cure all territory and citizens at the same time as the negotiations take place
in Havana.
Canada has formally communicated to the Government of Colombia
Canadas policy to support President Santos entry into negotiations. At the
same time, FARC remains on Canadas list of terrorist organizations. If these
18
tim martin
negotiations prove to result in an agreement, and the greater percentage of

FARC combatants reintegrate into licit activities, then we are on the verge
of the end of armed conflict in our hemisphere. And if they do not, we have
good reasons to be encouraged by efforts focused on victims, the broad
deceleration of the armed conflict, improvement in human rights, and the
momentum of Colombias strategic policy directions.
And there is another piece of good news: Colombia is now a mentor on
regional security, which Canada is a part of as well. We are working with
Colombia to share its security sector expertise with Central American coun-
tries struggling with weak government institutions, limited government
reach throughout the countries, and the increasing presence of transnational
organized crime and the violence associated with it.
The security situation in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean,
particularly as a result of transnational organized crime and illicit drug traf-
ficking and its associated violence, poses a significant challenge to the hemi-
sphere. Nobody knows this better than Colombia, which has learnt valuable
lessons through hard won advances and, with Canadian support, is sharing
its expertise with Guatemala and Honduras. A trend has been observed in
which Guatemala and Honduras are preferred entry points for the move-
ment of illicit drugs northward from South America. Colombia is providing
expertise and training to help the Guatemalan and Honduran authorities
interdict this illicit traffic on land, on sea, and in the air.
Intelligence sharing at the regional level is a critical dimension of
staying a step ahead of the criminals. In this respect, Canada is providing
$1.5 million in funding for Interpols Regional Intelligence Gathering and
Criminal Analysis project which provides specialized regional training for
law enforcement officers in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean to
effectively gather and analyze criminal intelligence and data as they relate
to illicit narcotics. Sharing real-time information among countries is an es-
sential element in the successful investigation and prosecution of crimes.
Canadian Contributions to Prosperity

Unfortunately, the scope of this discussion does not permit me to describe in
further detail the work of the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA) to prevent and protect children from recruitment by illegal armed
actors, the new robust bilateral defense MOU we are implementing, the work
of the RCMP with its regional counterparts, and the security work of the
Canadian Navy in the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean. Instead, I will turn to
the Calgary connection.
19
Canada views increased engagement through trade and commercial-

economic ties as one of the best ways to support positive change and growth
in the Americas. With fifty-two Canadian petroleum and mining companies
operating 240 projects intwenty-nine of Colombias thirty-two departments,
the security environment involves significant policy implications for the
extractive sector. Of course, in Colombia the big story is about oil. We have
some nineteen Canadian exploration and production companies working in
this sector in Colombia with a combined market cap of over $10 billion, most
with their head offices right here in Alberta.
Moreover, Canadas role in Colombia matters. Some 50 percent of oper-
ated production and about 30 percent of net production in Colombia is
thanks to Canadian companies in the context of over a million barrels a day
production in the territory of the Republic of Colombia.
The role of resources in national development was the core message in
Prime Minister Harpers address to the Business Forum at the Summit of
the Americas in Cartagena in 2012. He began by saying that []resource
development has vast power to change the way a nation lives. It is also
something which is tremendously responsive to the actions of government.
Today I want to talk to you briefly about how to maximize the value of this
great industry for a country and its people. Prime Minister Harper ended
with an invitation: []we believe in Canada that we have found the way
to transform resource assets into a sustainable foundation for equitable na-
tional development. And it is also an area in which we are more than pleased
to work cooperatively with willing partners for mutual benefit.
Colombia is one of the willing partners, and we saw that here in Alberta
and British Columbia just last month in a remarkable event in which the
Colombian environmental and regulatory leadership came to Calgary and
Fort St. John to see how we manage our sector in Canada. It is a source of
pride that Canada was the destination for this innovation in regulatory dip-
lomacy. I believe it is also the beginning of an important new relationship.
Why talk about the extractive sector and security in the same presenta-
tion? Two reasons come to mind immediately. Firstly, in a conflict affected
country like Colombia, the imperative for corporate social responsibility is
very strong. Moreover, many resource projects are in areas that have suffered
from conflict and the attendant social tensions can linger long. Fortunately,
Canada has a strong policy that integrates business and human rights. The
Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights is a key piece and the
Embassy of Canada as well as leading Canadian companies are active mem-
bers of the Colombian group promoting its implementation. It is called the
20
tim martin
Mining and Energy Committee and it is chaired by President Santos national

security advisor.
Secondly, there is a new phenomenon that we might as well call criminal
gold mining. This is illicit mining conducted by criminal organizations and
sometimes with the collusion of illegal armed actors, providing working cap-
ital for future crimes. Criminal mining is visible in many areas of Colombia.
Its primary visual manifestation is of large excavators aggressively mining
alluvial gold and polluting rivers. What is not so visible is the unregulated
use of mercury and cyanide for refining. There is an urgent need to replace
criminal mining with responsible and formal mining that is inclusive of the
artisanal miners who have been making an honest living for centuries from
small scale mining. Here Canada is working to build dialogue around sus-
tainable solutions and looking for ways to help the Government of Colombia
formalize and professionalize the artisanal sector. As part of our engagement
in Colombia and in the Americas, we are working to improve responsible
natural resource development by sharing Canadas world-class expertise
in corporate social responsibility practices. This is a critical and distinctive
contribution by Canada to peace, security, and development in the region,
and one that will expand as the new Canadian International Institute on
Extractive Industries and Development (CIIEID) takes off.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to recall that it was six years ago that Prime
Minister Harper launched Canadas engagement in the Americas as a for-
eign policy priority. Today, our engagement in the Americas and in Colombia
is stronger than ever. Canada is a partner in peace and security, a trusted
investor and a reliable friend. Canada has been present and made the right
kind of contributions at the right time while Colombia has made rapid and re-
markable progress. As Canadians, we have a stake in Colombias success and
we are making a significant contribution through our development assist-
ance, peace and security projects, and through the investments of Canadian
companies which are generating growth and opportunity for Colombians.
In Colombia, Canada is working to build a stable foundation for our long-
term engagement and increased influence in the hemisphere. I hope you will
agree with me when I say that Canada is the ideal partner for Colombia, our
commitment is for the long-term, and the future is bright.
21
The Canadian Military and Latin

American Security Challenges
Major-General D. Michael Day, Director General,
International Security Policy, Department of National
Defence, Canada1
M
ajor-General Day shared his knowledge and experience as Director
General, International Security Policy. Building on his recent
travels throughout South America, Major-General Day addressed
some of the significant and basic issues relevant to the Canadian strategy
for engagement in the Americas as well as the current defence practices of
Canada in the hemisphere, the Department of National Defence (DND) and
Canadian Forces (CF) partnership in the Americas, security challenges, how
DND addresses these security issues, and the creation and future of the
Canadian Defence approach. Throughout his presentation, Major-General
Day emphasized the partnership, cooperation, and dialogue between the na-
tions of Latin America and the DND/CF. Cognizant of operating in an area
of fiscal restraint, Day argued that the best force is a tax-effective modest
force.
Major-General Day reiterated the importance of the region to Canada, as
was evidenced by the Western Hemisphere strategy, one of only two official
strategies of this kind (the other being the Arctic strategy). Major-General
Day lauded peacekeeping, language courses, and military training pro-
vided in Canada, formal defence agreements in the region, and highlighted
Canadas participation throughout the Americas. He outlined a myriad of
issues and practices to combat existing challenges such as: countering illegal
migration flows; dealing with natural disasters; protecting Canadian tour-
ists; and addressing transnational criminal organizations, violence, and drug
trafficking.
Major-General Day espoused that cooperation and capacity-building
were vital in the Caribbean, and South and Central America in addressing
these cross border threats, stating that he believed there were only global
security issues not regional security issues. Citing extensive visits through-
out the region by the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, Major-General
Day described progress with DND/CF in training, education, exchange, and
placement opportunities throughout the hemisphere, and recounted the

the canadian military and latin american security challenges
operations of CP Hamlet where partnerships, education, and training were

advancing.
Day noted that practices such as anti-narco-terrorism learned in
Afghanistan were aiding in the Americas. He highlighted the importance of
a hemispheric over regional focus, and identified Chile as a very impressive
example of both a regional and global participant, crediting their worldview.
Day again re-iterated the need for effective, meaningful, and long-term en-
gagement and partnerships in the region to combat threats, build capacity,
and bolster relations.
He concluded by admonishing that Canadas role or involvement in the
hemisphere would increase in the future, as the region was deemed signifi-
cant. His final section of the presentation illustrated the main tenets of our
(DND/CF) approach. Here he shared current practices such as: coordinating
and partnering with governments and governmental agencies for long-term
relations; operating in a fiscally-responsible manner to ensure that relations
are benefitting all parties involved; and lastly, he returned to a point which
he had made earlier in his presentationbeing attentive and aware of the
defence-security nexus. Nevertheless, he admitted that while these meas-
ures did not constitute the total solution to the problems of the region, they
were significant to the resolution.
Note
1 Summary of presentation prepared by Adam Cahill, University of Calgary.
24
B:
Canadian Private Sector
Engagement
Introduction: Canadian Private Sector

Engagement
Dr. Stephen J. Randall, Director, Latin American
Research Centre, University of Calgary
I
n recent years the role of the private sector in Latin America, especially in
the natural resource extraction industries, has become more complex and
controversial. There have been pressures from host governments, local
communities and countries in which companies are incorporated to ensure
that corporate practices are in keeping with the highest standards of corpor-
ate social responsibility. One reflection of that broader societal concern with
the role of Canadian natural resource extraction companies abroad was the
focus on the mining industry, which such NGOs as Mining Watch brought to
bear in 2011-2012 in support of Bill C-300. Bill C-300 was a private members bill
tabled by Liberal Member of Parliament John McKay. The legislation, which
its advocates argued was a response to allegations of human rights abuses
and environmental damage inflicted by Canadian firms operating abroad,
proposed giving the government authority to investigate complaints against
resources companies operating abroad, and withholding public money from
offenders. The bill came to a vote by Members of Parliament in 2012 and was
defeated by a vote of 140-134. Some viewed the legislation as impractical,
others as a missed opportunity.1 Whatever the reality, the fact that it gained a
significant degree of support among legislators and a number of NGOs is an
indication that the concerns are widespread and one can anticipate that civil
society will continue to press for Canadian government attention to human
rights and environmental challenges in the region.
In some contexts, especially in conflict zones, companies also face secur-
ity challenges. The closing panel at the conference brought together security
specialists and company executives in the security and business develop-
ment areas from the oil and natural gas industry and gold mining to discuss
the kinds of security challenges they face and how they respond to them.
Discussion ranged from a focus on hard security, including relations with
private security contractors, local militaries, and military consultants to
corporate social responsibility, community relations, and popular culture.
This section includes the presentations of only two of the panelists and brief
references to the others.

introduction: canadian private sector engagement
Among the speakers in the closing session, John Noyes, Director of

Corporate Security for Goldcorp and a former RCMP officer, discussed the
challenge of security management and the costs of social conflict. He noted
that the rise of transnational criminal organizations particularly in Latin
America has considerably increased security challenges, whether ensuring
protection for employees and their families or company property. He ob-
served that companies such as Goldcorp recognize that they have to ensure
that security operations are conducted in conformity with international
standards and the protection of human rights. Mark Lalonde, Director, CKR
Global Risk Solutions and a former Program Director of the Justice Institute
of British Columbia, echoed many of John Noyes assessments of the security
environment in the region. Gary Finley, Director of Corporate Security for
Petrominerales, a Calgary-based oil company which operates primarily in
Colombia but also has start-up operations in Peru and Brazil, focused his
analysis on the companys security management programs. Finley reported
that the companys hard security challenges derive from the two leading
guerrilla insurgencies, which have been defined since 9/11 at least as narco-
terrorist organizations, FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and
the ELN (National Liberation Army) as well as from criminal gangs which
are largely restructured paramilitary organizations following the large scale
demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) over
the past decade. Paul Nelson, Director of Global Security at Nexen, Canada,
focused his discussion on the companys community relations and corporate
social responsibility policies. He stressed that Nexen is committed to partner-
ing with community members and other stakeholders where they operate,
building long-term trust by sharing information, consulting with stakehold-
ers about business decisions, and working collaboratively to understand the
needs and expectations of local communities. Jeff Collins of Calgary-based
Grantierra also emphasized the need of companies to work collaboratively
with local communities in which they operate.
Terry Blevins, Mexico Security Manager for Yamana Gold, adopted an
entirely different approach in his presentation in an attempt to explain the
relationship between popular culture and narco-terrorism in Mexico. He
stressed that government officials, military, police, and companies operat-
ing in Mexico need to understand the extent to which the images of drug
lords have invaded popular culture in the country, impacting the hearts and
minds especially of disadvantaged youth in society. A great deal of popular
music, online videos, cinema, and even quasi-religious imagery glamorize
the powerful lives of drug lords, creating a counter-culture of criminality.
28
stephen j. randall
Folk saints have emerged as protectors of those involved in the drug trade,
whether it is Santa Muerte in Mexico City or Jess Malverde in Sinaloa.
Blevins indicated that Jess Malverde images appear on both sides of the
U.S.-Mexico border.2
Although Glenn Faass, Managing Partner of Norton Rose Group law
firm in Bogot spoke on an earlier panel, his discussion of the Rule of Law
has particular applicability to the discussion of private sector operations in
the region. Faass presented World Bank data on the extent to which Latin
American countries adhered to the rule of law, with Chile not surprisingly
the leading country in the region and Venezuela one of the weakest, with a
ranking which placed it on a par with Chad and the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. Faass presented data on levels of corruption and the ease of
doing business in individual countries. He noted Colombia and Brazil have
both shown considerable improvements in those areas in recent years. He
added that although Brazil is considered a country where it is still chal-
lenging to conduct business, the country nonetheless has a comparatively
low corruption ranking. Faass predicted that Mexico, Venezuela and to a
slightly lesser extent Argentina, can be expected to experience economic
challenges in the future unless they improve their rankings. Rule of Law is
Figure 1. Jess Malverde: protector and patron saint of drug traffickers.
29
introduction: canadian private sector engagement
only one of the six World Bank Governance Indicators. The others are Voice
and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government
Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, and Control of Corruption. The contrasts
between Chile and Venezuela in the 2011 rankings are striking. Taking only
two of the criteria, Control of Corruption and Regulatory Quality, the re-
spective percentiles for Chile are 91.9 and 93.4; for Venezuela by contrast they
are 7.6 and 6.2. Colombia and Mexico are close in terms of regulatory quality
(60.7 and 61.1 percentile respectively), but Argentina fares badly in the same
category at 25.1 percentile.3
Notes
1 For the missed opportunity perspec- folklore on the U.S.-Mexico border,
tive see Penelope Simons and Audrey International Journal of Drug Policy 16:5
Macklin, Globe and Mail, 23 August (October 2005): 326-33.
2012.
3 Ed. Note. World Bank Data is from
2 See the work of Howard Campbell http://info.worldbank.org/governance/
an Anthropologist at the University wgi/sc_chart.asp. Accessed 5 June
of Texas El Paso. Drug Trafficking 2013.
Stories: Everyday forms of Narco-
30
Challenges of Security Management

John Noyes, Director-Corporate Security, Goldcorp
T
here are two main issues that concern the private sector on an ongoing
basis; firstly, the challenge of security management and secondly,
the costs of social conflict. There are the obvious costs of physical
security, which are higher in remote locations, but above that there are costs
that do not turn up as budget line items but that can impact operating costs.
Regardless of industry, companies are spending more than ever on security,
and the cost to protect our people, assets, and reputation are increasing, par-
ticularly as companies move into areas of higher risk in pursuit of economic
deposits to mine. Security within mining companies is often seen as a cost
center, and not something that contributes to production. This perception
is slowly changing particularly as we move into more difficult regions in
search of quality deposits.
We have a duty of care to employees, especially expats. This has been a
challenge in recent years with the rise in transnational criminal organiza-
tions particularly in Latin America. Executive protection and added security
measures for families that were once considered perks are now essential, and
substantially raise the cost of doing business. Associated insurance costs,
plus vendors and contractors who refuse to provide goods and services in
some areas, all impact our margins. In some areas the threat of extortion
is now the principal concern for private sector operations, rivaling theft of
copper and fuel, corruption, and internal fraud for preventative and investi-
gational resources.
The Challenge of Security Management

In past years, responsibility for security often fell to the Safety or Human
Resources Manager who contracted a private security provider and ex-
pected them to hire, train, and supervise security personnel. Little consider-
ation was given to the need for contractors to implement security policies,
procedures or rules of engagement such as Use of Force. Many companies
now realize they cannot contract away their responsibilities to ensure secur-
ity operations are conducted in a manner that conforms to international
standards and respects human rights. To that end, investment in proper
supervision for proprietary and contract security staff, plus recurrent train-
ing, is essential.

challenges of security management
In many Latin American countries there are few enforced regulations

for security companies, and many operators are unlicensed. It is very com-
mon for many contracted security providers to have an internal system of
deductions subjectively applied to the front line personnel for costs (such
as uniforms) and offences (such as dirty boots). Left unaddressed through
supervision, this will impact morale and ultimately the service you receive.
The average uniformed security guards in many of the countries we
operate have no more than a grade four to six education. After a short train-
ing course they are provided a shot gun (they may have been allowed to fire
the weapon once) then told to protect our facility. It is unreasonable to expect
these well-meaning, often locally hired, security guards to understand con-
cepts such as Use of Force. Most are not provided options, such as pepper
spray or a baton, and training, such as in the legal parameters of their author-
ity or what is expected in respecting human rights.
At Goldcorp we ensure security at our sites is managed by proprietary
supervisors or managers that report directly to the mine manager. It is always
challenging to find experienced security professionals to manage this func-
tion, and occasionally there is resistance to the additional personnel costs.
Security, like safety, should be seen as an investment. It is value added
when properly conducted in a manner that enables geologist and exploration
crews to add resources and reserves, allows unencumbered site development
and exploitation permitting, and ultimately takes a project through produc-
tion and into closure with minimal interruption. Investing in higher security
standards pays dividends by attracting ethical investors and shareholders
who demand compliance with the industry best practices and international
standards. It also minimizes conflict with the communities in our area of
influence.
Cost of Community Conflict

Latin America presents unique challenges and opportunities to mining com-
panies, but there are often disconnects between the promotion of a mining
project by national governments and the resulting negative reaction within
local communities. Some of this can be attributed to an elevated awareness of
mining companies Corporate Social Responsibilities programs and greater
expectations for the benefits mining brings. Unrealized or oversold expecta-
tions often lead to conflict.
According to the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America, 176
mining projects in the region are currently in conflict with 231 communities
(March 2013). Community issues with mining companies usually focus on
32
john noyes
allegations of insufficient community consultation, environmental damage,

and human rights abuses. This is compounded by a lack of trust in a national
government to enforce social and environmental laws, which provides fertile
ground for anti-mining and social NGOs.
The widespread use of mobile devises and social media has facilitated
the exchange of information to the extent where simultaneous protests can
be organized from Canada to Argentina. A common theme for protestors
is the lack of community consultation in accordance with International
Labour Organization Convention No. 169 (ILO 169) and The United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: this is the right to redress
for lands, territories and resources that could be adversely affected and a
commitment by the state to obtain the free, prior and informed consent
of indigenous peoples before the approval of any project affecting their
lands or territories and other resources. Countries experiencing the highest
number of mining-related violent conflicts are usually those that lack the
institutional structures to enforce the laws, or international conventions
such as ILO 169, they have ratified. While companies do actively engage
in community consultation, it is very common for NGOs to organize their
own community consultations, which in many cases result in a rejection of
mining.
Many of the conflicts mining operations face in Latin America can also
be traced back to simmering, unresolved political, economic, social, and eco-
logical issues. A failure to recognize, map and address these issues before
they arrive at the mine gate can lead to physical confrontation, costly losses
in project development or production, and the need to spend time, energy,
and money in response.
Some of the costs most difficult to quantify are from lost productivity
and those associated with the inability to pursue projects and opportunities
for expansion as a result of companycommunity conflict. Additionally, ex-
penditures for further studies and reports, legal advice and staff time when
conflicts arise affect the viability of a project.
In terms of lost productivity, a major mining project with a capital ex-
penditure of between US$3-5 billion can realize about US$20 million per
week of delayed production if shut down. Even at the exploration stage,
losses can be over US$10,000 for every day of delay in terms of wages, idle
machinery, and production. The working assumption is that 5 percent of an
asset managers time will be spent managing social risk, but in reality this
can easily be over 10 percent for senior managers, and higher for department
managers.
33
challenges of security management
Companies operating in areas of conflict or weak governance must take

additional steps to mitigate risk and promote a positive security environment.
There are opportunities to strengthen government institutions, such as pub-
lic security forces, and to operate in a transparent manner. Implementation
and adherence to international standard such as the Voluntary Principles on
Security and Human Rights should form the basis of the security manage-
ment plan.
The ability to accurately assess risks present in a companys operating
environment is critical to the security of personnel, local communities, and
assets. A multidisciplinary team needs to regularly consider security, pol-
itical/regulatory, economic, taxation, legal, corruption, environment, social,
and industry specific issues and changes.
By addressing real and perceived community concerns, and working to
resolve disputes before they escalate, companies have an opportunity to re-
duce the risk of actions such as blockades, protests, anti-mining campaigns,
legal suits or sabotage, thereby also reducing social conflict and the costs to
the company. An early investment in appropriate security that is proportion-
ate to identified threats is money well spent.
34
Petrominerales: Security Management

Programs in Colombia
Gary Finley, Director-Corporate Security,
Petrominerales
P
etrominerales is a Canadian oil company with corporate head office
located in Calgary, Alberta. Our operations are primarily located in
Colombia, where we have been working for nearly eleven years. We
also have startup operations in Peru and Brazil.
My discussion will focus on Colombia where we have operations in
various departments (or, as we know in Canada, provinces). Our Colombian
head office is in Bogot and the majority of our employees in Colombia,
numbering some 200, are Colombian nationals. We also have four expatriate
families residing in Bogot.
In addition, we have nearly two hundred personnel with contracted
services, primarily located in field operations. Added to this personnel
count, frequent visits are made to Colombia by corporate executives, en-
gineers, geologists, accountants, and various other professionals. Thus, our
security management programs involve not only security for personnel
and assets in Colombia but also protective programs for visiting corporate
professionals.
In the context of security challenges and the private sector, there are
practical and policy issues that form the framework of our security man-
agement programs. Firstly, it is important to briefly identify the risks that
we have faced in Colombia over the years. These risks emerge primarily
from three hostile elements that have been active in the country for many
decades:
1. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of ColombiaPeoples

Army (FARC) is an international recognized narco-terrorist
organization.
2. The National Liberation Army (ELN) is also an international
recognized narco-terrorist organization.
3. BACRIM refers to criminal gangs of organized criminals
restructured after the demobilization of some 32,000 paramil-
itaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

petrominerales: security management programs in colombia
Suffice it to say that all three organizations are active in illicit drug ac-
tivities, kidnappings, sabotage, extortions, and various other crimes. Risks
for the private sector depend on what part of the country companies oper-
ate. In this regard, our risk assessment process at Petrominerales provides
matrix guidelines for management decision on security measures required
to mitigate risks.
Security Infrastructure
In order to address these risks, we have developed a security infrastructure
that is designed for preventive and responsive measures to protect person-
nel and assets. We have established three levels of security in our security
management program in Colombia:
1. Security Department: At the outset of operations in Colombia,

a security department was created within the company, which
consists of several Colombian nationals who are employees
of Petrominerales. They serve various functions in the se-
curity department, ranging from Security Manager to Field
Coordinators. The principle of employee positions within the
company was to obtain experienced Colombian nationals with
police and military backgrounds, enhancing loyalty through
employee benefit positions. As part of this department, we
also have on retainer a retired general from the Colombian
Army, who serves as a special advisor within our security
department.
2. Security Contractor: Security services for Petrominerales are
required in Bogot and the field. These are guard positions
in various locations, as well as bodyguards (or escoltas). The
escoltas provide services for expatriate families living in
Bogot and for corporate visitors. Every two years several
security providers in Colombia are invited to bid for services
with Petrominerales. This tendering process is examined by
the company Contract Review Committee who awards final
contract.
3. Military Agreements: From the outset of operations in
Colombia eleven years ago, we have maintained excellent
relations with the Colombian military. This started in the
Putumayo department, adjacent to Ecuador where FARC
threats were, and still are, a concern. These high risk areas are
36
gary finley
under mandated jurisdiction of the military. Private security

companies, and certainly the Petrominerales security depart-
ment, are unable to address these high risk areas alone; thus,
military protection is required for personnel and assets.
Formal agreements for use of the military are arranged between the
Petrominerales legal branch and the Ministry of Defence. Our Petrominerales
security policy is very clear on how and why we use the military. Agreements
are very transparent, set out in accordance with regulations by the Colombian
government. These regulations recognize that the private sector, in high risk
areas of Colombia, is unable to operate without military protection.
As a practical example, we are currently drilling in an area in South
Meta that at one time was covered in coca plantations. Through success by
the authorities these plantations have been destroyed, FARC narco terror-
ists moved out of the area and we were able to proceed with our drilling
plans. However, families and sympathizers of the FARC remain in the area,
as do FARC militants in nearby mountain sanctuaries. This creates a high
risk environment whereby military protection is required in circumference
areas around drilling locations. Within the drilling site itself, security guards
and a Petrominerales Security Coordinator are established for close quarter
security of personnel and assets.
Support for the military is in the form of logistical support for soldiers
on assignment to Petrominerales. No company support is provided in ways
that assist offensive efforts by the military against the FARC and ELN. For
example, we constructed a large shower and toilet facility in one of the army
division locations, where soldiers are based and on rotational assignment
to Petrominerales operations. In addition, our retired general on retainer
works closely with these soldiers, reinforcing such matters as human rights
protocols. To reiterate, then, we have three levels of security management
in our company: Security Department, Security Contractor, and Military
Agreements.
Indirect Impacts of Risks on Private Sector

I have provided a very brief overview of how we manage security in
Petrominerales as it pertains to the direct impact of risks. In other words,
things we can do ourselves to protect personnel and assets. But what about
the indirect impact of risks? This is a question I often ask personnel in our
security department. What are those elements beyond our control that will
have an impact on our safety and what can be done about it?
37
petrominerales: security management programs in colombia
The oil industry consists of several segments, some of which an oil

company has control over and others it does not. The following are a few
examples that could pose concern:
1. Seismic operations are the initial stages of any oil operation,

whether it is in Alberta or whether it is in Colombia. It is often
the case, as it is for Petrominerales in Colombia, that we do
not assume security management responsibility for seismic
operations. They are contract providers and experienced in
conducting their seismic operations, often in areas where
inhabitants are unfamiliar with oil companies. As well, with
limited security presence, these seismic contractors are vul-
nerable to attack from hostile elements.
2. Other contractors working for the company have similar lia-
bilities. Water trucks, oil tankers, and equipment movements
may come to the attention of hostile elements.
3. Another example involves soft targets, such as unguarded
pipelines and utility sector infrastructures, which are often
attacked. These FARC and ELN attacks are another example of
the indirect impact of risks against the company. This threat
is very real at present, as the FARC undergo peace talks with
the Colombian government, their venue of negotiations being
in Cuba. Yet as these peace talks unfold, FARC have escalated
their attacks on pipelines in the Putumayo to unprecedented
levels during February to April of this year. (For example
52 attacks this year as compared to 13 for same period last
year). Likewise, the ELN has committed pipeline attacks in
other areas of the country, hoping to get on the peace talk
bandwagon. This recent escalation of attacks on soft targets
I identify as political statements. These terrorist groups feel
they can gain negotiating advantages through such criminal
acts.
But what does this all mean for Petrominerales and similar Canadian
interests operating in Colombia? It means that security management is often
beyond our control. We can provide assistance to seismic companies arran-
ging for military liaison and we can mentor contractors on effective security
management.
38
gary finley
At the end of the day if something happens to these companies, it hap-

pens to us. An attack on a seismic company or an oil tanker creates a busi-
ness interruption of essential services. Likewise, attacks on pipelines, all of
which cannot be guarded by the authorities, may create storage backups and
bomb damage repairsall of which may also create a business interruption
for Petrominerales. First and foremost, we would not want anyone killed or
injured in these incidents. Secondly, business interruptions often have a very
detrimental effect on the financial side of our business.
In conclusion, there is a very real security challenge for the private sector
in Colombia, including Canadian interests. Before any Canadian company
considers doing business in the country it is very important to conduct a
due diligence process of risk analysis. Security management will be required
in varying degrees, dependent upon threats expected in different parts of
the country. The private sector can do much within their own control to
develop effective security management programs, and in this way risks can
be mitigated for personnel and assets. I am proud that we in Petrominerales
have been successful in that regard during the past eleven years. However,
nothing is cast in stone and surprises are frequent. Certain hostile acts are
beyond our protective control and business delay is a reality. Most hopefully,
loss of life from these hostilities never becomes a reality.
39
II:
REGIONAL SECURITY,
HISTORY, AND TRENDS
Those Elusive Common Interests

and Objectives: The Evolution of the
Inter-American Security System
Hal Klepak, Royal Military College of Canada
T
his paper attempts to demonstrate that the inter-American security
system has known periods of cohesion and cooperation as well as
others of division and distrust and that these periods have resulted
from the degree to which the members of the system could be said to truly
share objectives and interests in the international and strategic context of the
day. It will suggest that the evolution of the system has been anything but
smooth and that while todays divisions may be the most dramatic in the
more than seventy years of the existence of the arrangements, they are far
from the first.
It is perhaps worth remembering, when reflecting on these matters, that
hemispheric cooperation in defence can hardly be considered natural or
automatic in the Americas or anywhere else. Defence and security are the
core elements of national societies and cooperation with others in alliances
or other structures is far from the normal way of conducting national de-
fence, even for smaller powers and much less so for greater. Countries tend
to wish to keep such matters firmly under their own control and as Antoine
de Jomini argued so convincingly, alliances and defence cooperation are
fraught with a lack of understanding, shared objectives, desires to do least
but have the most political impact, and a myriad of other basic flaws and
contradictions.
The Western Hemisphere: Ideal and Reality

If this has been true more widely in international affairs, it is equally so in
the Americas. No one would conjure up easily an idea of Eastern Hemisphere
cooperation in defence, or of Southern or even Northern. Yet in the Americas
exactly such an idea has at least been present, if often only in rhetoric, for at
least seven decades and there are structures, alliances, bilateral accords in
this context, joint exercises, schools, meetings at high diplomatic and mil-
itary levels and low, exchanges among national armed forces, and all manner
of real reflections of a hemispheric idea in defence.

the evolution of the inter-american security system
This is the result of three factors: the overwhelming power of the United
States in the Western Hemisphere, its status as the only international player
of weight in the region, and the popularity of what became the Pan American
ideal at least in the United States. The United States has for all this period
been much more populous and rich than any other country in the Americas.
Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, which at various times appeared as if they
might be potential real rivals for the northern giant, were never actually able
to compete with it. In no sphere was this clearer than in that of military cap-
acity. This asymmetry was mirrored elsewhere after the end of the U.S. Civil
War when the influence of the United States on the regional and then global
scene grew steadily and in impressive fashion culminating with the con-
struction of an actual U.S. empire after the defeat of Spain in the 1898 war and
the transfer of essentially the whole of the Spanish Empire to Washington.
The Pan American ideal, based on the belief that somehow the American
republics were morally superior to the old regimes of Europe, and aiming to
assure the Americas for the Americans, gained considerable credibility, at
least in the United States, in the last years of the nineteenth and the first of
the twentieth century. Thus a context appeared in which one could at least
imagine an inter-American system distinct from wider global ones.
Inter-American Security Before the Eve of the Second World War

At first the idea of a Pan American Union (PAU) of nations, or at least a zone
of economic cooperation in the hemisphere, did not include strictly political
and certainly not defence considerations. The United States, anxious to re-
duce or even exclude European, and especially British, economic penetration
of the region, sought something like a free trade area or a customs union but
at the least the founding of a grouping of countries cooperating on economic
matters, when it called for a first meeting of American nations to discuss
such a group in Washington in 1889. Canada, a monarchy with an immensely
strong British connection, was seen as a potential Trojan Horse for the British
in any such initiative, and was not invited.1 Brazil, a monarchy when the
idea of the conference was first put forward, was not to be invited either, but
the military coup that brought in the republic in that country in that year,
removed this obstacle and Rio de Janeiro was finally added to the list of those
to attend as well as the other republics of the hemisphere.
Immediately, the contrasting objectives of the United States and the
Latin American countries raised their heads. For in general, the latter were
extremely keen on European investment, immigration, trade, technology,
loans, and even military assistance missions as they modernized and en-
44
hal klepak
tered the new international division of labour so rapidly developing in the

years after 1870. While they wished for good relations with Washington, they
did not see anything like an exclusive relationship with the United States as
a good thing and many feared, as U.S. expansion into the region unfolded in
the years after 1815, that without European counterpoise the situation could
end up being very dangerous indeed. This feeling had been developing
steadily since the U.S. seizure of East and West Florida while Spain was
prostrate during the Napoleonic Wars, its support for the Texas rebellion in
1835-6 and its acquisition of that vast territory a decade later, its defeat of
Mexico in 1846-48 and the subsequent taking of half that countrys northern
spaces, its support for filibustering invasions of various Caribbean and
Central American countries with the final intention of adding them to the
Union throughout the 1840s and fifties, and finally its dramatic move into the
Caribbean in the 1890s with the seizure of Puerto Rico and Cuba after victory
in the war with Spain.2
The Pan American idea therefore was greeted by many Latin Americans
as little more than America for the United States rather than the more gen-
erous objective mentioned above. In this context it proved difficult indeed
for Latin American governments to do more than acquiesce to a very weak
economic cooperation arrangement and an agreement to meet at various
times in the future.3
Only in 1910 did real change seem to be occurring. Under the impact of
repeated militarized European attempts to collect on the bad debts of many
of the regions countries several capitals, and especially Brazil under its ex-
ceptional Foreign Minister Rio Branco, began to see the United States as less
of a threat and even a potential ally against such actions.4 U.S. support for
Venezuela in the debt and boundary crisis with Britain and other European
countries in 1895 had been well received in many regional states and the
Monroe Doctrine of 1823, essentially lettre morte because of British naval
power up to that time, did seem to some to be potentially useful in disputes
with the Europeans over debt. But this did not mean that Latin Americans
felt that U.S. domination was preferable to that of anyone else.
At the Rio de Janeiro Conference of that year, a breakthrough took place
with Latin American countries agreeing that there should be a permanent
secretariat for the grouping which should take the name of the Pan American
Union (PAU). This would inevitably have its headquarters in Washington
but would include among other activities those seeking to strengthen hemi-
spheric peace and security. Regular meetings at foreign minister level were
also foreseen as part of the new arrangements and these could be supple-
45
mented by emergency meetings if such were felt worthwhile.5 Thus was

established the first structure dealing, at least potentially, with hemispheric
security, although mutual suspicions ensured it did not really do so for some
decades to come.
This came with a backdrop of more strictly sub-regional experience of
truly dismal defence cooperation in the region and even such as there was
among only a very few countries. When Simn Bolvar had held a first inter-
American conference in Panama in 1824, his idea was very much one that in-
cluded well to the fore the idea of hemispheric or at least Latin American mu-
tual defence cooperation. The determination of the King of Spain to reverse
the independence of his Spanish dominions, still alive for several more years,
made such collaboration seem important to many of those who attended. In
fact, nothing came of proposals for cooperation, not even the much touted
idea of a liberating mission to be sent to Cuba, still a major Spanish base for
three-quarters of a century to come.6
The United States, invited to the conference in the hope that it might
commit to helping the fledgling southern nations in case of a Spanish counter-
attack, and fresh from declaring its Monroe Doctrine for excluding European
colonization, nonetheless instructed its delegates to make no such commit-
ments to Latin American states and indeed hold aloof from even ideas of
political collaboration. Mutual defence ideas were to be no less attractive in
practice to the Latin American nations either.
In the long years of European interventions in the River Plate Basin,
in Mexico, in the Caribbean, and Central America over the first forty years
of independence, few initiatives were put forward by individual countries
and nothing of consequence came of them. Indeed, instead of cooperating
in mutual defence, Peru and Bolivia fought Chile, Brazil fought Argentina,
Ecuador did the same with Peru, Mexico invaded Central America, and the
countries of the latter sub-region fought each other regularly over those dec-
ades, although it must be said that they did show considerable disposition to
cooperate in the defeat of the infamous Walker expeditions of the 1840s. But
even Haiti and the Dominican Republic found themselves repeatedly at war
over this period.
When later Mexico fell victim to the intervention of 1861 that eventually
saw Maximilian placed on an imperial throne in that country, only neigh-
bouring Guatemala raised much protest and no one at all offered to help
the Liberals in that country resist the new regime supported by Napoleon
III of France. When Spanish marauding naval vessels later in that decade
maintained a lengthy and vicious blockade of western South American ports
46
hal klepak
and heavily bombarded some of them, the reaction, even of those directly
attacked, included very little indeed of mutual support other than the de-
claratory. Everywhere European military efforts to collect debts found the
Latin American debtor nations alone in their efforts to deter or defeat such
initiatives.
It can thus be said that there was essentially no tradition of mutual as-
sistance in the face of foreign attack at all in the Americas by the time of the
outbreak of the First World War. Indeed, in the second half of the nineteenth
century the trend to local wars showed no signs of abating with Paraguay
involved in a disastrous and terribly costly war with three of its neighbours
(Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) in 1864-70, Brazil and Argentina at it again
shortly before in 1855, Chile at war with Bolivia and Peru in 1879-1884,
Central America wracked again repeatedly, and border disputes and skir-
mishes daily fare in most of the region.
Despite the accords of the 1910 PAU conference, World War I saw very
little defence cooperation either. In fact, the only countries of the Americas
that followed the United States into the war in 1917 were those physically
occupied by United States forces at the time. Brazil did join in the conflict
alongside the Entente allies but limited its active cooperation to the Navy
and even then only worked with the British and not with the United States
or other Latin Americans.7 The work of the PAU from 1910 to the mid-1930s
was limited to few and far between and generally desultory diplomatic ef-
forts to find solutions to the ubiquitous territorial and jurisdictional disputes
plaguing the region. The great conflicts of inter-war Latin America usually
found, as in the case of the Chaco War of 1935, ad hoc groupings of nations
or single mediators more effective in searching for solutions than the hemi-
spheric body. It did not help that the United States continued to adopt policies
to the region based on the infamous dollar diplomacy of the pre-war years.8
Nonetheless, at least formally some progress was being made. At the
Fifth Pan American Conference of 1923 there was agreement to, at a min-
imum, put in place some new arrangements for multilateral investigation of
incidents and disputes. And in 1929 signatories of a new accord agreed that
they would first exhaust PAU options before taking military measures in a
dispute, although this promise was not to prove very much of a constraint in
future conflict situations.
The Coming of Fascism

This situation was to change slowly but completely in the years to come be-
cause of dramatic changes in North America, Europe, and even Asia. In 1931,
47
Japan began the military occupation of Manchuria in flagrant violation of

the terms of the League of Nations Covenant. In January 1933, Hitler became
leader of Germany with firm plans to reverse the peace settlement of 1919.
And less seriously, in 1935, Mussolini launched his first imperial adventure
in Ethiopia. The unravelling of the international peace of the time seemed to
be quickly occurring with unimaginable consequences.
At the same time, governments of the extreme right were not only taking
power in Central Europe but also in Spain and Portugal, and in much of
Latin America as well. The Great Depression found movements with right-
ist solutions well to the fore especially in the form of military governments
promising order. Flirtations with fascism, and open admiration for the new
regimes in Italy and Germany, were frequent and loud.
Little wonder then that the United States reacted to a threat on its south-
ern frontier. By early 1934, the new government of Franklin D. Roosevelt was
implementing a dramatically new policy that rejected military intervention
in the region, supported democratic governments and reforms there, with-
drew U.S. occupation forces from regional countries, removed restrictions on
Cuban sovereignty put in place in 1902, and in general declared a new era of
the Good Neighbour Policy.9 This policy proved so firm that in 1938, in the
face of the unprecedented Mexican nationalization of an oil industry with
huge U.S. investment involved, Washington remained unmoved and for stra-
tegic reasons kept its response limited to diplomatic protest and negotiation.
The reaction of the Latin American political centre and left, and even
of elements of the right, can be imagined. Pro-U.S. stances became com-
mon, anti-Americanism became increasingly limited only to sectors of the
nationalist right, investment was welcomed as never before, U.S. naval ship
visits were received by admiring throngs, and governments queued up to
cooperate.
On the diplomatic front, despite the presence of rightist, military and
even pro-Axis governments in several capitals, hemispheric friendship was
in the air. In 1936, the Inter-American Conference for the Consolidation of
Peace, held in the wake of failures to resolve the Chaco War, produced five
accords on conflict resolution. They provided measures ranging from perma-
nent mixed bilateral committees to study disputes to norms of neutrality
during wars among American states. Here again though, these accords were
rarely put into practice or of much practical effect.
In 1938, at the Eighth Conference of Foreign Ministers, against Argentine
opposition, several countries joined the United States in a mutual effort to
cooperate in order to hamstring Nazi and other fascist subversion in the
48
hal klepak
hemisphere in case of war.10 The next year Brazil and the United States signed
an agreement on mutual consultation on political and strategic matters and,
tellingly, the United States joined to this economic assistance for the hemi-
spheres second most important country. Dramatically, and unimaginable
before this time and the maturing of the Good Neighbour Policy, when war
broke out in Europe later that year, a special First Meeting of Consultation (at
foreign ministers level) was held in Panama that approved a security zone
for the Americas out of which belligerents were told to keep their forces and
within which they should not engage in warlike acts. More striking still, all
American nations agreed to a declaration of neutrality, a step so original in
the inter-American context and such a victory for U.S. diplomacy, that one
American diplomat referred to it as a kind of Pax Americana.11
World War II: Cooperation Rampant

The key moment was, however, May 1940. With the fall of virtually all of
Western Europe to the Axis powers and blitzkrieg, and the collapse of Britain
thought by most to be merely a matter of weeks, there was for the first time
a real possibility that a future peace treaty would include the transfer of
European possessions, that is potentially some of those of Britain, France,
and the Netherlands, to the control of Axis countries. This would have meant
the arrival of actual Axis political and military power in the hemisphere.
An emergency Second Meeting of Consultation was held in Havana in
July to study this very real possibility. In another stunning victory for the
United States, Latin American countries essentially signed on to the Monroe
Doctrine in declaring their refusal to accept any transfers of territory in
the Americas between the belligerent powers. They also stated that if any
European country were no longer in a position to administer its American
colonies, the Pan American Union would take over those responsibilities
under a provisional PAU administration until the stricken country could
recover. Almost as striking, Resolution XV of the final declaration of the con-
ference included a statement that all signatories agreed to consult and decide
on common measures to be taken if an American nation were to be attacked
from outside the region as part of the wider war.12
The stage was thus set for the hemispheric reaction to the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbour in December 1941. Brazil immediately called for the Third
Consultative Meeting of Foreign Ministers to be held in Rio de Janeiro in
February of the following year. The conference called on all countries of the
Americas to break diplomatic relations with the Axis powers and established
the Inter-American Defence Board (IADB) and an Advisory Committee on
49
Political Defence within the PAU. Within two months the Board was already
meeting, although some Latin American nations had not yet declared war
on the Axis (two were not to do so until 1945 itself) and several had not com-
pleted the rupture of relations.
Agreements on basing arrangements, radar posts, communications,
standardization of weapons and doctrine, training and linguistic issues,
military assistance with weapons acquisition, access to strategic materials
and food, and a vast array of other cooperative accords were put in place
either multilaterally through the Board or bilaterally in agreements reached
under the Boards overarching mandate. This was all greatly simplified by a
trend in place also from the late 1930s that had seen European military train-
ing missions, active officially in most of Latin America since the 1880s, and
less officially from even earlier, gradually replaced by similar U.S. missions.13
This trend was completed by the need for France and Britain to withdraw
those missions in any case in 1939 with the arrival of war in Europe. But the
United States had been quick to move into the space created by such with-
drawals and had even been firm with several Latin American governments
that had Axis missions in insisting on their removal in the years preceding
the outbreak of war.
In Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, the levels of military
cooperation reached great heights seeing the full re-making of regional
forces. Mexico, despite its tradition of zealous distancing from the United
States especially in the defence field, became the closest of collaborators
with Washington even permitting the recruiting of labourers to replace U.S.
farmers conscripted for wartime service, the opening of bases and radar sta-
tions on the approaches to the U.S. Caribbean and Pacific coasts, and access
to food, petroleum, and other strategic minerals on a special guaranteed
basis.14 Similar events marked Central America and the Caribbean including
essentially the founding of regional air forces and navies in keeping with the
U.S. need to fight the Axis submarine threat and secure its approaches and
the Panama Canal.15
In a reversal of history, two Latin American countries actually sent
forces to fight on the Allied side. The most exceptional of these efforts was
that of Brazil, which sent a full infantry division to serve alongside the U.S.
Army in Italy and accompanied that force with attached air force units.
Mexico took the even more unheard of step of sending a fighter squadron
to fight alongside U.S. Army Air Force units in the Philippines.16 The Good
Neighbour Policy had paid off handsomely and common interests and
objectives had been found around which a real hemispheric defence effort
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could hang, even if Chilean and Argentine reluctance to break with the
Axis always tended to remind Washington and others that shared views
were not unanimous.
The Post-War Context and the Arrival of the Cold War

The wars end saw a new world appear into which Latin American govern-
ments knew they would have to find a way to enter effectively. The disappear-
ance of Great Britain as a great power and counterpoise to the United States
was nearly as serious for them as it was to be for Canada and the British
West Indies. French and Dutch decline were also of importance and the end
of Italy and Germany as political factors in the region was also noteworthy
if not on the same scale. The United States came out of the war absolutely
dominant on the world stage but dominant as never before in Latin America
as well.17
With the exception of Argentina, all of the region now had armed forces
organized, trained, equipped, armed, and even clothed along U.S. and no
longer European models. The habit of defence cooperation, and coming to
know the practical advantages of working with the United States, had also
transformed much Latin American military thinking where the United
States, and U.S. regional ambitions, were concerned.18 Politically, the region
was in the U.S. pocket where the United Nations was concerned, and even
Chile and Argentina had been obliged to acknowledge U.S. leadership as the
war ended and their desire to avoid exclusion from the new UN organisation
meant that they declared war on the Axis.
In the spring of 1945, at the invitation of Mexico, a conference to coordin-
ate approaches to the end of the war and the new era of peace was held in
Mexico City at the Palace of Chapultepec. But here, even if quietly, the lack
of shared objectives and visions was to show at least its outlines. The Latin
American delegations, hoping for gratitude on the part of Washington for
their part in ensuring allied victory, suggested a revamped inter-American
system to include defence cooperation but also to involve major efforts at
regional development, access to U.S. markets for Latin American agricultural
goods, and many other areas of collaboration. The United States came to the
meeting uncertain on the defence cooperation in peacetime idea (after all, the
United States had never engaged in such things in times of peace in continua-
tion of the Washingtonian tradition of disengagement from international
complications), and even more determined to avoid commitments on the eco-
nomic front that would without doubt be untenable in the domestic political
context of the peace on the horizon.
51
A further conference was held in Rio de Janeiro two years later, but with
the United States now keener on defence as a priority but with development
measures still the main issue dear to the Latin Americans. Despite these
underlying contradictions, positive feelings prevailed as well as a context in
which the Cold Wars dawning seemed more and more evident to statesmen,
and an Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) was signed by
all of Latin America and the United States, a first-ever peacetime collective
security pact for the whole of the Americas except for Canada. On the basis
that an attack on one state party was an attack against all, the formula for
the later North Atlantic Treaty as well, the United States and many Latin
American states abandoned peacetime neutrality and eschewing of defence
commitments in favour of a formal mutual defence accord.
The next year, this treaty, generally styled the Rio Pact, was reinforced
as the old Pan American Union was shelved in favour of a new Organisation
of American States (OAS). The new inter-American system was to be based
on three pillars: the Rio Pact for collective defence; the Pact of Bogot for the
peaceful resolution of disputes; and the Charter of the OAS for the general
context of cooperation and relations. The IADB would stay as a permanent
peacetime organ giving advice to, and being tasked by, the OAS on defence
matters. The Charter, signed in Bogot that year, repeated in its Chapters V
and VI the collective security commitments of the Rio Pact, but the treaty on
peaceful resolution of disputes, which included compulsory mediation and
other, for many, vexing commitments, was as unpopular in most of Latin
America as it was in the United States, and never entered into force.19
Nonetheless, a permanent security system in the Americas was now in
place and its Charter and principal treaty provided an overarching rubric
for all manner of bilateral, sub-regional, and bilateral agreements for the
United States on the one hand, and individual Latin American governments
and armed forces on the other. Even more promising, the new OAS soon
proved its utility in dispute settlement in Central America as the late 1940s
progressed.
The Korean War: Bilateralization Triumphant or

The Meat in the Sandwich
When war broke out again, this time in Korea in 1950, the United States
worried that the conflict in that peninsula might well be the beginning
of something much bigger and on a world scale in line with the Cold War
that dominated strategic thinking since at least three years before. The U.S.
Congress soon authorized the signing of Mutual Assistance Pacts (MAPs)
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with countries willing to commit to assisting the United States in case of

crisis or widespread major conflict. In time, some seventeen of the twenty
Latin American countries signed such accords with the United States, mostly
between the end of the war and 1957.
The pacts usually provided for U.S. access to basing rights, transit, prior-
ity access to strategic minerals and agricultural goods at protected prices,
and related military assistance provisions. In return Latin American armed
forces got access to military equipment and weapons at reduced prices, and
training and other assistance from the United States free or for nominal
cost. These arrangements were soon truly the meat in the sandwich of the
inter-American security system and provided much of the real cohesion it
enjoyed since U.S. dominance ensured generally applicable standardization
of weapons, equipment, training, doctrine, and ways of going about business
virtually throughout the hemisphere south of Canada. While the multilateral
arrangements continued to exist, their role seemed often secondary when
compared with these lubricants which made the system actually work. U.S.
funds, weapons, equipment, and especially training fuelled the creation of a
real inter-American network of working relationships among armed forces
that was frequently little understood by politicians in the Latin American
countries or even in the United States.
Formerly secondary institutions, such as the inter-American air force
college and the School of the Americas, were reinforced. U.S. Army, Navy,
and Air Force missions, usually already in place in most of the region, were
strengthened and given much more in the way of resources. Despite attempts
here and there, and especially in Argentina, to keep the door open to at least
European influence in the military, the United States now stood absolutely
supreme.
Those connections served the United States well when a reformist gov-
ernment, elected on two occasions in Guatemala, threatened legal and com-
pensated but nonetheless unacceptable nationalisations of U.S. assets in that
country in 1954. The reaction was swift and sealed the future of Latin America
as nothing perhaps before or since in the post-war world. The United States
moved to isolate the Guatemalan government internationally and to pillory it
before the UN and especially the OAS as under the influence of international
communism. Despite the lack of belief in such accusations in most of Latin
America, U.S. strength prevailed and the Guatemalan government was de-
clared incompatible with the peace and security of the Americas. Using its
place within the Guatemalan armed forces and its MAP-related influence,
the Central Intelligence Agency organised anti-government forces outside
53
the country into an invasion force that struck into Guatemala and gave the
green light for a military coup which ushered in one of the fiercest military
dictatorships ever to be seen even in that much suffering country. The Cold
War had arrived in force in the Americas and moderate leftist and democratic
forces were obliged to choose between no democratic progress at all or the
way of armed revolution. The impact on Latin American democratic forces
cannot be exaggerated as the United States renounced the Good Neighbour
Policy with staggering results over time.20
The Cuban Revolution: The System Works but at What Cost?

That radicalization of Latin American democratic forces took place just as
the Batista dictatorship in Cuba, supported fully by the United States, faced
the new challenge posed by the extraordinary figure of Fidel Castro. This
young liberal lawyer, horrified by what he saw in Guatemala as well as
Cuba, organised the bulk of the resistance to the Batista regime and in a long
struggle ousted it in January 1959. Beset by U.S. and upper class resistance to
his reform programme, Castro became ever more radical and, blocked and
threatened by the United States, searched out a relationship with the Soviet
Union.21
The United States quickly turned again to the inter-American secur-
ity system to answer its call for support. The new Cuban government soon
found itself under siege not only by the United States but by all the con-
servative governments of the region. Only moderate centrist or leftist gov-
ernments withstood the brandishments for a time. Caught between a public
opinion largely sympathetic with Cuba, and a United States and upper class
deeply opposed to Castro, these governments hesitated to be drawn into the
fray. While the United States sought by almost all means, including violent
subversion, assassination and Guatemala-style invasion to topple Castro, the
latter engaged in support for leftist movements aiming to unseat the very
governments that supported the United States in its efforts.22 This export of
revolution allowed the United States to bring in the system in its support in
ways never before discussed.
Multilaterally, the United States called and got a revamped inter-Amer-
ican system with a new Inter-American Defence College to train staff officers
for that systems organs, a new series of conferences of Army, Navy, and Air
Force commanders of the forces of the Americas, a new series of joint exer-
cises aimed at countering the threat, and the reorganizing of many national
armed forces in order to permit them to defeat the insurgency backed by
Havana and the reinforcement of what was soon to be seen as the infamous
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School of the Americas. MAPs were strengthened and vast new resources
in weapons, training, and equipment were made available to those armed
forces whose governments backed the anti-Cuban campaign.
More sinister was the next stage of the modernization. In line with
the policy of strangling the Castro regime, Washington sought to replace
moderate or leftist governments with ones more of its choosing and more
likely to reject relations with Cuba. Thus the systems institutions, and es-
pecially the IADB, the School of the Americas and the MAPs, were brought
into play in order to help conservative forces locally engineer situations in
which military coups would replace such governments with ones willing
to tow the anti-Castro line. Government after government fell as military
regimes replaced civilian rule in most of Central America, Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, and joined those, now reinforced
by increased U.S. support, in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Paraguay.
Only Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela, already boasting essentially
rightwing governments, seemed able to buck the trend towards military
government.
The price was exorbitant for this success. The prestige of the inter-Amer-
ican security system suffered seemingly irreparable harm as democratic
forces across the political spectrum denounced the violence, repression,
and ferocity of most of the new governments. The unholy alliance of U.S.
Embassy, Roman Catholic Church, oligarchy, and U.S.-influenced armed
forces became the target of virtually all democratic forces, and not just the
left, in most countries in the region. The security system, viewed as behind
or at least supportive of the worst excesses of the new regimes, lost all the
prestige that accrued to it during the period of the Good Neighbour Policy
and after in most democratic circles. But this was in the future.
For the time being, the system had stood the test of the Castro challenge
and the inter-American security system, as we currently know it, at least
formally, was completed. To make clear the elements of the system at the
time, they were now as follows:
1. The Rio Pact (TIAR): Still the main defence and collective se-
curity accord at the base of the system although only signed
by 21 countries;
2. The Charter of the Organisation of American States (OAS)
Chapter V and VI: Collective security elements of the TIAR
repeated and signed by all members although with many
reserving some commitments;
55
3. The Inter-American Defence Board (IADB): Still formally at

least the organ of advice and support in defence matters to the
OAS;
4. The Conferences of Commanders of Armies, Navies, and Air
Forces of the Americas;
5. The wide range of multilateral exercises set up at the time; and
6. The Inter-American Defence College.23
On the bilateral level, however, there were the seventeen MAPs or

similar accords linking the armed forces of other states with those of the
United States in a largely dependent relationship, the arrangements for U.S.
military missions in many countries, the School of the Americas specializing
in special training against insurgency, the Air Force College of the Americas
training Latin American pilots and other air force officers, and the various
commands of the U.S. armed forces responsible for Latin America and the
Caribbean. These were all supported by U.S. bases and other installations in
the continental United States as well as in Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, and
later on in Honduras and El Salvador. Many other sub-regional and bilateral
Latin American arrangements were also added to this list of accords and ar-
rangements but these were not always considered to be part of the system
per se.
With all this in place, Cuban-supported or inspired rural insurrection
and then urban insurgency were abject failures in the 1960s, seventies, and
eighties. Military governments throughout the region were successful in put-
ting down violent revolt and smashing leftist democratic movements as well.
The coordinating role of the system could be considerable but generally it
provided a context of assistance and welcome within which those govern-
ments could operate with some legitimacy. Only in Nicaragua was a rural
insurrection successful as the Sandinista movement turned into a real popu-
lar insurrection leading to the military defeat of the conservative Somoza
government, one of the most active members of the system, which replaced
that government with one not at all to the liking of Washington, but much
appreciated by the embattled Castro government in Cuba.
In the other guerrilla wars of the 1980s in Central America the system held
firm and leftists were defeated in Guatemala and El Salvador, in Honduras
they never really got started, and even in Nicaragua military pressure on the
Sandinistas was crucial to their electoral defeat in February 1990 and their
fall from power. Thus the system had functioned as the United States wanted
but was unable to garner support for itself as the return to democracy gained
56
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pace from 1977 on. Military governments pacted their way out of power
except in Argentina where defeat in the disastrous Falklands War led to that
countrys departure the next year. With victory assured, especially in Central
America, and then the end of the Cold War, the United States could relax its
stand on military governments and switch back to backing formal democra-
cies in the region. Some of this, however, was forced upon the United States
as the old problem of unshared objectives and perspectives came again to
the fore.
Democratic governments continued to view the Cuban Revolution and
the government that represented that movement as legitimate and by the
mid-1970s it was clear that the isolation of the island from the Americas the
United States had been able to achieve in the early 1960s could not hold. The
OAS agreed that those countries that wished could re-establish relations
with Havana and most did so as the late seventies progressed.24 In addition,
almost all newly independent ex-British colonies in the Caribbean rushed to
establish relations with Cuba and it thus became difficult to maintain even
the fiction of unity in the face of the Cuban threat.
The Cold War Ends

As the perceived threat of communism abruptly disappeared and the Cold
War ended, the inter-American security system, like others in the world, was
increasingly challenged to prove its relevance. The export of revolution
phase of Cuban foreign policy was long gone, if it had ever really existed as
seen in Washington.25 The Sandinistas were also gone and Cuba was busily
negotiating an end to its African internationalist interventions. The Soviet
Union was no longer in an adventurist mood and in any case was about to
disappear. Why not put the system to bed? Several countries added to this
question the accusation that in the recent war between the United Kingdom
and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, the OAS and the Rio Pact had prov-
en worse than useless to Buenos Aires, proving once more the irrelevance of
the defence system to Latin American states parties.
Canada, the newest member of the OAS having only joined after a cen-
tury of reluctance the inter-American system as a whole in 1990, was none-
theless active in suggesting a revised and updated security system as of the
next year. Unwilling to consider such a thing when it first joined as it feared
U.S. domination of the system and the dreadful reputation of the system in
most of the Americas (including Canada) as a result of the dark days of the
1960s and seventies, Ottawa soon realized that without a secure and peaceful
hemisphere, Canadas hopes for a stable, democratic and prosperous region
57
in which to integrate itself would remain just hopes. Armed forces of many
countries, long dependent on the United States, also wished to ensure that a
revamped system could still prove of worth. And many in the United States
feared losing the comparative advantage that country had in defence rela-
tions in the hemisphere at a time when political and economic dominance
was no longer in the cards.
In this context, the United States Secretary of Defense in 1994 began a
series of discussions with other American leaders and called for the next
year a meeting of defence ministers of the hemisphere to discuss the future
nature of the security system. The Conference of Defence Ministers of the
Americas (CDMA) was held in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1995 and almost
all defence ministers were present or represented at the highest level except
for Cuba, which was not invited, and Mexico, which came as an observer.
There was agreement on the need for a continuation of defence cooperation
in the hemisphere and even on the challenges before the region. Deep div-
isions surfaced, however, over the priorities to assign to such challenges as
well as the approaches to take to them. These divisions ranged from subjects
as diverse as the international illegal narcotics trade, illegal immigration, ter-
rorism, and even proper civil-military relations in democracies. Once again,
the ideal of shared interests and objectives within an inter-American security
system was to be elusive indeed, even though no one felt that the system as
a whole should be scrapped, the absence of the Cold War notwithstanding.
At this time other hemispheric trends were interesting and reinforced
the desire to keep at least some cooperation in defence alive. The civil wars in
Central America were drawing down with only Guatemala still causing ma-
jor concern. The UN observer missions there were active and successful and
backed by the OAS. De-mining was becoming a priority for several govern-
ments and the IADB could be and was helpful in this area. Haiti was a source
of almost constant security concern as the decade progressed. And defence
administration, progress with civil-military relations in many countries, cuts
in defence establishments, and much else was of great interest to newly re-
turned democratic governments. The short but sharp war between Peru and
Ecuador in early 1995 also underscored the fact that the oft-touted region of
peace Latin Americans liked to term their part of the world was not exact,
and that progress with confidence-building measures, peaceful resolution of
disputes, and arms control was not irrelevant in the regions still smoldering
border and jurisdictional disputes.26 Despite disagreements on priorities and
approaches, there remained a sense that there was work still to be done by a
revised system.
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An ad hoc Committee on Hemispheric Security (CHS) was set up at

the OAS in 1991 and four years later became permanent. An organ deal-
ing with support for democracy which included handling issues of civil-
military relations was likewise established in the organisation. The CDMA
became yet another potentially important new element of the system as
it decided to meet every two years and at defence minister level, making
it the highest level meeting in the hemisphere for defence affairs. All this
reflected the new Consensus of Miami of late 1994 when all hemispheric
nations agreed to move together towards hemispheric free trade and polit-
ical cooperation.27
Consensus Questioned and Then Shattered, 1998 to the Present

The Miami Consensus was destined to last very few years indeed. The poli-
cies proposed by the United States in order to build a new economic order in
the hemisphere were widely denounced as neo-liberal and anti-poor, and
the future trickling down effect that was to bring greater prosperity to the
poorer countries of the region was ridiculed as too little and too late. One by
one, governments proposing to join in such hemispheric cooperation were
defeated in elections and the tendency gathered steam steadily. But nothing
prepared the hemispheric system for what was to come.
In 1998, with the election of former lieutenant-colonel Hugo Chvez
Frias to the presidency in Venezuela, a trend began which was to become
powerful indeed in regional politics. For Chvez was an open admirer of
Fidel Castro, architect of an earlier coup attempt against the corrupt but
pro-American Venezuelan regime, and something of a populist firebrand
calling for the end of the old order not only in his country but throughout
Latin America. Calling for a revolution to return to what he saw as the prin-
ciples of Simn Bolvar, he launched a reform programme in Venezuela,
fuelled by petrodollars, which soon had the region and the hemisphere in
political ferment. Proposing a democratic but peoples revolution, he soon
had followers throughout the region and his close friendship with Castro
brought great succour to Cuba in the form of Venezuelan oil and cash in
exchange for the loan of Cuban doctors, nurses, teachers, sports and music
instructors, and other experts. This marriage made in heaven of the two
most leftist governments in the region soon had Washington in particular
worried.
This was, however, only the beginning. In a half-decade the rightist gov-
ernments of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua were also replaced by deeply
reformist if not revolutionary movements and leaders. These more extreme
59
forms of leftist leadership were merely part of the problem for conservative
forces to face. In addition, more moderate leftist leadership took power in
Argentina, Brazil, Chile for a time and eventually, if in some cases only tem-
porarily, in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay,
Peru, and Uruguay. Only in Colombia and Mexico did the trend not result in
power changes and even in the latter it was a near run thing. This pink tide,
itself the reflection of centuries of conservative rule rejected in the first real
context of possible victories by leftist democratic movements throughout the
region, seemed unstoppable for a while.
The formation of a radical bloc of nations within this tide, to be termed
ALBA after the Latin American Peoples Alternative and similar evolving
titles, and consisting of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela,
at first eschewed defence matters doubtless fearing the reaction in at least
four cases of the heavily U.S.-influenced and still powerful armed forces.
But soon, as early as the 2000 CDMA held in Manaus, Brazil, Venezuela for-
mally proposed the end of the inter-American security system as it had been
known up to then and its replacement with a two-tiered system based on
Latin America and the Caribbean on one level and the hemisphere only at a
second. While rejected by all other members of the CDMA, its merely being
proposed was a sign of future trouble and divisions.
The system, recently reinforced by the CDMA process and the CHS, and
given at least some direction by the Conference on Hemispheric Security,
at foreign minister level, held in Mexico in 2003, still found itself unable to
retain any degree of unity. The ALBA nations were increasingly unhappy
with a system they saw as entirely dominated by the United States and with a
dreadful past behind it, not to mention institutions which had blood on their
hands at massive levels. The IADB came in for particularly negative reac-
tions as did the Rio Pact itself. While some accusations spoke of institutional
irrelevance, others spoke of institutional evil. CDMAs for a time retained
some degree of restraint and no one would actually openly denounce the
system as a whole although the Venezuelans were to do so on several occa-
sions after Manaus and then that country stopped attending at ministerial
level altogether.
Even at the OAS the meetings of the CHS were increasingly irrelevant.
The overall political context worsened as the United States accused the
radical governments of abandoning democracy, and the latter responded
with considerable finger waving that the United States was no longer in a
moral position to be the judge and jury for the level of democracy of Latin
American governments. The absence of Cuba from the inter-American
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family also became a source of growing discord as not only the ALBA
states and the other leftists but even rightist governments in the region
joined the others, including Canada and the Commonwealth Caribbean
nations, in calling loudly for Cubas re-incorporation into hemispheric
bodies.
Worse was to come. Despite the withdrawal of Mexico from the Rio Pact
in 2001, the attacks on the Twin Towers that September had seen Brazil call
for the Pact to be activated as part of a hemispheric coordinated response to
terrorism. This rejuvenation had, however, ended there. By the end of the first
decade of the century, most countries spoke openly of either ending the Pact
altogether or at least reforming it to respond to the conditions of the moment
and not those of 1947. Attempts by Canada and others to reform and make
relevant the IADB, despite support from many of the regions national armed
forces, were rejected by capitals and came to almost nothing. The progress
made with hemispheric and regional confidence-building measures stalled
and then stopped being replaced by local initiatives in South America or in
other sub-regions.28 More and more it seemed that many countries attended
hemispheric meetings on defence merely to stymie progress and not to
further it. Dreams of greater hemispheric inter-operability among national
armed forces, especially in countering terrorism but also in peacekeeping
operations, fell afoul of the realities of the day and were shelved after some-
times promising beginnings. Civil-military relations were strained in several
countries as armed forces wished to continue and even increase inter-Amer-
ican defence cooperation but faced national governments with no inclination
to do so.
Repeated electoral victories returned ALBA governments, which felt
greater freedom to embark on measures to reduce further the relevance of
the inter-American system as a whole and its defence elements in particular.
When calls by Venezuela for a South American NATO to deter U.S. inter-
ventions in the region failed to garner support from more moderate govern-
ments or even from Cuba, moderating efforts were made which included the
founding in 2008 of a South American Union of Nations (UNASUR) which
was soon given a defence element. UNASUR made no secret of its desire
to build a South American identity in order to distance itself from the Pan
American, Western Hemisphere, and inter-American concepts of ordering
affairs, and its members even found fault with the idea of a Latin American
identity. And when a defence dimension of the body, the South American
Defence Council, was founded in 2010, it also quickly produced proposals
distancing the group from Latin American and inter-American initiatives,
61
structures, and organisations. For the first time in the long history of inter-
American security system, sub-regional organisations made no effort to link
themselves to the larger system and even proudly declared their independ-
ence from it.
Thus by 2012 one had a hemispheric system shorn of its unity but still
showing the old structures that had not completely disappeared over the
long years of decline. No one leaves the OAS nor do states usually show a
complete rejection of things as they stand. The Latin American tradition is to
stay in and slow down, that is to be there in order to ensure that nothing hap-
pens that is not in ones interest. Never is this more true than in defence and
never has it been more true than at the present moment in inter-American
political and defence affairs.
Nonetheless, in 2012 the crisis brought out active disenchantment pub-
licly admitted and even trumpeted. After the disastrous Cartagena Summit
of American leaders had broken up in total disagreement over future Cuban
participation in the hemispheric organs and the question of the future of the
Falkland Islands, moves on the defence front followed quickly. All four cur-
rent ALBA signatories of the Rio Pact denounced the treaty and announced
their intention to withdraw from it. Thus a treaty signed by twenty-one
states, which had already excluded one of them in the 1960s (Cuba) and seen
another (Mexico) withdraw in 2001, now found four more leaving as soon
as possible. And thus over a quarter of the original signatories are no longer
such and the Pacts legitimacy as somehow Pan American is highly suspect.
While it is true that the Charter still is in place and has not been similarly
denounced, and that it carries the same collective defence commitments em-
bodied in the Pact, this is splitting hairs. The systems main defence pillar is
all but shattered at the present time.
In addition, at the X CDMA held in Montevideo in October 2012, Ecuador
and Bolivia further announced they would no longer be taking part in at-
tempts to improve the system and would specifically no longer take part in
the IADB. Since Cuba is once again no longer a member of this body, and
Venezuela has for some time eschewed participation, one can again speak
of an organ of the system whose legitimacy can be questioned. Given that it
never included anything like the whole of the hemispheres countries, with
Canada for long and most of the Commonwealth Caribbean still holding
aloof from it, the IADB is in grave trouble. That its OAS funding, on which it
depends, is in doubt as well, merely adds to the feeling that the whole system
is tottering.
62
hal klepak
The Present Moment and the Possible Futures

Thus the system has arrived perhaps at its crisis point but certainly at its
moment of most division, most lack of shared objectives, most uncertainty
in general, in its history. Divisions of an ideological kind already discussed,
added to the South American versus North American and even Central
American and Caribbean perspectives, leave us with little immediate
hope for a reinforced inter-American security system. Nowhere does one
see common objectives, reducing tensions, etc. that are hemisphere-wide.
Instead one speaks increasingly of joining the efforts of like-minded, that
is either conservative or leftist governments, in projects in which only those
like-minded will be interested or which they will be willing to support. In
addition, other initiatives come within the new lines drawn geographically
through the hemisphere. North American defence initiatives, deux ou
trois, abound and others have seen the light of day for the Caribbean, Central
America, the Southern Cone, Mercosur, UNASUR, ALBA, etc. But the idea of
a hemispheric shared view of where we should be going is, alas, more absent
than at any time known by the author.
The reality is that the hemisphere is divided ideologically between
conservative governments keen on retaining the key elements of the inter-
American system in place, and reformist governments absolutely unwilling
to continue to play that game and proposing another way of seeing the hemi-
sphere which is anathema to those same conservative elements. To this ideo-
logical divide is added one of geography as South America moves quickly
to establish its own overall identity as not Latin American nor hemispheric
but rather continental in the restricted sense of Colombia southwards to the
southern cone. While every kind of cross-cutting issue may appear, those
central elements of what one faces in the Americas today are undeniable.
And the fact that those countries which might play a constructing honest
broker or helpful fixer role, like Canada or Mexico in the past, are not in-
terested because of their own evolution ideologically, merely means that no
one is prepared to risk anything serious in order to save the system as it was
known.
Chile and Colombia would doubtless be willing to support loudly the
inter-American system but not if the price is too high in terms of South
American solidarity. Ecuador at times would like to ensure that the system
does not become a casualty of UNASUR or even ALBA efforts, but cannot face
both those bodies and appear to be a spoiler of their wider objectives. Brazil,
anxious to be helpful but restrained by its deep commitments to UNASUR,
does its best but cannot do enough. Its virtually unqualified support of the
63
highly reformist government of Argentina limits what can be done in any

case as do its own doubts as to the current value of the system as its stands.
Virtually all countries call for a total re-making of the system, although the
rightist Central American governments can be counted on for slowing down
such demands. Unfortunately, such opposition to reform merely reinforces
the arguments of those that suggest the system is dead and should be put
out of its misery.
Conclusions
Thus the shared interests, objectives or even perspectives that might provide
for effective defence cooperation remain elusive and perhaps impossible to
find in the present context of inter-American relations. We have seen that this
situation of stymied working together has only really been avoided once in
the history of the Americas. The coming together of internal factors, such as
the Good Neighbour Policy, with external ones, such as the rise of fascism,
did produce more than a modicum of common perceptions of threat and
shared interests. The result, with nuance, was a level of defence cooperation
in pre-war conditions and then in wartime and in the post-war period never
seen before or since.
When those conditions changed, however, with the arrival of the Cold
War, the U.S. attempt to essentially bludgeon Latin America into taking the
challenge of Soviet communism seriously was not able to produce common
views where there were none naturally. Latin American societies were gener-
ally deeply Catholic and conservative and showed no signs of actually being
threatened by communist penetration and such was the view of the bulk
of regional governments. The communist threat simply could not act as the
glue in a cooperative effort without the United States allying itself with the
most reactionary forces in the region and assisting in the overthrow of civil-
ian democratic governments which would have been its natural allies during
the Good Neighbour Policys reign of 1934-54.
When the conditions of the Cold War ended, the security system in
place, used so dramatically to smash reformist forces over the long dark
years of military dictatorship, could no longer garner significant shared sup-
port. Whether anything can be done to change this state of affairs is the open
question. Major change in the actions of the principal actors on this stage
would appear to be the only way for progress to be made.
64
hal klepak
Notes
1 The history of the Canadian perspec- in Dana Gardner Munro, Intervention
tive on the PAU and the Organization and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean,
of American States (OAS) is given in 1900-1921 (Santa Barbara, California:
Peter McKenna, Canada and the OAS, Greenwood Press, 1980).
(Ottawa: Carleton University Press,
9 For the policy dynamic and develop-
1995). See also the ground breaking
ment of this new approach, see Bryce
work of James Ogelsby, Gringos from
Wood, The Making of the Good Neighbor
the Far North: Essays in the History of
Policy (New York: Columbia Univer-
Canadian-Latin American Relations,
sity Press, 1961).
1866-1968 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1976).
10 Demetrio Boersner, Relaciones inter-
2 Josefina Zoraida Vzquez and Lorenzo
nacionales de Amrica Latina, Caracas
Meyer, Mexico frente a Estados Unidos:
(Nueva Sociedad, 1990), 224-225.
un ensayo histrico, 1776-1988 (Mexico:
Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1989), 11 Quoted in David Haglund, Latin
especially 64-112 gives a classic Latin America and the Evolution of U.S. Stra-
American view on U.S. expansion not tegic Thought 1936-1940 (Albuquerque:
only into Mexico but into the region as University of New Mexico Press, 1984),
a whole. 148.
3 The symbol of the rejection of the Pan 12 Boersner, Relaciones internacionales,
American idea came to be embodied in 225.
the writings of the Argentine thinker
13 Frederick Nunn, Yesterdays Soldiers:
Manuel Ugarte. See his La Patria grande
European Military Professionalism in
y otros textos (Buenos Aires: Theoria,
South America, 1890-1940 (Lincoln:
1996).
University of Nebraska Press, 1985).
4 See his story and that of his apprecia-
14 Mara Emilia Paz Salinas, Mxico y
tion for the potential role of the United
la defensa hemisfrica, in El Mxico
States throughout Alvaro Lins, Rio
de los 40, ed. Rafael Loyola (Mxico:
Branco (So Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1995).
Grijalbo, 1986), 49-64. Useful also is in
5 This story is well told in Pierre Queu- the same volume, Blanca Torres, La
ille, LAmrique latine, la Doctrine Mon- guerra y la posguerra en las relacio-
roe et le panamricanisme (Paris: Payot, nes de Mexico y Estados Unidos, El
1969). Mxico de los 40, 65-8.
6 Francisco Prez Guzmn, La Habana: 15 See the Caribbean national chapters
clave de un imperio (Havana: Cien- in Adrian English, The Armed Forces of
cias Sociales, 1993). Liberating plans Latin America (London: Janes, 1984).
came to naught in the face of mutual
16 For the Brazilian side of this story,
suspicions among the potentially par-
see Ricardo Bonalume, A Nossa se-
ticipating countries, Cuban opposition
gunda guerra: os brasileiros ao combate
to independence, and priorities else-
1942-1945 (Rio de Janeiro: Espresso e
where for both Gran Colombia and
Cultura, 1995), 43-53; and for Mexico,
Mexico.
Mario Moya Palencia, 1942: Mexica-
7 This interesting story is found in the nos al grito de guerra! (Mexico: Porra,
first chapters of Arthur Oscar Salda- 1992), 35-77.
nha da Gama, A Marinha do Brasil na
17 G. Pope Atkins, Latin America in the
Segunda Guerra Mundial (Rio de Janei-
International Political System (Boulder:
ro: Capemi Editora, 1982).
Westview, 1995), gives perhaps the
8 A good description of the workings best overview of this evolution and
of this policy approach can be found state of affairs.
65
18 Freerick Nunn, The Time of the Generals: (Miami: University of Miami Press,
Latin American Professionalism in World 1987), 13-99.
Perspective (Lincoln: University of Ne-
25 Cuba has always argued that it was
braska Press, 1992).
not an export of revolution but
19 How this all fits together is presented rather a defensive strategy to ensure
throughout Hugo Luis Cargnelutti, the survival of the Revolution and that
Seguridad interamericana: un subsis- it should properly be termed a policy
tema del sistema interamericano? (Buenos of active defence. Even Che Gue-
Aires: Circulo Militar, 1993). vara referred to his writings on guer-
rilla warfare as intended for defensive
20 Walter Lafeber, Inevitable Revolutions
operations by Cuba in the event of
(New York: Norton, 1983), gives exam-
another invasion and not aimed at
ples of this impact.
taking revolutionary ideas abroad. See
21 For the only major study of this con- Paul Dosal, Comandante Che: Guerrilla
nection so far, see Yuri Pavlov, The Soldier, Commander, and Strategist 1956-
Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 1959-1991 (New 1967 (University Park: Pennsylvania
Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction State University Press, 2003), 20-22.
Publications, 1993).
26 Those conflicts remained numerous
22 For context, see Morris Morley, Impe- and often troubling. See Jack Child,
rial State and Revolution: The United Geopolitics and conflict in South America:
States and Cuba, 1952-1986 (Cambridge: Quarrels among Neighbors (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1987). Praeger, 1985).
23 See Rodolfo Garri Faget, Organismos 27 See throughout Richard Lipsey and
militares interamericanos (Buenos Aires: Petricio Meller, eds., Western Hemi-
Depalma, 1968). sphere Trade Integration (London: Mac-
millan, 1997).
24 See the highly useful overview of this
evolution in Ismael Moreno Pino, Ori- 28 Progress in this important field had
genes y evolucin del sistema interameri- at first been impressive. See through-
cano (Mxico: Secretaria de Relaciones out Francisco Rojas Aravena, Balance
Internacionales, 1977); and also F.V. estratgico y medidas de confianza mutua
Garca-Amador, La cuestin cubana en la (Santiago: FLACSO, 1996).
OEA y la crisis del sistema interamericano
66
Challenges of Collective Action in the

Hemisphere
Frank O. Mora, Latin American and Caribbean Center,
Florida International University, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of DefenseWestern Hemisphere Affairs
(2009-2013)1
I
n the Western Hemisphere, we face a strategic challenge that has not yet
been fully appreciated. Whilst there is a litany of challenges that have
been collectively agreed upon in the 2003 Mexico City Declaration, ran-
ging from extreme poverty and natural disasters to transnational organized
crime, experience as a policy practitioner in government over the past four
years has made it abundantly clear that we are not collectively prepared, or
able, to tackle these challenges. In fact, it is questionable whether the political
will required to confront these challenges is present.
This insecurity dilemma is not one that is driven by traditional con-
cepts such as power asymmetries, or arms races, but, rather, is a phenom-
enon presented to us by weak states, with significant institutional deficits.
Over the past four years it has been apparent that while many states are able
to talk the talk in terms of agreeing to promising and pragmatic solutions
to the host of hemispheric security challenges, few countries have the insti-
tutional capacity or resources to walk the walk in terms of implementing
meaningful countermeasures.
A mixture of globalization and weak state power has given rise to chal-
lenges of a complexity and magnitude never seen before, requiring more
than ever a multinational, interagency, response which is sorely lacking.
This paralysis of action is ominous. Global and hemispheric problems are
multiplying whilst the capacity of governments and organizations to con-
tain them is stagnant. It is a crisis of trust, expectations, and legitimacy. The
nature and complexity of the challenges requires a level of collaboration and
coordination across agencies and national border of the likes not seen before.
The question is whether governments, agencies, and non-government organ-
izations are up to the task.
When was the last time a large number of countries in the hemisphere
agreed to a major regional accord on a pressing issue? Not since the 2003
Mexico City Declaration have we reached consensus on what the problems

challenges of collective action in the hemisphere
are and how to respond. Diplomatic relationships in the hemisphere are not
currently conducive to cooperation even towards modest goals. For instance,
U.S. efforts to achieve non-controversial cooperation in the way militaries re-
spond to natural disasters were met with significant resistance in the Defense
Ministerials fora (CDMA). This has been the pattern towards U.S. leadership
over the past decade. On the other hand, chattering organizations such as
CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), CARICOM
(Caribbean Community), SICA (Central American Integration System) and
others have a tendency to issue a prolific number of international agreements
that go unfunded, resulting in, effectively speaking, useless rhetoric.
Effective deals are elusive with high levels of distrust between states
and, perhaps more importantly, between and within institutions of the same
states. For instance, governments and institutions with weak political capital
and institutional capacity, in the many incomplete or unconsolidated democ-
racies in our hemisphere, cannot strike effective deals. These require political
risks weak leadership has little incentive to attempt, and/or sacrifices their
publics will not allow them to make. The current environment has led to
the pursuit of bilateral, and smaller multilateral, agreements between small
clusters of capable, or likeminded, countries that are not broad enough in
scope to deal with the problems we face. What is required is to develop a
new framework, or regime, or set of institutions, that are flexible and capable
of dealing with the host of complex problems and flexible adversaries in the
twenty-first century.
What should the response be in a post-Westphalian era where state
borders and sovereignty mean less every day? Unfortunately, states, includ-
ing the United States, are still too jealous of their sovereignty to contemplate
shared sovereignty. What is doable now? Countries besides the United
States and Canada can export their capabilities, such as Colombia is doing
with security training. Chile is another promising leader punching above
its weight by exporting security training to Haiti and El Salvador. We can
continue to broaden the sense of burden sharing a bit beyond bilateralism
to mini-lateralism, with three or four states working together such as the
Pacific Alliance. At the end of the day, such measures will be insufficient
without broader strategic consensus as to what the problems are and how
to win.
Audience Commentary
It was noted that Moras recipe to successfully address future security chal-
lenges in the hemisphere appears to overlook significant U.S. role and leader-
68
frank o. mora
ship. In reply, Mora noted the United States has been forced to act bilaterally
within the hemisphere in the face of strong U.S. opposition. Moreover, the
United States is tired of issuing financial backing to countries with a ten-
dency to make excuses for why initiatives cannot work or who refuse to work
together in an effective way. Brazil, for instance, despite its militarys willing-
ness to work with the United States, will only deal with the United States
on security issues bilaterally, refusing to cooperate openly with the United
States in regional fora for political reasons.
It was further observed that the United States appears itself to be disin-
clined to act multilaterally, putting forward weak multi-lateral delegations,
and opting for unilateral policy stances on contentious issues such as Cuba.
However, such critiques were dismissed as overly U.S.-centric. At the end of
the day, even if Cuba were to be removed as an issue, it was argued, U.S.-Latin
American relations would not improve substantively. The institutional prob-
lems of organizations such as CARICOM and the Organization of American
States (OAS) and the Inter-American system in general are much deeper than
whether or not the United States fields strong delegates in Latin American
diplomacy or favors one position or another.
It was argued that hemispheric initiatives such as the Inter-American
Democratic Charter contradict pessimistic prognostications regarding hemi-
spheric agreement and cooperation. However, this claim was dismissed from
the standpoint that the Charter itself holds little sway or meaning at this
time. In the face of democratic reversals in Venezuela, for instance, there was
no collective response, even from the United States, which fears its critiques
will only serve to make matters worse. Then there was the perversion of the
Mercosur and UNASUR reaction to events in Paraguay. The country was
suspended despite following its own constitution.
U.S. intervention can be productive as it was with Plan Colombia, yet this
success was only possible due to the collective epiphany of the Colombian
people in the late 1990s who decided to make the sacrifices necessary to save
their country. For instance, while the United States footed billions of dollars
in aid, the Colombian government had the will to implement the tax on the
wealthy to pay for most of what was required and the wealthy proved will-
ing to pay for it.
Note
1 Summary of presentation prepared by Clayton Dennison, University of Calgary.
69
The Persistent Multidimensional

Security Dilemma in the Caribbean
and Requirements for Emergence:
Trapped Between Dependence and
DevelopmentA Strategic Deficiency
Brigadier-General Anthony WJ Phillips-Spencer, Vice
Chief of Defence Staff, Trinidad & Tobago Defence Force
I
am appreciative of the important responsibility to contribute to discus-
sion on the theme of security from the perspective of the Caribbean sub-
region. I must emphasize that while I will refer generally to the reality of
the entire Caribbean, I will focus on the small states of the Caribbean, and
principally the island jurisdictions and the other nations that are members of
the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
The title of my paper describes the problem of multidimensional security
in the Caribbean as a dilemma. I hope that upon conclusion, the nature of the
problem of Caribbean security is made clearer. However, I trust that above all
else, the potential for future Canadian, Caribbean, and international policy,
defined as prerequisites for what I call emergence, will be recognized and
embraced by representatives of the public, private, and civil society sectors
and, equally important, by the representatives of academia and other actors
with an interest in improving the global and hemispheric strategic security
environment.
For the Caribbean generally and the small states of the English-speaking
Caribbean and CARICOM more specifically, the issue of emergence has for
too long remained an elusive reality. Whether applied to the requirement
to either emerge fully from the culture of dependence created by its inter-
national political history, or from the clutches of underdevelopment that
have been enabled by its international economic history, the small, highly
open and still developing states of the Caribbean Basin remain trapped in a
dilemma. The dilemma is that in the face of an increasingly multidimensional
security environment, these small states must pursue sustainable economic
development and political independence, or even better, interdependence,

trapped between dependence and development
amidst structural features that have historically been conducive to crime and
other multidimensional threats to their security.
The character of security in the Caribbean has been historically and
structurally multidimensional. Whether viewed from the perspective of
plantation economy or international economic periphery, the reasons for the
emergence of crime and insecurity in the Caribbean have all been associated
with the features of:
an exploitable and inescapable geography, on one hand, ideal

for man-made illicit trade or illegal transhipment activity,
whether in slaves and contraband of centuries ago, or drugs,
guns, and humans today, and on the other hand, exposure
to natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes, and climate
change;
an open and exogenously driven economy, and its propensity
for the movement of pirated bullion of centuries ago to the
accumulation of private unregulated off-shore accounts and
money-laundering practices of today with the associated brib-
ery and corruption of public officials;
a dependence on the transfer of technology to the region, ori-
ginally associated with industrialization by invitation models
of the early post-colonial years that have been adopted by
criminal actors including deportees in the form of ATM fraud,
kidnapping, cyber-crime, and excessively violent crimes of
today; and
a migrant and pluralist society with the challenges of social
diversity, income disparity, and divergent extra-regional
loyalties that have all led to a high probability for undocu-
mented migration, document fraud, identity theft, and human
smuggling.
At the outset these features may be considered to be common to many

other developed and developing regions of the world today. However, it is
their debilitating and destructive presence in small states in particular, like
those in the Caribbean with limited capacity to address them that renders
the region vulnerable to what may otherwise be manageable threats to pub-
lic safety and security. This was certainly not missed in the recent case of
the response by Boston, granted with federal support, to the bombings at
the Boston Marathon. In the vast majority of Caribbean states, sufficiently
72
anthony WJ phillips-spencer
capable and competent state institutions, such as law enforcement, intelli-

gence, defence, criminal justice, border management, and corrections with
the requisite organizational capacity to provide an acceptable level of public
safety and security rarely exist. Where they do exist, and even with their
constrained capability, capacity, and competency, there is the high level of
exposure to corruption and bribery as was previously highlighted as a struc-
tural reality of the region.
An even greater cause for concern, however, is the reality that beyond
the institutional level of analysis, there is a critical and persistent deficiency
at the political and strategic levels to understand the realities and, more
important, the requirements for decision-making and policy-making to ac-
curately respond to multidimensional security threats, which in turn create
circumstances of increased vulnerability because of already existing institu-
tional weakness.
In fact, in some Caribbean states where time has been taken to examine
the source of institutional weaknesses in the state security sector, it has been
recognized that flawed or deficient strategic security decision-making and
policy-making have also contributed to the persistence of weak security in-
stitutions. If ever there was a trap, or the proverbial catch 22, I would consider
this situation of persistent vulnerability from a strategic deficiency to be a
classic one.
Figure 1. Public Policy Conceptual Framework.
(Source: Brigadier-General Anthony WJ Phillips-Spencer).
73
Up until the end of the Cold War, the response to this under-estimated
and miscalculated multidimensional and transnational security reality in
the Caribbean was exogenously determined and understandably threat-
driven on the basis of previous patterns and traditional approaches to global
wars over territory or ideology. It was therefore only after the end of the Cold
War by the mid-1990s that regional as well as extra-regional actors realized
and accepted that the security response by the region, for the region, and to
the region was overlooking the inescapable vulnerability-based reality of the
Caribbeans multidimensional crime and security experience. (See Table 1.)
However, the Caribbean region itself had also failed to diligently fulfil
expressed commitments at regional integration and functional cooperation
including in the area of regional security. These unrealized expectations have
long denied and delayed efforts in the region for the pursuit of a strategic and
integrated approach in response to the multidimensional and vulnerability-
based challenges of the region.
In the process, Caribbean states, governments, and institutions have
experienced a crisis of legitimacy and trust within their individual jurisdic-
tions. Just as Holsti predicted, and as has now occurred in several Caribbean
countries, this loss of legitimacy has undermined the strength of these states
and has created what John Rapley has referred to as statelets in his 2006
article The New Middle Ages.1 In fact, Cope and Mora offer the following accur-
Table 1. Historical Overview: Major Shifts in Caribbean Security Cooperation

Environment, 1983-2010
(Source: Brigadier-General Anthony WJ Phillips-Spencer).
74
ate description of the problem confronting some CARICOM states today: At

the core of the turbulence is the decline of the state symbolized by deteriorat-
ing sovereignty and exacerbated by poverty, inequality, and ineffective gov-
ernance at all levels of society.2 Based on the obvious multidimensionality of
the vulnerability-based security reality of the Caribbean, the historical and
traditional threat-driven response to territorial, ideological or other global
threats, while still necessary, can no longer be considered as sufficient to ad-
dress the security concerns of the Caribbean.
From my own exposure and experience over more than thirty years as
a former practitioner in the field at the tactical level, to my current role as a
policy advisor at the political-strategic level, I am now fully convinced, both
by first-hand evidence and independent research, that the Caribbean is likely
to remain trapped in its struggle to overcome the violent, destructive, and
potentially destabilizing effects of its multidimensional security realities,
principally because of the vulnerabilities that are certain to persist in the face
of the deficiency that exists in the area of strategic security decision-making
and policy-making, at the political and institutional, as well as individual
levels of analysis.
The principal threats to Caribbean security, such as illicit trafficking,
whether in drugs, guns or persons, cannot be ignored or avoided and must
of necessity be addressed. However, given its structural and historical re-
alities, the strategic security dilemma for the Caribbean is more accurately
examined and understood with greater reference to the vulnerabilities of
the region. It is the persistence of these vulnerabilities on account of limita-
tions in institutional capacity, but even more so because of deficiencies at the
political level in strategic security decision-making and policy-making that
render the current multidimensional security experience of the Caribbean a
dilemma.
CARICOM
CARICOM comprises twelve islands and three continental states within
a geographical zone that lies directly in the path of one of the most active
international drug trades: between the worlds primary source of cocaine
(the Andean region of South America) and its primary consumer markets
(the United States and Europe). Adding to the challenge of the international
drug trade, CARICOM member states have extensive coastlines and vast ter-
ritorial waters to patrol, and lack adequate law enforcement capabilities. The
twelve islands are spread over approximately 60,000 square kilometres of the
Caribbean Sea, which has an area of 2.75 million square kilometres. Just over
75
2 percent of CARICOMs area is land, within an overall area that is three

quarters the size of the twenty-seven member states of the European Union
combined. This makes it extremely challenging for each state to monitor its
coastlines and territorial waters which are, on average, fifteen times larger
than their land mass. Four member states share land borders with other
sovereign territories.
Although diverse in terms of population size, all the member states of
CARICOM are considered small states. The Community has inherent sus-
tainable developmental challenges, which include small populations, very
large maritime frontiers, susceptibility to external shocks and natural disas-
ters, vulnerability to global economic developments, and the threat of both
domestic and transnational organised crime.
As a Community with approximately 17 million people, over half of
which are in Haiti, CARICOM member states are committed to the principles
and values of democratic choice, freedom, justice, prosperity, respect for and
promotion of human rights, and good governance. CARICOMs crime and
security mandate is guided by these principles and values all of which reflect
the convictions of the Community.
The Impact of Crime

Most CARICOM member states have high rates of homicide and violent
crime. (See Table 2, p. 77.) This has reduced citizen security, impeded socio-
economic development, eroded confidence in nation-building, and height-
ened fear among the population. The 2012 Caribbean Human Development
Report indicates that region wide, only 46 percent of respondents said
that, overall, they felt secure or very secure living in their countries. The
greatest threats to the regions security and sustainable development are
transnational organised criminal activities involving illicit drugs and illegal
guns; gangs and organised crime; cyber-crime; financial crimes; and corrup-
tion. Tier 1 Threats are the main drivers of criminality, have already crippled
the development of a number of member states, and have the potential to
undermine all hopes for socio-economic development in CARICOM and the
advancement of the CARICOM Single Market & Economy (CSME).
In the recently adopted CARICOM Crime and Security Strategy, which
I will later discuss, four Threat or Risk Tiers have been established. Tier 1
Threats are primarily responsible for the regions high murder rates and
violence that burden socio-economic development. These threats have a
particular impact on the most vulnerable members of the population, es-
pecially women and children in poor areas. The average homicide rate for
76
the Community is 30 people killed for every 100,000 inhabitants annually.

In Mexico, a country suffering appalling widespread drug-related violence,
the rate is just 18 while the global rate is approximately 7 (see Table 2). All
CARICOM member states have significantly higher murder rates per cap-
ita than the United States, which has a murder rate of 4.6 per 100,000. More
than 70 percent of the people who die a violent death in the region are killed
with a gun. Young people under the age of thirty comprise 60 percent of the
regions citizenry, and are both the main perpetrators and victims of crime.
This very high level of violent criminality has reduced the citizens quality of
life, placed the limited resources of member states under extreme pressure,
reduced local and foreign direct investment, and has threatened the ability
of states to achieve their developmental goals.
Recent and Current Responses to the Dilemma

Given the misdirected and misplaced response to the Caribbeans multi-
dimensional security dilemma until the mid-1990s, it should be noted and
recognized first that the process of effective security institution-building in
the region is now still less than two decades old. Second, the realization by
regional and extra-regional security cooperation actors that the Caribbean
security experience is multidimensional and not principally territorial or
ideological, nor even purely transnational, occurred barely ten years ago and
was significantly precipitated by a global strategic security shift in September
2001. Of course earlier projects such as the 1991 Santiago Commitment, and
Ivelaw Griffiths 1997 articulation of a conceptual framework for understand-
ing the multidimensional scope of drug trafficking in his publication Drugs
and Security in the Caribbean: Sovereignty Under Seige (Griffith Framework) also
Table 2. Murder Rates for Selected Regions and States, 2011.
(Source: IMPACS 2012; UNODC 2011).
77
helped to reveal the necessity for a multidimensional approach to security

generally, and for Caribbean security in particular.
It should therefore have been expected that the Multidimensional
Approach to Security would have emerged in the form of the Declaration
of Bridgetown in 2002 at the 32nd Organization of American States (OAS)
General Assembly. This hemispheric commitment more accurately expresses
and defines an appropriate philosophy, doctrine, and concept to guide the re-
sponse to crime and security in the Caribbean. The timing of the Bridgetown
Declaration was also perfect when one examines the definition of security
and crime in the 2002 Report of CARICOM Regional Task Force on Crime
and Security.
Since the Declaration of Bridgetown in June 2002, the response to the
Caribbean Crime and Security Experience has been consistently focused
on the multidimensionality of the regional security experience. In fact, that
process, which began with the Declaration of Kingstown on the Security of
Small States in January 2003, served to propel the approval and establish-
ment by the CARICOM Heads of Government of the existing CARICOM
Framework for the Management of Crime and Security in July 2005. In this
regard, it must be noted that while the necessity for effective state security
institution-building in the region goes back to 1996, the actual framework
and processes for doing so at the regional level, as well as for regional level
strategic security decision-making and policy-making are in fact only now
approaching their eighth year of existence.
Even so, it must be highlighted that the imperative for action during the
first half of that short eight year experience of institution-building, decision-
making, and policy-making was driven almost exclusively between 2005 and
2007 by the exogenously mandated security requirements for CARICOM to
host the 2007 Cricket World Cup Tournament in ten of the member states.
During this time even the strategic security decision-making organs and
entities of the newly established CARICOM Framework for the Management
of Crime and Security such as CONSLE and SEPAC, were themselves deeply
engaged in operational level activities, and less focused on strategic security
decision-making and policy-making.
Having a strategy makes it even more urgent to develop the capability
and build the capacity at both the political and institutional levels for strategic
security decision-making. If that capability and capacity is not developed in
the flawed short-term, tactical decision-making of the past will continue and
the strategy will become just another well written but failed security policy
agenda. It appears the CARICOM region, due to its structural security chal-
78
lenges and insufficient capacity to meet threats, is likely to remain inextric-

ably trapped between dependence and development. However, there are
opportunities for emergence. The regions decision-making capacity needs
to be reformed, ideally with outside assistance from nations like Canada and
the United States, in order to strengthen security at an institutional level.
There needs to be increased participation from civil society groups and the
private sector. Together these groups can bring to bear significant underutil-
ized capacities.
Notes
1 John Rapley, The New Middle 2 John A. Cope and Frank O. Mora,
Ages, Foreign Affairs (May/June Hemispheric Security: A New Ap-
2006), http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ proach, Current History 108, no. 715
articles/61708/john-rapley/the-new- (February 2009): 65-71.
middle-ages.
79
Multidimensional Security Perspective

Ambassador Adam Blackwell, Secretary of Multi
dimensional Security, Organization of American States
T
he Secretariat for Multidimensional Security, created in 2005, is tasked
with coordinating political, technical, and practical cooperation
among member states and other inter-American and international
organizations to analyze, prevent, confront, and respond to emerging threats
to national and citizen security. Politically, the Secretariat receives mandates
from the Summit of the Americas, from the annual general assembly, as well
as from our Permanent Council and its working groups.In fact, we are cur-
rently working on a drug study and TOC (Transnational Organized Crime)
plan, both of which were mandated by the Presidents of the Hemisphere at
the last Summit.1
To fulfill these mandates and other obligations, the Secretariat has
technical bodies; the Executive Secretariat of the Inter-American Drug
Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), the Executive Secretariat of the Inter-
American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE), the Department of Public
Security (DPS) and the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB). Each of these
technical bodies has its own set of networks to address key themes such as:
border and maritime security, cyber security, money laundering and ter-
rorism financing, forensics, prisons, arms trafficking, drugs and organized
crime, and terrorism, among others. These networks are made up of our
National Points of Contact and are in my view our real force multipliers.
In my tenure as Secretary of Multidimensional Security, we have tried
to move beyond supply driven solutions to build practical programs that
connect the political and technical platform that we have at our disposal.
Our work is united by a common philosophy, which we have termed smart
security. Smart security is actually something simple and logical: an object-
ive, evidence-based diagnosis of the problems; creation of proposals based
on national and regional needs and capabilities, implemented in alliance
with all relevant actors; a multidimensional and multi-stakeholder focus
ensuring systematic problem-solving; and a rigorous evaluation of results
and indicators.
Our work in the region has produced positive tangible results. We have
helped countries set up Drug Treatment Courts as an alternative to incar-
ceration for certain types of drug offenders and financial intelligence units

multidimensional security perspective
to prevent money laundering; implement computer emergency response

teams to tackle cyber threats; strengthen detection techniques to identify
suspicious cargo; expose cases of human trafficking and adopt better tech-
niques to manage risks at airports and sea ports; mark and manage fire-
arms; reduce the demand and supply of illicit substances; and help millions
of victims. We have also been a lead player in the gang truce in El Salvador,
leading programs to promote alternatives for at-risk youth and former gang
members trying to reintegrate back into society, and I am a member of the
Commission to Reform the Security Sector in Honduras where I have been
tasked with investigating corruption and redesigning security institutions.
These are important tactical results but it is clear that we need to be more
strategic.
The Declaration on Security in the Americas is now ten years old. In its
days, this was a forward-looking document that helped member states start
to define the new and emerging threats to international security that have
accompanied globalization, and the need to place a higher value on citizen
security. It started to identify some of the future challenges in dealing with
the multidimensional nature of risks we face, but left the possible mitigating
strategies undeveloped.
I am not sure though that this Declaration could have predicted how
rapid this evolution would behow information, technology, communica-
tions, and transportation would challenge the norms of global governance
and the international system. Never before have we had to contend with the
sheer volume, speed, and diversity of people and commodities that cross our
borders both legally and illegally. This openness, in the exchange of informa-
tion and knowledge through the internet and social media, or global travel,
migration, trade, and banking, has benefited Canada as we are a trading
country, but it is this very openness that also places us and others at risk.
It is estimated that the illicit economy ranges from 1 to 15 percent of
global GDP. Even on the low side, this puts it at US$718 billion. We estimate
in our soon to be released drug study that the trade in illicit drugs in our
hemisphere alone to be in the range of $150 billion per year. This is half the
GDP of Alberta just from illicit drugs.
This vast illicit income has financed the growth and fortification of vio-
lent organized criminal enterprises. Their adaptability, innovativeness and
increasing convergence gives them ever-improving ability to circumvent
official countermeasures and overcome logistical challenges, as well as de-
velop even better tools for exploiting weaknesses and opportunities within
the state system, indeed attacking that system, not to mention the people.
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adam blackwell
We cannot forget that people and families are bearing a heavy cost. They
are many times caught in the crossfire, both literal and figurative, of the battle
between the criminal groups and law enforcement. In 2011 the hemisphere
recorded 150,000 homicides related to organized crime. Firearms were used
in 75 percent of these homicides, whereas the global average is 40 percent.
USAID reports that there are over 900 gangs in Central America alone, re-
sulting in a fear of crime.
Trafficking, smuggling, and irregular migration has now become a major
business line for transnational organized crime groups. While it is impossible
to know with certainty, there are estimates from the International Labour
Organization (ILO) that report as high as $32 billion in annual income from
these activities. According to a 2005 International Organization for Migration
(IOM) report, trafficking in women and girls for purposes of sexual exploita-
tion has become a $16-billion-a-year business in Latin America.
At a recent Regional World Economic Forum meeting in Lima, I had
a unique opportunity to mingle with the presidents of Peru, Mexico, and
Panama, and many senior ministers and key business actors. At the Forum,
I noted some common themes from the senior level speakers, regardless of
ideology; comprehensive reform, continuity, state policies, social and eco-
nomic development, inclusive societies, and open for business.
Similarly they all recognize that crime, violence and insecurity are a
drag on their business and prosperity. The Inter-American Development
Bank estimates that Latin Americas per capita GDP would be 25 percent
higher if the regions crime rate were reduced to the world average. Crime
increases costs; it drives away investment and forces states to re-direct their
already limited resources towards security. Canada boasts low crime and
violence rates, but it sends millions of tourists, invests billions of dollars each
year, and has signed seven free trade agreements in the last five years. So
clearly, Canadian interests are not immune to these security concerns.
This, unfortunately, is only half of the story. How much of the illicit
economy is flowing across our borders? Where do the cocaine, heroin, and
methamphetamines come from? How many gangs do we have in our cities,
some that were started elsewhere? All you have to do is look at the econom-
ics or business of crime to know that the risks are also here as we are major
consumers of the illicit economy.
What Can We Do About the Problems: Smart Security

The solution to the problem of insecurity is not necessarily more security;
such as police, troops, and heavy-handed anti-crime legislation. We know
83
that we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem. Rather, we
need to refocus strategically on a humanistic approach; on areas like pre-
vention and keeping youth out of the gangs in the first place. We also need
to ensure that there is no impunity for those that do commit a crime, that
they are punished by criminal justice systems that are professional and
trustworthy, and that the punishment is humane and fosters the reintegra-
tion of offenders back into society to hopefully lead useful and productive
lives.
Looking ahead for the next ten years I see Multidimensional Security
converging to what I would call shared security, which looks at three core
and interconnected themes; new concepts of networked sovereignty; inclu-
sive multi-stakeholder states; and resilient communities where citizens have
a renewed consciousness of their rights and obligations. Success will require,
first and foremost, confidence. Confidence is the great enabler and multiplier;
impunity is the enemy.
Networked Sovereignty: Strong States

Let us start with shared sovereignty. Historically, most countries used
multilateral fora to try and protect their sovereignty rather than enhance it.
This might have worked twenty-five years ago but we now live in an era
of global borders and virtual territories. Globalization and our open econ-
omies, open societies, and open technologies have advanced so quickly it
has far outpaced our traditional governance models. The lack of capacity in
some countries has led to either the militarization of security, the privatiza-
tion of security or, frankly, no security. What is required is a citizen-centred
or a people approach. We also need to start changing the indicators or we
are going to be stuck measuring homicide rates, prison populations and
drug seizures. It is hard but essential that we rebuild the confidence of the
citizenry in their police and rule of law institutions through well-articu-
lated and well-designed prevention, community policing, and correction
models.
We have successfully developed global financial systems, global tel-
ecommunications networks, and global supply chains. It is clear that the
response to transnational threats require the same approacha multi-state
response system which must devise comprehensive and multidimensional
strategies and policies that reinforce collaboration, build confidence across
jurisdictions, and ensure that there is no sense of criminal impunity, which
is surely the greatest threat to our sovereignty today.
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Inclusive Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Governance

This leads to my next point about helping others create a modern multi-
stakeholder approach to the building of robust, resilient, and responsive
state institutions to support long-term public policies. The Inter-American
Democratic Charter (IADC) is over a decade old and we should be very proud
that almost all of our countries have a democratically elected government, al-
beit of mixed quality, but democratic principles have advanced significantly.
What, in my view, is the next challenge is the creation of professional and
inclusive state institutions that are capable of providing essential services,
opportunities, and support to their citizens on the one hand, and, on the
other, are able to understand that a mature and sophisticated democracy at
its best is messy and even messier in the multi-stakeholder connected soci-
eties in which we live today. Messy meaning that now we have even more
actors with a multiplicity of interests and concerns.
Examples of this can be found in the fields of cyber security and money
laundering. In both cases major parts of the infrastructure are in the hands of
the private sector. Whereas if you look at the drug study we are working on,
in many countries, NGOs or the not-for-profit sector are providing prevention
and treatment services. The private sector can play a very important role here,
by not corrupting and helping with the development of modern transparent
tools like accounting, business management, and ISO-like (International
Organization for Standardization) rigor in the development of the processes
of government. This is important because for the multi-stakeholder approach
to be effective, it must be built on mutual trust and confidence.
Resilient Societies
Petty/common or transnational organized crime in all its manifestations
will continue to be insufficient if we do not address the underlying social
conditions that allow these activities to take root. We must work to build up
the social capital of our communities, which can be measured in levels of
trust, teamwork, and cohesiveness. Young persons in a supportive, inclusive
society are less vulnerable than those who are isolated. Resilient societies
are built from the bottom up, through grass-roots level community-based
initiatives like cultural programs for underprivileged communities, vo-
cational training programs, basic skills for a successful life, programs for
young and under-educated parents, and community-based policing pro-
grams, to list a few.
Resilient societies must simultaneously be supported from the highest
levels of government. Leadership must address such issues as economic
85
inequity, access to quality education, healthcare, good governance, and pub-

lic trust. The convergence of not doing this is what I call social warming.
Today, we essentially have a better connected and better educated popula-
tion. The lives and behaviours of persons in public office are more public
than ever and today citizens are more outspoken and have higher expecta-
tions than in the past.
As democracy has improved in the Hemisphere, so too has the economy.
The Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
says that we have been able to reduce poverty levels by over 40 percent over
the last ten years. Unfortunately, we have not been as successful at reduc-
ing inequality by more than 4 percent. This remains the Achilles heel and
it is clear that without shared development there is no security, and without
security there is no development.
If all of this seems unobtainable, I can assure you that there are models
of success out there that we need to start duplicating in a much more rigorous
manner. To bring what I have mentioned so far to the ground and away from
the abstract, take, for example, the story of Colombia. Ten to fifteen years
ago this country was as close to being considered a failed state as possible.
Through strong leadership, good international cooperation, and inter-state
coordination, Colombia has begun the long hard slog to rebuild itself. Today,
Colombia has stronger institutions, a robust democracy and civil society,
and economic opportunities for a greater number of its citizens. Colombia
is becoming a global playerpotentially joining the OECD, promoting
international security cooperation across the hemisphere and helping us
at the OAS document their police experience and ISO certification models.
Of course, this transformation did not happen overnight. It involved a lot
of assistance and policy coordination to reduce impunity and rebuild the
confidence of its citizens.
One such example was the OAS led Mission to Support the Peace Process
in Colombia, or MAPP-Colombia. Established in 1994, the mandate of this
Mission was to contribute to peacebuilding in Colombia by working with
different sectors of society; providing support to the initiatives of the govern-
ment and civil society groups; and supporting local initiatives in the conflict
areas. In Colombian communities, MAPP worked to re-build trust, promote
reconciliation, and strengthen democracy at the local level. The MAPP
Mission employed three strategies to help in this re-building process: shared
sovereignty; a multi-stakeholder approach; and stronger resilient societies.
In using this three-pronged approach,it succeeded in re-instating trust and
confidence, the real multiplier.
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adam blackwell
We know there are a variety of different problems, but we need to be

smart about solutions and draw from successful models. Our office has
drawn on the experience of MAPP in Colombia in our strategic approach
to addressing insecurity in Central America and the Caribbean, which we
have dubbed MAS Centro- America and MAS Caribbean. Using this
approach, we are working at every level (regional, national, municipal) with
different actors (including private sector, NGOs, civil society groups) to
strengthen the capacity of states and institutions to respond to their security
threats, as well as to emphasize the importance of community development
and resilience through prevention programs. If, as in the case of El Salvador,
this means open dialogue with the gang leaders, then so be it, as there is
no solution in a country that a year ago was the most violent in the world
without dealing with the major cause of that violence.
The TRUST of the Americas is an excellent example of this approach. The
not-for-profit organization, run by Linda Eddleman, is building partnerships
with local organizations in communities across the hemisphere to provide
vulnerable populations with alternate development opportunities. At the
same time, they are coordinating their activities with governments and
the private sector to promote economic and social inclusion for maximum
impact.
We are convinced that a multidimensional, multi-stakeholder, coordin-
ated joint effort is the only logical way forward. What comes as no surprise
is that we have found that the best solutions are those that are built on an
accurate diagnosis of the problems, tailored to the local environment, and
must adopt a multi-stakeholder horizontal approach in its delivery and
evaluation. The international community also needs to do a much better job
of coordinating its assistance, recognizing its role as illicit consumers, and
helping those societies that are struggling.
Note
1 The Report on the Drug Problems in the Americas was released by the OAS on May
17, 2013, and can be accessed at www.cicad.oas.org.
87
The Future of Inter-American Relations

Peter Hakim, President Emeritus,
Inter-American Dialogue
I
n the 1990s, following the end of the Cold War, there emerged for a time
what appeared to be a relatively wide agreement in the United States and
much of Latin America regarding the direction hemispheric relations
should take. The convergence focused on renewed efforts to achieve inter-
American cooperation and integration along three axeseconomic, political,
and institutional.
Most nations welcomed the 1990 proposal of President George H.W.
Bush to build toward an integrated economic bloc, a hemisphere-wide trade
area that would allow for the free flow of capital and goods among all the
countries of the Americas. The new bloc, later named the Free Trade Area of
the Americas (FTAA), was intended to improve the competitiveness of the
hemispheres economies, and enable them to keep up with the economically
integrated nations of the European Union and with Japan and the fast grow-
ing tigers of East Asia. The increasingly market-oriented Latin American
economies had begun to unilaterally reduce their trade barriers, and saw
the value of joining a regional free trade arrangement effectively led by the
United States.
Second, the idea that democracy was the only valid form of govern-
ment was taking firm root across the Americas. Free and fair elections were
widely accepted as the only legitimate way to secure power. By 1991, every
country in Latin America except for Cuba could boast an elected govern-
ment. Moreover, the hemispheres governments approved Organization of
American States (OAS) resolutions requiring collective action to protect and
strengthen democratic governance in all nations of the Americas. This com-
mitment to collective responsibility was subsequently codified in 2001, when
every country of the hemisphere (except Cuba) signed the Inter-American
Democratic Charter (IADC).
Third, the OAS was seen as providing the crucial institutional frame-
work for regional governance and cooperation. It was supplemented in 1994
by the newly launched Summit of the Americas process, which was designed
to regularly assemble the hemispheres heads of state.
This three-pronged convergence, which represented more of an aspira-
tion than a firm commitment from the governments, has mostly evaporated.

the future of inter-american relations
Negotiations toward a hemispheric trade bloc were halted in 2005 after

several years of limited progress, largely because the United States and
Brazil could not find common ground on several key issues. The Democratic
Charter has hardly ever been invoked, despite many notorious violations of
democratic practice. And, after many setbacks, the OAS and Summit of the
Americas are both weakened institutions. Today, there is a lack of anything
near a consensus on hemispheric relations.
Diminishing Ties Between Latin America and the United States

The United States and Latin America have been drifting apart for a decade
or more. Still, the United States remains the most important external eco-
nomic presence in Latin Americaeven though it has been steadily losing
ground to Europe and China, which is now the leading commercial partner
of several Latin American countries. The United States is the first or second
largest trade partner for nearly every country in the region. No other nation
invests more in Latin America, transfers more technology, or is the source of
more remittances and overseas aid (although the latter is focused mainly on
public security and drug-related issues). While its relative economic signifi-
cance will continue to diminish in the coming period, the United States will
surely sustain a robust commercial and financial relationship with Latin
America.
U.S. political engagement in Latin America has suffered a faster decline.
Washington no longer has much influence on most issues and decisions in
the region, particularly in South America. U.S. capacity to shape the regions
agenda or affect specific decisions has diminished considerablyand its
interest in doing so has shrunk as well. Washington has sharply reduced its
involvement in conflict and crisis resolution in Latin America, both within
or between countries. The Latin Americans themselves have taken on these
tasks, often making use of new regional and sub-regional institutions in
which neither the United States nor Canada participate.
The United States today has no unifying vision or common approach
to Latin America. U.S. policy is largely directed to Mexico and Central
America, driven by geographical proximity, economic and demographic in-
tegration, and concerns about security and drug trafficking. Brazilbecause
of its size, economic potential, and regional and global influencealso com-
mands U.S. attention. The two countries, however, have not identified any
clear path toward a closer, more cooperative relationship, either political or
economic.
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Diverging Trajectories in Latin America

Economically, Latin America has divided itself into two blocs. One includes
the eleven countries that have free trade agreements with the United States,
virtually all of which are seeking even stronger U.S. commercial ties. The
other bloc consists of the five members of Mercosur and two aspirants.
Nearly all of them enjoy substantial economic relations with the United
States, but few have shown much interest in developing more formal com-
mercial ties. There is currently no overlap between the two blocs. Of twenty
Latin American countries, only Haiti and Cuba belong to neither.
Regional politics are even more divisive. Among Latin American
countries, there is no agreement on (a) what norms have to be satisfied for
a government to be considered democratic; (b) what should be viewed as a
violation of democratic practice, to be corrected and possibly sanctioned; (c)
how persistent violators should be dealt with; (d) who should be the judge of
whether violations are taking place; and (e) what role the OAS should play in
preventing, judging, and responding to violations.
Other trends are also evident. Perhaps the most important is Brazils
assumption of a more active and important regional leadership role, particu-
larly in South Americaalthough it does not yet appear fully comfortable in
that role or certain of its objectives. Venezuela is in a transition. During the
Chvez years, the Venezuelan government was time and again a disruptive
force in inter-American relations. The new government of Nicols Maduro
remains hostile to the United States, but Venezuelas significance in the post-
Chvez era is in question.
Latin American countries are diversifying and strengthening their ties
outside the Western Hemisphere. Chinas presence is expanding almost
everywhere in Latin America, including countries that still do not officially
recognize the Beijing government. Chinese trade, investment, and land
purchases have all exploded in the last ten years, particularly in commodity
exporting nations. It is reasonable to expect growing political influence in
the region as well, even as the Chinese government has insisted on its only
limited interest beyond economics and commerce.
Looking Ahead
The critical question, however, is not where inter-American relations stand
today, but where they are headed in the coming decades. What follows are
four possible scenarios for the evolution of hemispheric affairs. They should
not be viewed as predictions. Indeed, the most likely outcome is probably
some unexpected combination of several of the scenarios. Instead they are
91
meant to contribute to an understanding of the principal factors that will

likely shape the future of hemispheric affairsand stimulate a discussion of
policies that would lead to productive outcomes.
Scenario I: The Drift Continues

The most likely scenario is that inter-American relations remain on their
present course. The United States continues gradually to disengage politic-
ally from most of the region. Economic relations expand with many coun-
tries, but the U.S. share of total trade and investments keeps falling as China
and other extra-hemispheric nations increase their share. Reflecting evolving
political forces, social changes, and national aspirations, hemispheric ties
may become less structured and perhaps less coherent. Relations among the
countries of Latin America could become more tense and divisive.
For the United States, the scenario involves increasingly selective engage-
ment, directed to specific issues, countries, and eventswithout much atten-
tion to developing a broader strategy for U.S. relations with Latin America.
U.S. interest in issues of regional scope will continue to recede.
U.S. engagement remains strong only in Mexico and Central America, but
even there it will be less intrusive as the countries become more independent
and assertive. Latin Americas foreign relations grow increasingly diverse
as globalization opens up new opportunities and weakens hemispheric ties.
Within Latin America, countries continue to diverge and disagree; in some
cases their differences may intensify in the absence of a significant U.S. pres-
ence. The distancing of the United States and Latin America combined with
the divisions within the region will likely continue to diminish the import-
ance of the OAS and Summits of the Americas.
Scenario II: A Return to the Pan-American Vision

With Chvez gone, the anti-U.S. alliance, ALBA, loses what is left of its drive,
direction, and determination. Venezuela faces deeper political and economic
challenges and no longer has the money or unity to play much of inter-
national role. No effective replacement for Chvez and Venezuelan resources
emerge, and what is left of extreme opposition to U.S. engagement in Latin
America fades in importance.
There is broad movement towards the centerregarding relations with
the United States and political and economic issues generally. This shift
may already be occurring in many countries and should lead to an easing
of tension and division between Atlantic and Pacific nations, and between
North and South American countries. Most Latin American countries in-
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creasingly adopt orthodox macroeconomic policies, their economies become

more closely aligned, and they expand attention to issues of equality and
social justice. The continued emergence and strengthening of the middle
class helps to sustain a pragmatic centrism in most countries, and allows for
an increasingly shared understanding of democratic principles and the rule
of law.
Mexico and Brazil recognize the value of closer bilateral ties and more
regional and global cooperation. For its part, Brazilwhose differences with
the United States have frustrated hemispheric economic integration efforts
becomes increasingly concerned about its long-term economic prospects. It
recognizes the Mercosur trade bloc as mainly consisting of unstable, eco-
nomically hobbled partners. Brazil is also painfully aware that other Latin
American nations (Peru, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico)
show greater dynamism and brighter economic futures than the Mercosur
group. If U.S. negotiations with Europe and Asia are successful in creating
new trade agreements, Brazil knows that its global competitiveness will
shrink further. Meanwhile, its expanding middle class presses for faster
growth and improved government performance. All of these factors should
push Brazil toward greater economic pragmatism and openness, and toward
stronger commercial ties with the United States and the higher performing
Latin American nations.
The appeal of the Pan-American vision increases as the United States
decisively emerges from slow growth and high unemployment, and man-
ages to overcome its current political hyper-polarization. A more prosperous
and unified U.S. modifies policies that have long caused friction with Latin
America in the past, including Washingtons approaches to drugs, immigra-
tion, and Cuba. The United States is viewed as a more responsible and more
respectful neighbor.
In this scenario, hemispheric economic cooperation becomes more
viable, perhaps opening the way for resumed negotiations toward a hemi-
spheric free trade arrangement. The OAS takes on a more forceful role in
regional affairs, and progress toward economic integration allows enhanced
political cooperation.
Scenario III: Latin American Solidarity

Exactly as in the previous scenario, a broad movement towards the center
leads to improved relations among Latin American nations. Most Latin
American governments pursue similar economic and social policies, solid
(not spectacular) growth rates are attained across the region, middle classes
93
continue to expand, and a shared understanding of democratic practice

emerges. The left and right extremes are rarely able to win elections. Latin
Americas two giants, Mexico and Brazil, recognize the value of closer eco-
nomic ties, and greater international coordination.
During this period of Latin American convergence around centrist pol-
itics and economics, the United States remains unable to regain an adequate
trajectory of economic growth, the countrys politics remain dysfunctional,
and it finds itself overextended internationally. After conservative triumphs
in presidential and congressional elections in 2016, 2018, and 2020, immigra-
tion legislation becomes more restrictive and exclusionary, harsher sanctions
are imposed on a post-Castro Cuba, and U.S. policy in Latin America focuses
mostly on drug and security issues and trade disputes.
Under this scenario, political and diplomatic relations remain cordial
but the United States importance in the region declines sharply. The United
States no longer plays a major role in regional affairs. Conflicts between
countries or crises within them are addressed by Latin American govern-
ments. The United States remains an important economic partner for many
nations in Latin America, although a weak U.S. economy leads Latin America
to focus increasing attention on other trade partners and investors.
The OAS and Summits lose most of their role in hemispheric affairs.
Latin American institutions take on many of their responsibilities.
Scenario IV: A Hostile Relationship

There remains a possibility that Latin American nations could become in-
creasingly hostile or antagonistic toward the United States. Some variant
of the anti-U.S. sentiment promoted by Hugo Chvez could take hold in a
significant number of countries in the region.
Developments in the United States would be the same as those outlined
in the previous scenarioa continuing U.S. economic slump combined with
highly polarized politics and increasingly isolationist foreign policies.
At the same time, Venezuela and Argentina unexpectedly rebound from
their economic setbacks, Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner takes firm control
of Argentina politics, and Maduro or a Chavista successor does the same in
Venezuela. Brazil and Mexico, along with several other countries, enter a per-
iod of slow or zero growth again, leaving both their low-income populations
and what had been expanding middle classes vulnerable and frustrated.
Populist, authoritarian leaders win elections in many countries.
Although extensive economic ties remain in place, neither the United
States nor Latin America retains much interest in collaborating with the
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other. Regional organizations, like the OAS and the Summits of the Americas
become moribund, if they survive at all.
Some Final Observations

Interestingly, of the four scenarios, only the last (by far, the least likely) would
necessarily be damaging to long-term U.S. interests, and probably to Latin
American interests as well.
The Pan-American scenario (Scenario II) is most appealingin part be-
cause we are long accustomed to hearing it portrayed as an ideal model for
inter-American relations, but also because it would likely lead to most pro-
ductive outcomes for both the United States and most countries of the region.
But the factors responsible for the already attenuated U.S.-Latin American
relationship may have sunk any prospects of a return to the Pan-American
framework, at least anytime soon.
Since neither the United States nor the countries of the region seem will-
ing to do very much at this point to rebuild vibrant, collaborative relations
the best that is hoped is a continuation of some form of selective engage-
ment (see Scenario I). This allows for countries, including the United States,
to choose the partners and allies with which it wants to work, and establish
appropriate distance from others. It does mean, however, that there will
be only limited commitment to any common set of norms or hemispheric
institutions.
Latin American solidarity (Scenario III) should not be considered a par-
ticularly intolerable outcome, particularly if it leads to improved and more
constructive relations among the countries of Latin America, and enables
them to develop joint approaches to critical domestic, regional, and inter-
national issues and needed institutional arrangements to put them into
practice. The United States and Latin America might even benefit from a per-
iod of disengagementrather than trying to sustain what has increasingly
become, at least for most countries, a largely empty rhetoric of partnership
and community.
95
III:
CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS
AND SECURITY POLICY
Challenges to Institutionalizing
Civil-Military Relations in the New
Democracies of Latin America
Thomas C. Bruneau, Naval Post-Graduate School,
United States
Introduction
I
n this paper I define what I mean by the concept civil-military rela-
tions (CMR), discuss the different roles and missions security forces are
currently expected to fulfill, and assess the challenges to implementing
democratic civil-military relations by analyzing the incentives motivating
civilian decision-makers in the broad areas of national security and defense.
The paper builds on my previous publications in civil-military relations,
and seeks to elaborate on the perspective of David Pion-Berlin and Harold
Trinkunas in their work focusing on the incentives motivating civilian
decision-makers in Latin America. It draws extensively from my work with
the Center for Civil-Military Relations between 1996 and today in conducting
week-long seminars for high level officers and civilians on various aspects of
democratic civil-military relations throughout Latin America. Specifically I
use the opportunity of looking back to more than a decade and a half of con-
ducting programs promoting democratic civil-military relations in the region
and analyze their impact, if any. I have kept notes and files on the programs
I conducted, which included all countries between the United States and the
Antarctic but for Guyana and Venezuela. Unfortunately, in looking back I
have found in most countries minimal progress, and in several (including
Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua) regression. While the emphasis in this
paper will be on the lack of progress, I will also include, near the end of the
paper, the cases of Chile and Colombia where there has been clear progress.
And I will attempt to explain that progress in terms of incentives for civil-
ians, in these two countries versus all of the others, to become interested and
invest political capital and resources in national security and defense.1 My
overall analytical goal in this paper, as well as in my other publications, is to
put on a more empirical basis the analysis of civil-military relations, which
until now has been heavily normative and minimally empirical. To under-

challenges to institutionalizing civil-military relations
stand the central issues of CMR, requires a framework, and that framework,
with comparative evidence, is a key part of this paper. My focus is on the
necessary, if not sufficient, requirements for the components of civil-military
relations that I posit. To suggest what could be possible, I will compare and
contrast the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Partnership
for Peace (NATO/PfP) regions with those in Latin America. And, since in
democracies, including even new democracies, civilian politicians make
the main decisions, the focus will be overwhelmingly on them and not on
military officers.
Conceptualization of Civil-Military Relations

Traditional concepts of civil-military relations focus almost exclusively on
the one dimension of democratic civilian control of the security forces, and
on these forces in terms of their preparation for and engagement in trad-
itional territorial defense and war fighting.2 Yet, if we even superficially re-
view what the armed forces and other security forces in fact do, and are pre-
pared to do in the contemporary world, war-fighting is probably the least
likely role and for which most forces in most countries are only minimally
prepared. In a recent chapter on roles and missions of the armed forces by a
retired U.S. Navy captain, he posits five different macro roles that he argues
predominantly characterize countries and their armed forces. Of these five,
citing as examples the United States, Russia, China, France, and India, only
one is concerned with war fighting. The others include what he terms roles
as defender, peacekeeper, fire fighter, and police officer. According to this author,
the Latin American countries fit within the last three categories.3 In an arti-
cle by a respected British scholar on civil-military relations and security sec-
tor reform, the title alone conveys the sense of the article. In What are armed
forces for? The changing nature of military roles in Europe, Timothy Edmunds
identifies four roles for European militaries in the post-Cold War era. These
are the following: war-fighting, peacekeeping, internal security, and nation-
building.4 Going beyond Europe, in our own work with a global perspec-
tive, we have identified six major roles. These are: war-fighting, fighting
internal wars, peacekeeping, counter-terrorism, supporting the police in
combatting organized crime and gangs, and supporting civilian authorities
in humanitarian disasters.5 There could be a seventh if we consider the fifty
countries under NATO in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
in Afghanistan as something other than peacekeeping, fighting internal
wars, or combatting terrorism.6 Further, there could be yet another role if
we take Paul Collier in his Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous
100
thomas c. bruneau
Places seriously where he apparently advocates the use of armed forces to

intervene and overthrow dictatorial regimes, mainly in Africa. (Lest I am
accused of misunderstanding his point, here is Colliers text: The core
proposal of this book is a strategy whereby a small intervention from the
international community can harness the political violence internal to the
societies of the bottom billion. This powerful force that to date has been so
destructive can be turned to advantage, becoming the defender of democ-
racy rather than its antithesis.7 It is clear to me that if we even minimally
investigate what military forces are in fact doing, what becomes obvious
is that there are 116 countries that are currently involved in peacekeeping
under the United Nations.8 There are the fifty countries participating in
ISAF. In certain countries and regions, including Brazil, most of Central
America, Mexico, and South Africa, the armed forces support, or have even
supplanted the police in dealing with domestic sources of violence. And
everywhere, military forces support civilian authorities in responding to
humanitarian disasters brought about by volcanoes, earthquakes, hurri-
canes, tsunamis, and the like.
Once we broaden the focus on military roles and missions to what
they are in fact doing today, we encounter yet greater problems in logic and
methodology in assessing their effectiveness. For, even if we limit our focus
to only traditional territorial defense and war fighting, we encounter the
logical fallacy of proving a negative. That is, how to evaluate wars that do
not happen? It can be argued, for example, that due to nuclear deterrence
between the United States and former Soviet Union in the Cold War, there
was never a hot war. Or, when a country does not attack another due to the
perception of military strength of the latter? Or, how to assess intelligence
successes vs. intelligence failures, when those involved, either intelligence
professionals or special operation forces, cannot talk or write about oper-
ations? When we broaden the focus to the roles and missions that armed
forces are actually fulfilling, it becomes all but impossible to assess effect-
iveness. Peacekeeping can continue, as is the case with the UN missions in
India and Pakistan since 1949, Cyprus since 1964, Syria since 1974, Lebanon
since 1978, and the Western Sahara since 1991, for as long as troop-contribu-
tors can be found.9 Failed states, such as Democratic Republic of Congo, will
require peacekeepers for the foreseeable future. Organized crime, street
gangs, and natural disasters result in serious human and security challen-
ges that can be mitigated, but probably never resolved. In short, it is all but
impossible to assess effectiveness without making so many assumptions as
to seriously damage reality.
101
A Broader Concept of Civil-Military Relations

If I have accurately identified a major problem in traditional approaches to
civil-military relations for focusing only on traditional territorial defense and
war-fighting, an equally important lapse is the exclusive focus on democratic
civilian control. This is the focus in the traditional literature, beginning with
Samuel Huntington, and it has been brought forward in the more recent
focus on democratic transitions and consolidation.10 My colleagues and I have
argued tirelessly in print, that in addition to control, the conceptualization
of CMR must also include effectiveness in the implementation of the roles
and missions.11 In our recently published Routledge Handbook of Civil-Military
Relations we have assessed sixteen countries in terms of either control or ef-
fectiveness, or both. The assessments can be found in Table1.
Considering that, as argued above, effectiveness is virtually impossible
to assess, short of making a great number of unfounded assumptions, we
focus on the necessary, if not sufficient, requirements to achieve control or
effectiveness, or both.
It is clear in Table 1 (p. 103) that there are major differences between the
NATO and PfP countries and those in other areas. For example, the only
NATO/PfP country that ranks low in any of the six categories is Moldova,
whereas in the other, non-NATO/PfP countries the lowest rank is 2, 3, 3, 4, 3,
4. Or, conversely, in the high rank, whereas the NATO/PfP countries are 8, 3, 7,
2, 5, and 2 for the other countries there are 4, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1. It is particularly clear
that the lowest, or the least high, pertain to the dimensions of effectiveness.
My argument is that the requirements for accession to NATO and PfP,
the Bologna Process, not to mention European Union (EU) and Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and ensuing membership
demands, motivates them to create the institutions for both control and ef-
fectiveness. I have found in doing CMR programs in older NATO members,
including Portugal, as well as newer ones, including Bulgaria and Romania,
and even those desiring less than NATO membership (Armenia and
Moldova), that the requirements of the Membership Action Plans require
these countries desirous of membership to fulfill extensive categories that
amount to democratic civilian control and effectiveness (on Membership
Action Plan for accession to NATO, NATO 2012). These requirements are not
duplicated in other parts of the world, and my argument is, therefore, the
presence, or more likely absence, of these requirements is up to the civilian
decision-makers. In analyzing whether or not they will fulfill these require-
ments, we turn to the concept of incentives; that is, the incentives for the
civilian decision-makers to provide these requirements.
102
Table 1. Requirements for Achieving Democratic Civilian Control and Effectiveness
Civil-Military
Three Requirements for Civilian Control Three Requirements for Effectiveness
Relations
Institutions/
I nstitutional Con- Professional Structures (incl.
Country trol Mechanisms Oversight Norms Plan interagency) Resources
Argentina High Medium/low Medium? Low Medium Low
Chile Medium/high Medium High Medium/high Medium/high High
Portugal Medium/high Medium/high High Medium/high Medium Medium/high
Spain High Medium Medium Medium Medium Medium
France High Medium High High High High
Germany High High High Medium High Medium
Austria High High High Medium High Medium
Slovenia High Medium High Medium Medium Medium
Hungry Medium/high Medium High Medium Medium/high Low/medium
Romania High Medium/low High Medium/high High Medium
Lebanon Low Low Low Low Low Low
Iraq N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Egypt N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Moldova Low/medium Low Low/medium Low/medium Low Low
South Africa Medium Medium High Medium Low Medium
North Korea N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
United Sates High High High High High High
Mongolia Low/medium Low/medium Low/medium Medium Medium Low/medium
India High High High Low Medium Medium
Russia High Medium Low Low Low Low
103
thomas c. bruneau
Incentives to Use Resources for National Security and Defense

An approach analyzing the incentives civilian decision-makers possess to
use the resources to which they have access will, I believe, prove useful
in further elaborating my approach to analysis. I will apply the concept of
resources to each of the requirements for control and effectiveness. One
cannot only examine the resources in a positive way, what may be gained,
but equally in a negative manner in terms of what may be lost; what may
be the costs to the political decision-maker. Further, I will illustrate each of
the dimensions I review with anecdotal evidence from my own personal
observations in fourteen countries in Latin America since 1996 in order to
illustrate the points. Again, the ratings are based on the balance, or net result,
of the positive and negative aspects regarding politicians and the resources
to which they have access.
What are the resources that political decision-maker have access to?
There are two prior considerations before we discuss resources. First, aspir-
ing politicians are not decision-makers until and unless they are elected.
Max Weber provides some insight on this issue: We wish to understand
by politics only the leadership, or the influencing of the leadership of a pol-
itical association, hence today of a state. He continues by stating: All party
struggles are struggle for the patronage of office, as well as struggles for
objective goals.12 Today, in modern democracies, electionsvotesare the
key to politicians calculations. And in power, politicians have access to re-
sources by virtue of their role in using the powers of a government. This
can be as directly elected members of the executive or legislative bodies, or
as advisors or staffers proximate to these decision-makers and influencing
their decisions. It seems to me, based upon research on secondary materials
and observation of and interviews with civilian decision-makers, that they
have access to two main resources: first, political capital, meaning the ability,
or influence, to affect or change something using their access to the pow-
ers available in government. Second, the use of money, derived from taxes
and other government generated sources, and applying it to one purpose or
function and another. And, to emphasize again, the focus here is on civilian
decision-makers, for once a democracy has been consolidated the civilians
can take control over all areas of policies, including national security and
defense. They may decide not to, but they can and in most cases do. My basic
question here iswhat do the politicians gain, or lose, in attempting to imple-
ment any of the requirements for control and effectiveness? What, finally on
balance, is the costhigh, medium, or lowin terms of use of resources for
the following six dimensions?
104
thomas c. bruneau
Control Power Money

Inst. Low Low
Oversight High Medium
PME High High
Effectiveness
Plan High Medium
Inst. High Low
$ High High
Indicators of the Dimensions

Utilizing evidence from countries that are members of NATO and PfP, the
following indicators are used to evaluate each of the six dimensions. As
the central institution of democratic civil-military relations, the creation of
a ministry of defense is clearly the main indicator of institutionalization
of democratic civil-military relations. Indeed, for NATO membership, the
presence of a civilian-led ministry of defense (MOD) is the sine qua non for
membership. Thus, the mere creation of a civilian-led MOD is the criterion
for this dimension.13
Oversight requires not only a MOD, but also a MOD staffed with know-
ledgeable civilians who are qualified to make inquiries and empowered to
do something about what they find. And, it also requires either a functioning
national security council, or its equivalent, and/or a defense committee in the
legislature that can keep track of what is, or is not, going on.14
Reform of professional military education (PME) is necessary to demo-
cratic civil-military relations since during pre-democratic times the military
everywhere had a monopoly on education. There is little point in changing
structures to more democratic civil-military relations unless the culture of
the officer corps is changed. This is the case in the NATO/PfP countries, and
has been accelerated by the so-called Bologna Process by which civilians
have asserted their control over all education, including military education.15
For our purposes here, reform of PME means, at a minimum, proof that civil-
ians have asserted control over PME, either through a ministry of education
or through reforms directed by a civilian-led MOD.
A plan or strategy is necessary to demonstrate to the security forces, the
population itself, and the outside world, that there is some plan or strategy
for what the country intends to do with the forces. In the NATO and PfP
areas, this is included in the individual partnership action plans (IPAP).
105
Organizations for operational effectiveness encompass, today, the cre-

ation of joint or general commands whereby the forces can be employed for
specific purposes. The emphasis must be on joint commands since it is hard
to imagine any military situation that does not require the use of more than
one of the armed forces. This is a tricky issue since creation of such a struc-
ture demonstrates that a country has gone beyond taming the armed forces,
to once again empowering them. But, there are cases, including Portugal,
where the author has personally verified that the civilians have gone beyond
control to effectiveness.16
Finally, without some level of resources, it is inconceivable that a coun-
trys security forces can be effective. Obviously the question comes up as
to effective at what since not all countries will seek to implement a full
spectrum of roles and missions. But, if we can identify the level, and also
identify the percentage assigned to personnel costs, we can have an idea of
what is involved.
As I reviewed my notes from conducting programs in Latin America
since 1996 what stands out most clearly are two facts: first, it has been a rela-
tively long period of time during which countries stated publicly and were
expected to create the institutions for both control and effectiveness; and,
second, how little progress has been achieved in all but a few countries.
Creating the Institutions for Control of the Armed Forces

1. This is the one area that is relatively positive in Latin America.
The fundamental organization is a civilian-led ministry of
defense. Even so, it was only in 1999 and 2000 that a MOD
was created in Brazil and Nicaragua respectively. It should
also be noted that there is still no MOD in Mexico, but rather
two secretariats, one for the army and air force and another
for the navy, headed by a general or admiral respectively. It
takes neither much power nor money to establish a ministry of
defense. In short, all but Mexico have created MODs, although
by law in Guatemala the minister is an active duty senior of-
ficer, and the same is the case by tradition in El Salvador. On
balance, creating a MOD demands relatively low political and
economic resources.
Establishing Oversight Mechanisms

2. To create oversight mechanisms, however, is much more
onerous in terms of politicians resources than just creating
106
thomas c. bruneau
a MOD. Oversight can be done by a MOD that is well staffed

by sufficient numbers of prepared personnel, and by either
a functioning national security council or well-staffed com-
mittees in the legislature. What stands out clearly in the vast
majority of countries in the region is the lack of these well-
staffed institutions. We have seen clear regression in the staff-
ing of the MODs in Ecuador and Guatemala, and the prepared
civilians we have helped train in El Salvador and Honduras
have never achieved decision-making positions in these de-
fense institutions. I have verified in Bolivia and Ecuador that
the National Security Council (NSC)equivalent, Consejo
Nacional de Seguridad (COSENA) in both countriesdo not
function. To achieve these civilian capacities, which would go
against the tradition of military dominance, will require both
political capital and substantial funds. So far, but for Chile and
Colombia, this has not been done.
Reform of Professional Military Education

3. Currently, the vast majority of the instructors in professional
military education (PME) are active duty or retired military
officers. There are some changes in Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
and Colombia, with the assertion of civilian control over PME,
and the hiring of some civilians. Elsewhere in the region, how-
ever, there is no willingness to change PME. To overcome the
resistance in the military, recognizing that this could involve
a cultural change, requires political capital. And, to hire quali-
fied civilians to replace the officers, who are already receiving
salaries as either active duty or in reserve or retirement, would
involve a cost. The demand for political resources, then, to
change PME is high on both dimensions.
Developing a Plan or Strategy

4. The most useful definition I have seen on strategy is by Hew
Strachan: In the ideal model of civil-military relations, the
democratic head of state sets out his or her policy, and armed
forces coordinate the means to enable its achievement. The
reality is that this processa process called strategyis itera-
tive, a dialogue where ends also reflect means, and where the
resultalso called strategyis a compromise between the
107
ends of policy and the military means available to implement

it.17 Unfortunately, the political demands are high, and the
resources are medium at least. I have seen promises to develop
strategies in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras, for at least
a decade, but the most these countries, and others including
Argentina, produce are the so-called white books, which are
basically coffee table books displaying some defense equip-
ment and personnel. The main reason why these countries,
lacking the motivation of NATO and PfP, do not produce
national strategies is the vulnerability they would create for
themselves if they publish a plan, with any degree of detail,
and then do not fulfill it. The opposition would attack them,
and they know it. Therefore, they simply do not produce plans.
Institutions to Achieve Effectiveness

5. To achieve military effectiveness requires the creation of some
kind of joint or general command. To do so requires a sense
that democratic civilian control has been established, and is no
longer questioned. This took at least a decade in Portugal and
in the newer democracies of East/Central Europe. Throughout
Latin America there are real joint or general commands only
in Colombia, with nascent structures in Argentina, Brazil,
and Chile. In all of the other countries, there are totally separ-
ate forces, as in Mexico, a primitive military structure doing
its own thing in Nicaragua, or haphazard arrangements
between a weak MOD and confused command structures
in most other countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, and
Guatemala.18 To change this situation would require heavy
investment of political capital, and some funds.
Money to Achieve Effectiveness

6. To provide the resources for military effectiveness requires
high political capital, as everybody knows that defense does
not bring votes and money for which there are other huge
and obvious demands in poverty relief in the economic, so-
cial, and health areas, and which do bring votes. Therefore,
it is not surprising that the percentage of GDP devoted to na-
tional security and defense in the region is minimal. Utilizing
data from SIPRI from 2010, the percentage of GDP to national
108
thomas c. bruneau
security and defense is as follows: El Salvador 1.1 percent;

Guatemala 0.4 percent; Honduras 1.1 percent; Mexico 0.5
percent; Nicaragua 0.7 percent; Argentina 0.9 percent; Bolivia
1.7 percent; and Brazil 1.5 percent. (By contrast, Canada is 1.5
percent and the U.S. 4.5 percent). And, also in contrast, Chile
is 3.2 percent and Colombia 3.6 percent.19
In short, the requirements for achieving democratic civilian control,

and especially military effectiveness, are high in terms of the resources to
which political decision-makers have access. It is no surprise that in terms of
the framework, most countries in Latin America show little, or no, progress.
There are two deviant cases, however, which are Chile and Colombia. Not
only do they spend a great deal more on national security and defense, but
also in my other publications I demonstrate that they have developed the
institutional bases for both control and effectiveness.
How to Explain Deviant Cases: Chile and Colombia

In seeking to explain why Chile and Colombia are different from other Latin
American countries, what stands out first is their shared emphasis on institu-
tional development in national security and defense by the civilian political
elites.20
Chileans have felt threatened by their neighbors, particularly Bolivia
and Peru, for reclaiming territorial gains made by Chile during wars in
the nineteenth century. In 2008, Peru brought suit for conflicting territorial
claims (really a large maritime zone) before the International Court of Justice
in The Hague (International Court of Justice). Meanwhile, the Peruvian and
Chilean media keep the issue alive at home. The conflict with Bolivia, and
Bolivian President Evo Morales, also threatens to go to the International
Court of Justice, is yet more pressing. A constitutional referendum passed on
January 25, 2009, mandates that in 2014 the Bolivian president must abrogate
the 1904 treaty between Bolivia and Chile recognizing the current territorial
situation. While there is some progress in confidence-building measures
(CBMs) between Chile and Peru, with Bolivia there is much less progress
since the Bolivians want to maintain pressure on Chile regarding access to
the Pacific Ocean.
Colombias investments in institutional development, PME, and strategy
formulation are due to nearly fifty years of fighting several leftist insurgen-
cies, particularly the well-organized and well-funded (through drug money)
FARC (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). The threat became
109
particularly acute during the presidency of Ernesto Samper (1994-1998),

when the country was decertified by the U.S. government for its anti-drug
policies. President Andres Pastrana, (1998-2002) attempted negotiations with
the FARC which, by the end of his term of office, were widely recognized as
a failure. In 1998 and 1999, while ostensibly negotiating an end to the conflict,
the FARC launched extensive attacks, persuading many analysts that they
were a more capable armed force than the Colombian military (Serafino 2001,
10).
lvaro Uribe was elected president on a law and order platform, in the
first round of voting in May 2002. Upon taking office on August 7, 2002, Uribe
immediately declared a state of emergency and used the increased powers to
impose a special tax that was allocated mainly for defense.21 President Uribe
was easily reelected president on May 26, 2006, with 62 percent of the vote, 40
percent more than his nearest competitor and left office in August 2010. His
approval ratings were between 79 percent and 84 percent during his second
term. Despite the traditional reticence of the Colombian civilian elite to be-
come involved in issues of national security and defense, civilian officials
finally perceived that the danger to the country was extremely serious, and
instituted major reforms to several aspects of national security.
In short, Chile and Colombia have made much greater progress than
other countries in the region toward creating the institutional capacity for
democratic control and effectiveness in the security and defense sector,
and in funding this sector, because civilian political elites in both countries
perceive threats, and have clear political incentives to commit financial and
political resources. At a minimum, the incentives are votes. It is significant
that Michele Bachelet of Chile and Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia were
both elected president of their countries immediately upon leaving their
ministerial position in the MOD. I can think of no similar experience in any
other South American country. Elsewhere, the MOD is not a trampoline for
political ascendency, but rather a millstone perpetuating political irrelevance.
Or, in popular terms, defense does not produce votes.
Conclusion
My argument in this paper is that in most countries of Latin America the
political decision-makers lack incentives to utilize their resources, power or
money, to improve CMR, here understood as including both democratic civil-
ian control and effectiveness. Utilizing a framework developed to compare
and contrast CMR globally, I attempt to demonstrate that political decision-
makers have little or no incentive to use their resources, as they will not get
110
thomas c. bruneau
any votes by doing so. Making reference to my previous work on Chile and
Colombia, I argue that in both countries there are indeed incentives and the
countries have indeed made major improvements in CMR. To highlight the
political relevance I note that in both countries, previous ministers of defense
were subsequently elected president of their countries.
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Cottey, Andrew, Timothy Edmunds, and Nunn, Frederick M. 1976. The Military in
Anthony Forster. 2002. The Second Chilean History: Essays on Civil-Military
Generation Problematic: Rethinking Relations, 1810-1973. Albuquerque:
Democracy and Civil-Military Rela- University of New Mexico Press.
tions. Armed Forces & Society 29 (1):
Olmeda, Jos A., ed. 2005. Democracias Frg-
31-56.
iles: Las Relaciones Civiles Militares
, Timothy Edmunds, and Anthony For- en el Mundo Iberoamericano. Valencia:
ster. 2005. Civil-Military Relations in Tirant lo Blanch.
Postcommunist Europe: Assessing the
Organization for Security and Cooperation
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zas Armadas en las nuevas democracias org/fsc/41355.
latinoamericanas. Buenos Aires: Nuevo-
Pion-Berlin, David. 2005. Political Manage-
hacer.
ment of the Military in Latin America.
Donadio, Marcela, ed. 2010. La reconstruc- Military Review 85 (1): 19-31.
cin de la seguridad nacional. Defensa,
, and Harold Trinkunas. 2007. Atten-
democracia y cuestin militar en Amrica
tion Deficits: Why Politicians Neglect
Latina. Buenos Aires: Promote.
Defense Policy in Latin America.
Edmunds, Timothy. 2006. What are armed Latin America Research Review 42 (3):
forces for? The changing nature of 76-100.
military roles in Europe. International
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Affairs 82 (6): 1059-1075.
Military Relations in Latin America.
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Routledge Handbook of Civil-military Re-
Radseck, Michael. 2005. From Casa Militar
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to an Instrument of Political Control:
Cris Matei, 48-60. London: Routledge.
A Functional Analysis of the Defense
Flisfisch, ngel, and Marcos Robledo. 2012. Ministries in Argentina and Chile.
Gobernabilidad democrtica de la defensa Defense & Security Analysis 21 (2): 179-
en Chile: un ndice para el periodo 1990- 199.
2010. Santiago, Chile: UNDP.
Red de Seguridad y Defensa de Amrica
Gerth, Hans Heinrich, and Charles Wright Latina (RESDAL). 2010. A Comparative
Mills. 1958. From Max Weber: Essays in Atlas of Defence in Latin America and the
Sociology. New York: Oxford Univer- Caribbean. Buenos Aires, Argentina:
sity Press. RESDAL.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1991. The Third Wave: Serafino, Nina M. 2001. Colombia: Conditions
Democratization in the Late Twentieth and U.S. Policy Options Washington,
Century. Norman: University of Okla- D.C.: Congressional Research Service.
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Serra, Nrcis. 2009. Beyond Threats to
Katzman, Kenneth. 2012. Afghanistan: Post- Democracy from the Armed Forces,
Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Police, and Intelligence: The Spanish
Policy. Washington, D.C: Congressio- Case. In Democracies in Danger, edited
nal Research Service. by Alfred Stepan, 75- x. Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Accessed November 15, 2012. . 2010. The Military Transition: Democratic
ht t p://w w w.nato.i nt/c ps/e n /SI D - Reform of the Armed Forces. Translated
71196302-5950BC27/natolive/official_ by Peter Bush. Cambridge: Cambridge
texts_27444.htm. University Press.
112
thomas c. bruneau
Simon, Jeffrey. 1996. NATO Enlargement and 5 Thomas Bruneau and Florina Cris-
Central Europe: A Study in Civil-Military tiana Matei, Towards a New Concep-
Relations. Washington, D.C.: National tualization of Democratization and
Defense University Press. Civil-Military Relations. Democratiza-
tion 15, 5 (2008): 909-929.
Stockholm International Peace Research In-
stitute (SIPRI). Accessed November 16, 6 Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan: Post-
2012. http://www.sipri.org/research/ Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S.
armaments/milex/milex_database. Policy (Washington, D.C: Congressio-
nal Research Service, 2012).
Stepan, Alfred, ed. 2009. Democracies in
Danger. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins 7 Paul Collier, Wars, Guns and Votes: De-
University Press. mocracy in Dangerous Places (New York:
Harper-Collins, 2009), 10.
Strachan, Hew. 2005. The Lost Meaning of
Strategy. Survival 47 (3): 33-54. 8 (United Nations 2012)
United Nations. Accessed November 16, 9 (United Nations 2012)
2012. http://www.un.org/en/peace-
10 For example, see Felipe Aguero, Sol-
keeping/resources/statistics/factsheet.
diers, Civilians, and Democracy: Post-
shtml.
Franco Spain in Comparative Perspective
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Uni-
Notes versity Press, 1995); Felipe Aguero,

Toward Civilian Supremacy in South
1 Thomas Bruneau and Florina Cris- America. in Consolidating the Third
tiana Matei, eds., Routledge Handbook Wave Democracies, Larry Diamond,
of Civil-Military Relations (London: Marc F. Plattner, Yun-han Chu, and
Routledge, 2012); Bruneau Civilians Hung-mao Tien, eds. (Baltimore: The
and the Military in Latin America: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997),
Absence of Incentives. Latin American 177- 206; Jose Olmeda ed. Democracias
Politics and Society (Forthcoming 2013); Frgiles: Las Relaciones Civiles Militares
David Pion-Berlin and and Harold en el Mundo Iberoamericano (Valencia:
Trinkunas, Attention Deficits: Why Tirant lo Blanch, 2005).
Politicians Neglect Defense Policy in
11 Bruneau and Matei 2008; Bruneau
Latin America. Latin America Re-
2011; Bruneau and Matei. 2012.
search Review 42, 3 (2007): 76-100.
12 Hans Heinrich Gerth and Charles
2 Thomas Bruneau, Chapter 1 in
Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays
Routledge Handbook of Civil-Military
in Sociology (New York: Oxford Uni-
Relations, Bruneau and Matei, eds
versity Press, 1958), 77- 87.
(London: Routledge, 2012); Thomas
Bruneau, Patriots for Profit: Contractors 13 Bruneau and Goetze, Ministries of
and the Military in U.S. National Security Defense and Democratic Control,
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, in Who Guards the Guardians and How,
2011). Bruneau and Tollefson, eds. (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2006); Jef-
3 Paul Shemella, The Spectrum of Roles
frey Simon, NATO Enlargement and
and Missions of the Armed Forces
Central Europe: A Study in Civil-Military
in Who Guards the Guardians and How,
Relations (Washington, D.C.: National
Bruneau and Tollefson, eds. (Austin:
Defense University Press, 1996), 290.
University of Texas Press, 2006).
14 Giraldo in Bruneau and Tollefson;
4 Timothy Edmunds What are armed
Thomas Bruneau, Florina Cristiana
forces for? The changing nature of
Matei and Sak Sakoda, National Se-
military roles in Europe. International
curity Councils: Their Potential Func-
Affairs 82, 6 (2006): 1059-1075.
tions in Democratic Civil-Military Re-
113
lations Defense and Security Analysis Argentina, in Bruneau and Matei,

25, 3 (2009): 255-269. 2012; Florina Cristiana Metei and
Marcos Robledo, Democratic Civilian
15 See http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/
Control and Military Effectiveness :
hogeronderwijs/bologna/ for informa-
Chile, in Bruneau and Matei 2012.
tion on the Bologna process.
19 SIPRI Stockholm International Peace
16 Thomas Bruneau, Developing a Ro-
Research Institute (SIPRI). Accessed
bust Ministry of Defense and a Joint
November 16, 2012. http://www.sipri.
Staff: Portugal, in Bruneau and Matei,
org/research/armaments/milex/mi-
2012.
lex_database.
17 Hew Strachan, The Lost Meaning of
20 Thomas Bruneau, Civilians and the
Strategy, Survival 47, 3 (2005): 52.
Military in Latin America: The Ab-
18 Thomas Bruneau, An Analysis of the sence of Incentives. Latin American
Implications of Joint Military Structures Politics and Society, Forthcoming 2013.
in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia
21 Jay Cope. Strategic Forum, INSS,
(Applied Research Center, Florida
Washington, D.C.: National Defense
International University,.April 2011);
University, 194 (2002): 1.
Thomas Bruneau and Florina Cristia-
na Matei, Asserting Civilian Control:
114
Militarization of Public Security in

Latin America: Where Are the Police?
Luca Dammert, Universidad de Santiago, Chile
C
rime and violence have increased in Latin America in the last
decades. The scenario is multiple and complex with high levels of
violence specifically localized in some areas of the region. Despite
the evident differences even within countries, the criminal phenomenon is
at the center of the public agenda.1 The diversity of the phenomenon is not
only linked to the magnitude of the crime wave: there are some countries
with the highest homicide rates in the world, while others show rates similar
to developed countries.2 But also to its characterization: there are countries
that are facing important levels of violence, while others have non-violent
property crime as their main concern. Additionally, in recent years the main
element of differentiation between crime problems is the link to organized
crime. Although drug trafficking is present throughout Latin America, in
some areas the problem is linked to specific battles against the state and be-
tween drug cartels. In any case, insecurity is a phenomenon that pervades
the entire region with social, cultural, economic, and political consequences.
Unfortunately, the structural weaknesses of police institutions reported
by several authors in recent years have not been resolved.3 Quite the contrary,
the sophistication of the criminal phenomenon has highlighted the lim-
itations of the criminal justice system as a whole. The challenge for govern-
ments is not only to improve the quality of police service, but also to increase
the quality of justice, to prioritize the modernization of the prison systems,
and to increase health coverage for addiction problems, among many other
specific needs.
Specifically in the case of police institutions, many reforms have been
designed and implemented in the last decades. Ranging from modernization
processes to complete restructuration of the police institution; the initia-
tives in most cases have little long-term results. The literature on this issue
is comprehensive and recognizes the need to continue or rather start a real
transformation agenda of police services.4 Nonetheless, it also recognizes its
limited achievements and effective progress.
At the same time, many governments have decided to use the armed
forces for public security purposes. Based on the assumption that police

militarization of public security in latin america
forces are either incapable or ineffective to control crime, armed forces have
been called to patrol the streets. The range of functions done by police per-
sonnel varies greatly in each country but the undeniable process towards the
inclusion of the military in the fight against crime continues.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss both processes as complementary
faces of the same problem. Lack of results in police reform initiatives and
growing military response to crime in many ways are elements of the same
problem. Both linked to the incapacity of governments to effectively prevent
and control crime with adequate policies as well as to the electoral debate
that highlights the need for direct and quick action.
The simple analysis presents the situation with two elements. On one
hand, there is an increase in crime, corrupt or inefficient police institutions,
and the difficulty of preventing crime and controlling frightened citizens.
On the other hand, there are military institutions consolidated in budgetary
terms, in many countries with high levels of citizens trust accompanied by
limited military conflict scenarios.5 For many, all the elements are in place to
call the military as the main force to tackle criminal activity, especially crime
related to drug trafficking.6
A Difficult Context
Latin America faces an increasing problem of violence and crime. Homicide
rates are an example of the magnitude and the diversity of the problem. As
shown in Figure 1, homicide rates have different levels but a growing trend
in most countries. In any case, it is clear that those closely linked to the drug
market have higher rates. Interestingly, the main cocaine consumer in the
hemisphere, the United States, is the exception to the rule.
But homicides are only one part of the criminal picture. In most coun-
tries violence has not reached this point, but increasing levels of non-vio-
lent crimes mark the public policy agenda. Altogether, crime is one of the
most important public concerns throughout the region and greatly impacts
political discourses and actions. Figure 2 shows that countries tradition-
ally considered safe in terms of homicide have victimization levels similar
to those with higher homicide rates. It seems that any victimization has a
direct impact on the population since that problem is more decentralized,
while homicides are a localized problem, not only in terms of territorial
presence but also in the definition of the victims. While almost every
group in society is a victim of street crime, those related to homicides are
mostly young males from the most precarious socioeconomic groups of
society.
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luca dammert
As crime starts to emerge as one of the main problems for Latin

Americans, the confidence and trust in institutions in charge of the problem
are at a minimum. Figure 3 shows that an important part of the population
has expressed zero trust in the police since 2004. It is important to mention
that we have witnessed a decreasing trend, but still by 2010 more than 15
Figure 1: Homicide Rates, Latin America 2000-2011.
(Source: Organization of American States 2011.)
Figure 2: Victimization and Homicide Rates 2010.
(Source: Barmetro de las Amricas.)
117
percent declared having no trust in the very institution in charge of crime

control. On the other hand, those who declared having no trust in the armed
forces ranged from 15 percent to 8 percent in the same period.
Furthermore, the same source included a question on the possibility of
supporting a military coup under specific circumstances, among them secur-
ity problems. For many, the results are shocking since more than 50 percent
declared support for a military coup in 2004 and 41 percent in 2010. In fact,
after military coups and civil wars during the 70s and 80s, the armed forces
have regained a role in public security issues.
Missions and functions of the armed forces have been changed in many
ways in the region. The reforms have been mostly focused on keeping the
armed forces as far as possible from the political arena but still most institu-
tions could play an array of roles. An analysis of the functions of the armed
forces in Latin America divided the roles in three: policemen, social workers,
and firefighters. As Figure 4 shows, most countries have armed forces that
could be part of any activity linked to the development and protection of
the country. In that sense, the presence of many countries in the area where
all three roles overlap is a clear demonstration that at least in legal terms the
armed forces are still defined as an institution with no specific function.
Figure 3: Zero-Trust in Police and Armed Forces, Latin America 2004-2010.
(Source: Barmetro de las Amricas.)
118
luca dammert
Militarization: Fast Answer?

Democratization and the end of civil wars generated more civilian inter-
vention in military issues. There was an increasingly strong desire to limit
the political role and ambitions of the military in domestic affairs. At the
same time, since conflict between countries is not normally a threat in Latin
America, there was increasing scrutiny of large military budgets to evaluate
their effectiveness.
But do not confuse urgency with actions, because the military incursion
into internal security issues is longstanding with the result that change has
only come slowly. In Colombia, for instance, since the end of the 1990s, with
the development of Plan Colombia the armed forces became increasingly
involved in the drug war. Colombians followed the experience developed in
Peru during the previous decade in the fight against terrorism and its rela-
tionship to drug trafficking. Both strategies were supported and developed
under the umbrella of the U.S. regional strategy to combat drugs. Later on,
this perspective was confirmed with the participation of more than 45,000
Mexican soldiers under the Mrida Initiative in Mexico.
Figure 4: Functions of the Armed Forces in Latin America.
(Source: FLACSO 2007.)
119
The results of such military engagement in the war on drugs are mixed,
and although it is clear that combating drug trafficking, especially if linked
to guerrilla movements, is an area of possible military involvement, the use
of military forces for public security is a different issue.
In Uruguay in late 2012, the Secretary of Defense of the United States
Leon Panetta, as part of the Tenth Conference of Defense Ministers of the
Americas, urged the countries of the region to use the police and not the
military in the control and enforcement of the law. He recognized that mil-
itary involvement is not a good recipe for long-term solutions. In order to
have a professional response to crime, Panetta committed U.S. help in the
development of local police, and to promote respect for human rights and
the rule of law.
Unfortunately, Panetta does not represent the general consensus among
Latin American governments. Many, as the result of a lack of alternatives,
have brought the military to the streets to perform police functions. There
are many different types of military involvement in the fight against crime in
Latin America, from full operational groups that patrol specific areas of the
cities to border patrol.
Governments in Latin America are at a crossroad facing a citizenry des-
perate for more security and fearful of institutions marked by inefficiency
and corruption. The military has become the tool to be used to show signs
of governmental power and strength. As mentioned before, this situation is
present not only in countries marked by the presence of organized crime in
the region but in general. For example, in November 2011 the Honduran gov-
ernment voted to change the constitution and allow the military to be used
for police roles. Similarly, the President of Guatemala during his first speech
to the nation, urged the army to neutralize organized crime. The govern-
ment of Venezuela, for its part, motivated by high homicide rates, created the
Peoples Guard, a military-type organization that shares the security police
roles, even investigating crimes.7
In Ecuador, President Correa referred to the battle against organized
crime as a military priority, noting there cannot be a successful battle
against organized crime without considering the military in it.8 These state-
ments are at least contradictory with Ecuadors constitution (2008), which
states clearly that the maintenance of internal order and the rule of law
are exclusive powers of the national police role while the armed forces
are devoted to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity. However,
the political rhetoric included a complementary perspective that President
Correa noted: A poor country cannot afford to have their armed forces only
for conventional warfare.9
120
luca dammert
In Peru, President Humala authorized the military to collaborate with

the police in a social conflict in Cajamarca where roads, schools, and hospi-
tals were closed. In Bolivia, military units were deployed to assist the police
in high-crime areas of Santa Cruz and El Alto. However, Bolivias constitu-
tion allows the military assistance once the police have been overwhelmed.
In El Salvador, President Mauricio Funes defended the 2009 reform
that allowed a greater role for the military police in the context of the battle
against organized crime. In this respect, and in front of the rumors that most
of those allocations would increase with further reform, the president stated
that citizens fears are anchored in past actions of the armed forces, but now
with democracy the armed forces must play a role in security matters.10
Guatemala installed three task forces against crime that were part of the
proposal of Prez Molina in his presidential campaign. These task forces are
staffed with Police Special Forces, researchers from the Specialized Criminal
Investigation Division, Public Safety personnel, and army paratroopers.11
Nonetheless, the United Nations has been pressing to put limits on the mil-
itary use of force in law enforcement.
Honduras with Operacin Libertad12 has recently initiated a new
operation with the aim of lowering the high levels of violence plaguing the
countrys major cities. However, the military legitimacy is often disputed by
denunciations of personnel accused of being involved with torture, injuries,
and threats against citizens. Furthermore, there have been increasing indica-
tions and charges of corruption among officials.
In Mexico, the strategy developed by President Caldern included
broad participation of the military, which was replicated at the state level
and even with local efforts.13 With the return to power of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), the drug strategy was modified and one of the
signs of this change would be the gradual withdrawal of the military from
the streets. However, in his first months in office, Enrique Pea Nieto has not
been able to show progress.14
In South America, Brazil has expanded the militarys role in crime con-
trol tasks. Since 2010 army troops have been located in the favelas to contain
organized crime. What initially was conceived for a brief period of time, it
has been extended until today with the peacekeepers that are present in
many intervened favelas.15 That is why the military involvement in a diverse
range of missions that it has been assigned is not a good omen for democracy
in Brazil, a country where deep social problems remain and civil institutions
are weak and traditionally inefficient.16 Beyond the urban patrolling, in Brazil
a priority has been given to military involvement in crime control tasks at the
121
borders where it has developed multiple operations, including the installa-

tion of high-tech equipment to increase seizures of illegal material.17
In Argentina, the federal government has resorted to using middle forces
(Gendarmerie) for operating support in the fight against crime in the city of
Buenos Aires and greater Buenos Aires.18 Additionally, President Cristina
Fernandezs government recently named an active military officer as secre-
tary in the Ministry of National Security, raising all kinds of questions and
doubts about the strategy that seeks to ensure civilian government control
over military affairs.
The brief overview presented in the previous paragraphs shows that
the phenomenon is across the region and is supported, at least currently,
by the citizenry. As previously explained, it is not clear what the positive
consequences of this involvement will be. No country has evaluated the
military involvement in terms of their effectiveness in reducing crime. In
fact, information gathered on the initiatives described above is scattered and
most of the time does not include details on the consequences of such actions.
Nonetheless, many voices have been heard regarding the difficulties and
challenges of military intervention. However, there are multiple problems,
and these are described below.
Corruption, Human Rights, and Politicization

Multiple voices directly criticized the use of armed forces in the fight against
crime. Many cases focused on a classical doctrinal position that divides the
work of the military and police since the early nineteenth century. It is best to
leave aside definitions open to confusion, such as Huntingtons conceptualiza-
tion, which makes explicit that the militarys main role is the application of
violence under certain conditions (1957) or when Bayley and Shearing (2001)
note that both police and military are security forces but their main difference
is their jurisdiction. Clearly for many authors who develop their theories in
contexts of high levels of professionalization and modernization of the armed
forces, the challenge to study the Latin American dilemma is massive.
In the last two decades we have witnessed a narrowing of the distinction
between these roles.19 The increased importance of the types of military-style
policing strategy and the incremental use of technology and military instru-
ments, not to mention the military involvement in police work in multiple
peacekeeping operations and military action in internal order, are only ex-
amples of the porous border between the two institutions.20
While the debate is global, Latin American specificity is evident. This
is a continent marked by multiple forms of political involvement by the mil-
122
luca dammert
itary in the recent past. Armed forces that participated in clear actions have
been denounced and investigated for human rights violation and corruption.
However, as Stepan enunciated, the main danger of military involvement in
crime control tasks is its possible politicization.21
In this analytical framework it is noteworthy that in many countries
the process of democratization does not necessarily limit the real powers
of the armed forces, but rather high levels of autonomy are still the norm.
Maybe this is clearly shown in the budget analysis that indicates that only the
military has been subject to measures of transparency and accountability of
their revenues and expenses.22
In this sense, the 2010 Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) re-
port states that the involvement of the military in this issue lies in the official
position of the forces, which can seriously compromise their political isola-
tion, and may even try to use this power to influence policy in government
decisions.23
Human rights violation is one of the problems mentioned repeatedly
as a result of military actions on issues of public safety. The Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in particular has emphasized the
problems encountered especially in Mexico and Central America where vari-
ous press reports and complaints of civil society organizations have revealed
the presence of torture, disappearances, and even murders in the context of
actions not yet recognized by soldiers in crime control efforts.24
Another of the recognized problems of military involvement in inter-
nal security tasks is corruption. Linking unprepared soldiers, narrowly
professionalized with minimal specialization in tasks related to prevention
and control of crime with organized crime agents opens the space for the
development of illegal actions. Thus, there is concern that this recognized
corruption in the police will penetrate the armed forces. Multiple media al-
legations on these practices in various countries of the region suggest that
rather than being just a threat, corruption in the armed forces is a reality we
must face in the near term.
Thus, the impending military involvement in the fight against crime
seems not to bring major benefits except institutional budget increases and a
greater political role. This strategy does not appear to address the increase in
crime. To the contrary, several authors argue that it is precisely the military
response to organized crime which is one of the triggers of the exponential
growth of violence in Mexico.
Finally, as Bailey (2012) indicates, in various debate forums on the best
strategies to address organized crime the central question is not whether
123
the military will continue to play a police role in the medium term. Rather,
the main question is whether this intervention has led to changes in learn-
ing, adaptation, and innovation processes to address previously identified
problems. The answer is not clear and requires more specific analysis to
determine its impacts.
A Way Out?
In this paper, a clear gap emerged. The problems of armed forces participa-
tion in public security policies are evident but that realization has not had
any impact on public policy decisions that increasingly call for more military
involvement in the fight against crime.
What to do? For many there is no way that the military should be al-
lowed to participate in this issue. For instance, an IACHR report stated, the
Commission has repeatedly observed that the armed forces are not properly
trained to deal with citizen security; hence the need for an efficient civilian
police force, respectful of human rights and able to combat citizen insecurity,
crime and violence on the domestic front.25 Furthermore, the same report
mentioned that states must restrict to the maximum extent the use of armed
forces to control domestic disturbances, since they are trained to fight against
enemies and not to protect and control civilians, a task that is typical of po-
lice forces.26
Although there are valid reasons for the opposition to the use of mil-
itary intervention, at this point it should be recognized that in most coun-
tries with serious problems of violence and crime the reasons that motivate
governments to use the military in police functions persist. In that sense,
pragmatism meets doctrine and decisions are not easy to take. In any case,
two processes should be addressed in the short run: an internal process of
training and institutional change in the armed forces, and a strong police
reform agenda.
Both processes would ensure an effective crime control policy and a
clear path towards a recentralization of the role of the police while leaving
the armed forces for the national security agenda. Among the steps that
should be considered as urgent in those countries where military personnel
are participating in public security strategies are:
Training in public security principles that govern the actions

of the security forces in the area of security, which clearly de-
fine and guide their actions in relation to citizens;
124
luca dammert
Limiting abuse by explaining that prevention is the main

goal and the arrest of the offender should be done under strict
rules of law;
Training in community involvement in order to enhance
trust and to limit possible problems in the interaction between
military personnel and the community;
Training in the exceptionality in the use of force: The use
of force is allowed for exceptional situations in which crime
cannot be prevented or controlled;
Training in due obedience: Like any police force, subordin-
ates are bound only to lawful orders given to them by their
superiors;
Training judicial police: For the military to ensure the safety
of citizens in the best possible way, it is key that personnel be
trained with legal procedures and that they be accompanied
with judicial police in any activity;
Use of appropriate weapons to the requirements of public
safety, particularly in urban centers.
Finally, governments should recognize that this is a limited solution.

Not only that the military involvement will not ensure success in the crime
control strategy, but also that it will not necessarily help the process of police
reform.
The Agenda for Police Reform27

The improvement of the police service is an issue in Latin Americas political
and civic agendas. The difficulties are not minor because of the institutional
variety, multiplicity of structural challenges, limited sustained political will
and institutional corporate pressure. Despite this recognition, advances are
slight and evaluations of the processes developed are very precarious. In
fact, it lacks an evaluative gaze of the progress and challenges in almost two
decades of interventions. The necessary structures for the development of
a professional police force have not been able (or willing) to be installed in
most countries.
Latin American police institutions are diverse in terms of origin, type of
structure, organization, agency, scope, and objectives, to name a few items.
This diversity limits a comprehensive analysis and a design of unique initia-
tives that impact on major problems. Despite this limitation, it becomes in-
creasingly urgent to review these institutions at a regional and sub regional
125
level, identifying common trends, challenges and especially possible areas

of intervention.
Police can be characterized in general terms as (...) the persons author-
ized by a group to regulate interpersonal relationships within the group
through the application of physical force.28 This definition has three key
elements: institutional nationalization, use of force, and professionalism. As
police force, the institution responds to the needs of society as a whole, which
requires responding to the various pressures of the citizenship. This feature
has been eroded over the past decade in most countries of Latin America by
two parallel processes: the rise of private financing and the lack of regulation
of this funding, and the explosive growth of private security, which puts
a halt to policing, occupying their spaces, and limiting and, in some cases,
weakening their ability to respond. The proliferation of security companies
paradoxically increases the sense of vulnerability of many citizens who do
not have access to that service, as well as those that invest in these mechan-
isms of confinement and collective alarm. Multiple studies now show that
the number of police in most countries is significantly lower than the number
of private sector operatives.29
In the area of the use of force, the police should be the institutions that
hold the monopoly on the use of legitimate force of the state. Various factors
have undermined this principle, not only by the aforementioned increase
in private security but also by the increasing use of weapons by citizens
in some countries. Furthermore, the exercise of the use of force requires a
significant degree of social legitimacy that is in doubt due to cases of easy
trigger (cases recognized by the press in countries as diverse as Argentina,
the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Guatemala) or alleged involvement in
criminal schemes as organized crime.
The third element of this conceptualization is the professionalization of
the police exercise. This professional preparation also gives the police some
autonomy from the political leadership in relation to intervention in deci-
sion-making and the implementation of expertise in their work; however, in
no way does this give them full independence. The security responsibility
should be assumed by the political power, which also has the responsibility
to evaluate and assess the impact of the strategies used.
The three main elements in the definition of police work are seriously
called into question in the daily actions in Latin America. While most in-
stitutions have undergone major modernization and reform processes in
the last two decades, these have been insufficient. In fact, at the present the
information gathered by the authors shows with force the pending agenda of
126
luca dammert
roads to advance and accomplish the decrease of the three central problems:
corruption, inefficiency, and abuse of the use of force.
While the challenges are many and of various kinds, police moderniza-
tion requires change in at least four areas:
Institutional processes: The challenges of reforming police

work include a weak selection process of police personnel,
who often lack the educational background required for the
type of work to be done. The precariousness of the initial
process and subsequent training prevents the development of
early responses to problems and leaves the police work on a
purely reactive level of action. The professionalization of the
police is also a problem in many countries where the police
do not have a system of promotion, grades, and benefits; the
health and pension coverage are not appropriate; and, in some
cases, wages are clearly insufficient.
Relationship with the community: High levels of distrust
expressed towards the community police institutions are a
serious problem. It lowers the legitimacy of the policies de-
veloped to prevent and combat crime, provides a look away
from possible innovation capabilities and further isolates the
police officer in spaces often marked by violence. Community
policing programs that sought to improve relations with neigh-
bors have been ineffective because of their limited impact and
short time sustainability. It is necessary to seriously tackle the
initiatives to improve police-community relationship.
Integration in the criminal justice system: Police work by
itself will not solve the problem of crime in any of the coun-
tries analyzed. It requires a system that is able to integrate
from prevention to post-prison rehabilitation. This should be
a process in which the police play a specific role to be profes-
sionalized, transparent, and respectful of the rule of law while
recognizing the relevance of other interventions. Likewise,
the clear differentiation between the tasks that the military
and police develop becomes an unavoidable task to prevent
the militarization of security responses; many of which are
daily as seen in Central American countries.
Private security coordination: Sustained increase in private
security provision as well as the ability to carry weapons has
127
ended with the monopoly of the use of force in most Central

American countries. This situation poses a serious risk over
the police capabilities to generate effective action strategies
and market control of weapons and their use inside the coun-
tries. Similarly, the lack of effective control over the industry
(especially informal) increases security problems and enhan-
ces the sense of impunity.
All the proposed action areas are complex; they require a financial in-
vestment and political support sustained over time. Besides, the intervention
requires a clear prioritization to avoid duplication of efforts and the building
of expectations in officials and citizens who will be able to enhance the feel-
ing of security in the future.
In other words, police reform should be a strategy that is here to stay. The
threat of organized crime and state weakness leads to a permanent agenda
based on the modernization of institutions and reform focused on the goal of
effectiveness, transparency, and accountability.
The participation of the armed forces in public security initiatives should
not be perceived as a barrier for further development of the police reform
agenda. On the contrary, in Latin America strong and professional police
forces are needed in order to clearly define the differences between military
and police doctrines.
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8 Geoffrey Ramsey, Ecuador to Expand riodico.am/nota.aspx?id=539635 [site
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Sight Crime, April 30, 2012. http://www.
14 Anuncia Pea Nieto medidas
opeal.net/index.php?option=com_
para mejorar el nivel de vida de los
k2&view=item&id=10921%3Aecuador-
militares; Plantea la Sedena acciones
to-expand-militarys-role-in-fighting-
para lograr un Mxico en paz y con
crime&Itemid=1232012)
educacin, La Jornada, February
9 El papel de las Fuerzas Armadas es 20, 2013, http://www.jornada.unam.
apoyar a la Seguridad Ciudadana, mx/2013/02/20/politica/013n1pol
Diario Regional Independiente Los An-
Senado mexicano fortalecer legal-
des, October 30, 2012, http://www.
mente lucha de militares contra el
diariolosandes.com.ec/index.php/
crimen., EFE, October 31, 2012, http://
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senado-mexicano-fortalecera-legal-
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luca dammert
mente-lucha-de-militares-contra- gendarmeria.gov.ar/prensa/archivo.
el- c r i men,166a8f 93808ba310Vg n- html.
CLD2000000ec6eb0aRCRD.html.
19 Larry Watts, Whose Professionalism?:
Mara Teresa Pea Prez, Militares de Separating the Institutional Roles of the
vuelta a cuartel: Consejo Ciudadano, Military & Police (Camberley: Conflict
November 14, 2012, http://www.sex- Studies Research Centre, 2001).
enio.com.mx/articulo.php?id=21878.
20 Derek Lutterbeck, Blurring the Divid-
15 Fuerzas armadas de Brasil entran a ing Line: The Convergence of Internal
las favelas de Rio de Janeiro; pretenden and External Security in Western Eu-
limpiar las calles de narcotraficantes, rope, European Security 14, 2 (2005):
Revista Virtual Sin Embargo, March 3, 231-253.
2013, http://www.sinembargo.mx/03-
21 Alfred Stepan, The New Profession-
03-2013/546999.
alism of Internal Warfare and Military
Ola de violencia en Brasil lleg a Flo- Role Expansion. in Authoritarian
rianpolis, Nuevo Diario, November Brazil: Origins, Policies and Future,
15, 2012, http://www.nuevodiarioweb. Alfred Stepan, ed., (New Haven: Yale
com.ar/notas/2012/11/15/violencia- University Press, 1973),x 47-68.
brasil-llego-florianopolis-422257.asp.
22 For further detail see www.resdal.org.
16 Wendy Hunte, State and Soldier
23 For further detail see www.wola.org.
in Latin America, Redefining the
Militarys Role in Argentina, Brazil, 24 For further detail see www.cidh.org.
and Chile. United States Institute of
25 IACHR, 2009, 39.
Peace Peaceworks 10 (October. 1996).
26 Ibid., 40.
17 Brasil custodiar con drones la zona
de la Triple Frontera, La Maana de 27 This section is based on the previous
Neuqun, March 27, 2013, http://www. collaboration for RESDAL (2012).
lmneuquen.com.ar/noticias/2013/3/27/
28 J. Bayley, Patterns of Policing: A Com-
brasil-custodiara-con-drones-la-zona-
parative International Analysis (New
de-la-triple-frontera_182248.
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
For further detail see: http://www. 1990).
noticiasyprotagonistas.com/
29 Dammert and Salazar, 2009.
noticias/34324-fronteras-calientes/
h t t p : // e l c o m e r c i o . p e / a c t u a l i -
dad/1487019/noticia-militares-brasil-
incautaron5-toneladas-droga-limites-
peru-bolivia [site discontinued].
18 Gendarmera Nacional Argentina
Accessed March 27, 2013. http://www.
131
The Armed Forces: An Analysis of the

Role of the Forces and the Distinction
Between Defence and Security
Hector Luis Saint-Pierre, Universidade Estadual Paulista
Translated from Portuguese by Monique Greenwood Santos,
Latin American Research Centre, University of Calgary
T
here is a clear tendency in Latin America for the armed forces to be
employed on secondary and parallel missions. This tendency dates
back to the end of the Cold War when the United States attempted to
recuperate their strategic hold on the region. Several events contributed to
this concern such as the emergence of the so-called new threats associated
with the Palme Commission Report on Common Security, and the proposed
regional implementation of the Washington Consensus. This new set-
ting initially emerged at the first Meetings of the Ministers of Defense of
the Americas in Williamsburg. At these meetings, which tried to impose a
hemispheric security agenda on the countries of the region, the concept of
multidimensionality was first used in relation to the region.
The term multidimensional, which until then had been used exclu-
sively in relation to threats, was moving towards a focus on stability to de-
fine security as a whole. When applied solely to threats, it was possible to
understand that the term referred to new kinds of threats which, once the
traditional influences had diminished, could be viewed in more detail. As a
result, the origin of the threat was not limited to the state but rather spanned
various spheres such as the social, economic, political etc., and the new con-
ceptual neologism multidimensionality of threats emerged. One of the last
attempts at placing a limit on the reach of the term security was left for
Ambassador Patio Mayer, who warned that the emerging threats did not
necessarily affect security and did not require a military response. In light
of a multidimensionality of threats, the state deployed an array of multi-
faceted responses that should have been articulated by the various specific
state agencies. Mayer proposed that the state rely on various institutional
tools, apart from the armed forces, in order to deal with these challenges. The
Ministries of Education, Health, Justice, and Economy, among others, seemed
to be the more appropriate options than the Ministry of Defense in organiz-
ing the measures needed to successfully deal with the new challenges.

an analysis of the role of the armed forces
The 2003 Declaration on Security in the Americas1 outlines both the

diversity of challenges, concerns, and threats, as well as the multidimen-
sional scope. Accordingly, these challenges, concerns, and threats extend
to different spheres of the state. However, many concerns and challenges,
such as environmental, political, economic, and those related to extreme
poverty,2 do not appear to threaten sovereignty or the legitimate monopoly
of violence guaranteed by the state. Indeed, many of the challenges are not
simply threats but rather clear symptoms of incomplete sovereignty and
undesired consequences of deficient democracies. Nevertheless, according to
the signatories of the Declaration, security is multidimensional in nature
and in some ways, the implicit philosophy in Patio Mayers warning rings
true, as outlined in the Declaration: The new threats, concerns, and other
challenges are cross-cutting problems that require multifaceted responses
by different national organizations and in some cases partnerships between
governments, the private sector, and civil society all acting appropriately in
accordance with democratic norms and principles, and constitutional provi-
sions of each state.3
However, confronted with the institutional weakness of some countries
in the region, the lack of confidence in the police system and sometimes in
the judicial system, added to the generally limited politicians who are mainly
concerned with the timeframe of their four-year term (until the next elec-
tion), military responses are much more appealing than appropriate institu-
tional responses. Consequently, the new threats, which, according to Patio
Mayer, do not require a war, normally need to be dealt with by strong state
institutions. On the other hand, even if proven to be ineffective in solving the
new challenges, the armed forces, because of their capacity to mobilize and
maneuver as well as their logistical amplitude, create almost immediate and
impressive results. In the streets, the armed forces create a sense of secur-
ity for citizens, allowing for good levels of popular approval which are
important for politicians and the government, even without changes in the
level of violence or decreases in criminal activity. In actuality, for some coun-
tries the only institutional option with the capacity for national mobilization
is the armed forces. This echoes the warning from some analysts of the se-
curitization of some problems afflicting the region4 and the militarization
of the response. Others fear that the irresponsible use of this conceptual
method can lead to the militarization of the police service, which in some
countries is exhausted due to high levels of intolerable crime, or lead to its
counterpart, which can be equally harmful to the state: the policization of
the armed forces.
134
hector luis saint-pierre
The concept of multidimensional security, which could be appropriate

for discussion at hemispheric summit meetings given that the objective is
to specify all aspects that impact security of the state, societies, and people,
becomes a trap when incorporated in the Hemispheric Conferences of
Ministries of Defense (CHMD), because as the name implies, it is a forum ex-
clusively for defence. In fact, ministers meet to discuss issues relevant to their
ministerial agenda of defence. However, a multidimensional provision of
security has been incorporated into recent meeting agendas and relates to
the development and progress of the nations of the region. As stated in the
second paragraph of the 2004 Quito Declaration:
Security constitutes a multidimensional condition for the de-

velopment and progress of our nations. Security is consolidated
when its human dimension is promoted. The conditions for hu-
man security improve with the full respect for dignity, human
rights, and the basic freedoms of the people, in the framework
of the rule of law, as well as by promoting social and economic
development, education, the fight against poverty, disease, and
hunger. Security is indispensable to create economic and social
opportunities for all and to generate a favorable environment to
attract, retain, and productively use the investment and trade
that are necessary to create sources of employment and fulfill
the hemispheres social aspirations. Extreme poverty and social
exclusion of broad sectors of the population are also affecting
stability and democracy, eroding social cohesiveness and under-
mining the security of the States.
It is true that each State has the sovereign right to identify its own na-
tional security and defence priorities; to define strategies, plans, and actions
to address threats to its security, in keeping with its legal framework. Yet,
given the difference in perceptions between the countries of the region and
the range of institutions for confronting these threats, dangers, and challen-
ges, I am cautious to agree that the Ministry of Defense is able to attract,
retain, and productively use the investment and trade. I doubt the ability of
the Ministries of Defense to make sound decisions on mitigating HIV; on the
reconstruction following natural disasters such as earthquakes and torna-
does; containing forced migration; and combatting organized crime, when in
many countries these are the concern of other Ministries. It is understandable
that the armed forces could be able to play a role in responding to natural
135
disasters, supporting the fight against crime and at some point play a role in
migratory control; however, it must depend on the judicial orders and sub-
sidiary functions of the armed forces. These types of missions should never
become specific objectives of defence policy, as in the case of some Ministries.
The misunderstood concept of multidimensional security does not
appear in the official documents released by the Ministries of Defense of the
South American Defense Council (Conselho de Defesa Sul-Americano, CDS).
This particular detail perhaps reflects one of the motives for which South
America began to acquire an identity based on strategic interests and values,
differentiating its position in successive CHMD meetings from that of other
countries in the Americas. The effort to minimize the defence agenda to
specific items, along with the intent to distinguish between issues of public
security and defence, and maintain the institutional mechanisms combatting
challenges and threats separate, highlights the convergence of the positions
held by the countries of the South American region.
The avoidance of the use of the discursive concept multidimensional
security is considered a sign of maturity on the part of the sub-regional
defence forum, as was the creation of a separate Commission specifically
for dealing with issues pertaining to public security. On 10 August 2009 the
Conselho Sul-americano de Luta Contra o Narcotrfico (South American Council
Against Drug Trafficking, CSLCN) was created as part of the Union of South
American Nations (UNASUR) as a forum for consultation, coordination and
cooperation in preventing and combatting the global problem of drugs.5
The creation of the CSLCN was related to the clear intention of the CDS to
separate the defence agenda from that of security, not only for conceptual
considerations but also for institutional and operational reasons as well (the
institutional representation of CSLCN is comprised of government minis-
tries and/or entities specialized in combatting drug trafficking in the region).6
Before discussing the semantic inaccuracy and heuristic ineffectiveness
of the concept in question, I will first consider two relevant aspects that are
often left unnoticed. On the one hand, there is the notion of a single agenda
for hemispheric security that contains a list of common threats to all the
countries in the region, as well as a set of prescribed responses for all of the
countries. Security declarations and conferences have already recognized
the different perceptions of threats and the presence of institutional and
organizational idiosyncrasies in confronting them, which I will discuss in
further detail and include my personal point of view. I will reflect on the
difference in the nature of defence and public security, without neglecting
to recognize that it remains nebulous and unclear, be it because of a lack of
136
conceptual definition, constitutional precision or institutional resources and,

at times, political orders and electoral interests.
Perception as the Original Source of Security

A critique of the idea of an agenda of common threats to the hemisphere,
which I discussed in other settings,7 is based upon the definition of a threat
as a purely perceptive phenomenon. Thus, a threat itself does not actually
exist; rather it constitutes itself and acts in the perception of who is or feels
threatened. I describe the threat as a representation, a sign, a certain dis-
position, gesture or manifestation perceived as an announcement of an
undesirable or risky situation for the existence of whoever perceives it.8 In
this sense, the threat is not an object that can itself be analyzed, but rather
a relationship that requires an assessment of all its components, from the
emitter of the signal and the emission to the receptor. Since a threat sim-
ply exists in and for a perception, and since perceptions are relative to the
specific makeup of the receptor, when we refer to national threats we are
referring to a phenomenon conditioned by a specific and unique geopolit-
ical, historical, cultural, institutional, and political context that reflects the
idiosyncratic aspects of each country, filters inputs, and constructs percep-
tions. Therefore, a single threat to the entire continent does not objectively
exist, but the particular perceptions that make up threats are numerous:
migration, for example, while one of the principle threats for the United
States, constitutes an important (when not the principle) source of foreign
capital for other countries of the region. Even if we are able to agree on a
single theory of threats (whether it be militarily, economically or politically
imposed), the question remains whether we can also agree on a single stra-
tegic response: for example, some countries in South America have declared
armed combat to be the only possible solution to drug trafficking, while
others have identified precisely this type of combat, along with the local and
armed presence of extra-regional military personnel, as the principle threat
to their sovereignty and freedom of action.
As a last resort, security, as a central aspect of international politics, is
made up of the same empirical material as the perceptions. Consequently,
the exercise of external politics produces, consolidates or alters perceptions
of neighbouring decision-making bodies. The threatening act or attitude of
a political body, as an expression of its external politics, tries to provoke in
others a certain perception, such as intimidation or insecurity. As such, a
political body seeks to carry out acts of friendliness, transparency, and trust
in order to create a perception of security and even cooperation.
137
These simple arguments, while perhaps obvious, were sufficient to dis-

mantle the untenable notion of common threats that were the basis of the
proposal for a hemispheric security agenda. What was disguised in the back-
ground was the need to rely on a common base of threats and their respective
responses in order to apply a single security doctrine, which would allow
the region to strategically recover from its position of irrelevance during the
Cold War. In line with this doctrine, and as part of the continental security
initiative, countries of the region, with the help of their armed forces, set out
to overcome what the United States considered to be threats. In turn, the
United States would offer a defensive cover for a powerless region, and the
national armed forces would be transformed into mere police forces respon-
sible for public security.
Philosophical Basis for the Difference Between Defence and

Public Security
Despite the operational difficulty of some countries9 to recognize the distinc-
tion between defence and public security because of severe internal conflict,
I argue the need to debate10 this issue based in a constitutional distinction
assumed by different countries. Here I attempt to outline another approach
that justifies the distinction between defence and public security through a
philosophical analysis.
Several philosophical anthropologists consider humans to be social
beings by nature and consider society to be an intrinsic characteristic that
defines humans.11 Conversely for others, human nature is solitary, and soci-
ety is a product of debate and agreements between humans. These philoso-
phers12 believe that at the beginning there was a pact; not a chronological
or historical beginning, but rather strictly a logical one. Prior to this, the
gods had not yet been created, and as a result, there was no good or bad.
Furthermore, there were no laws or norms that guided human behavior, and
without which there was no crime. Therefore, without moral restraint or nor-
mative or legal limits, force became the preferential form of contact between
humans who, as a result, perceived themselves to be the most powerful in
nature. It was perceived that each human should look out for themselves
in an endless cycle of self-defence; every person for themselves and against
others in a state of permanent war that Hobbes called state of nature in
which man is a wolf to man.13
It was not love for a fellow being, but rather fear that led humans to make
a pact in which they renounced their will to make decisions, ability to defend
themselves, and their force and tools, concentrating on conceding themselves
138
to someone (a person or group of people) that, because they were not part of
the agreement, lacked obligations and restraints in addition to controlling
the absolute and monopolized concentration of force. To be above of the pact
was to be sovereign; a pure will without limits. As such, the other beings
became subjects through this voluntary pact and legitimated the leader as a
monopoly of force and political decision.
Total liberty of the sovereign is founded in the incontestable exercise of
his total decision-making power. This decision-making ability, as a product
of the freedom of the leader, constitutes the material content of his expres-
sion and syntactic form of his obligation. As such, the sovereign exerts his
freedom and manifests his will in the way in which he makes decisions. As
a result of this manifestation, the sovereign creates a network of norms, and
with the normative expression of freedom the sovereign legally commands
the relations between him and his subjects, and amongst his subjects. He
creates interconnected obligations that constrain will and limit freedom. The
tragic paradox of the sovereign exercising freedom is that the manifestation
of his absolute will organizes the world and his place in it, and with this he
limits the freedom of his will.14 It is not a pure form of the norm - as Carl
Schmitt would say in response to Hans Kelsen - that is the basis of rights, but
rather total absence, and therefore, the exercise of total will: the materializa-
tion of the decision.
In the inevitable order created by the expression of freedom, one condi-
tion guides sovereign will within its normative realm. However, the leader
(who has no obligations whatsoever) is not connected to the agreement, the
basis of which guarantees the protection of the subject and, as a result, is
an implied condition, albeit a founding one as well. As a result, humans
renounce their ability of self-defence and surrender their instruments of vio-
lence knowing that neither the accumulation of powerful abilities nor instru-
ments of violence would be enough to guarantee their security. They concede
these capabilities to the leader with the expectation that they will receive
protection from the legitimate monopoly of force (because it is collectively
voluntary). Therefore, a principal characteristic of this monopoly is the na-
ture of decision-making and violence towards the subjects, which is both
the organizer (in the way in which it normatively manifests) and protector
(of both the subjects and the normative status quo that guarantees security).
The nature of the use of legitimate monopoly of force towards the subjects
is to guarantee security and order, which is to resolve internal problems and
internally dissolve the concept of enemy,15 insomuch as the leader owes
security to his subjects. The internal exercise of sovereignty is for neutral-
139
izing conflicts within the limits of security of all citizens.16 Internally, the
leader represents police17 and, in the strict sense of the term, externally the
leader represents politics.18
The normative order that produces the will of the leader establishes the
relationship between humans and constitutes the social sphere between the
inhabitants of the territory under the monopoly of violence. The relationship
between the leader and its subjects is expressed within a legal univocalism
established through the normalcy created by the leader and maintained by
the legitimate monopoly of violence, the political monopoly. This univocal
expression constitutes, in international political terms, the decision-making
unit or, in stricter terms, political unit. In turn, this decision-making unit
makes up a unit in an area in which other political units independently
reclaim the respect for their particular legal univocalities applied exclusively
to a community within the territorial space.19 They try to defend the norma-
tive principles of their units against whichever other units can threaten their
existence. It is vital for each unit to develop their strategic sensibility that al-
lows them to perceive amongst the neighboring political units those that can
empower their unit and those that can threaten it. This perception is based
on the ability to distinguish between friends and enemies, which is the basis
of its external political function. The presence of this plurality of political
units, which can end up fighting for their existence, configures the external
sphere as a pluriverse, as opposed to a universe, as Schmitt observed. In this
pluriverse, each political unit tries to preserve its own normative order and
achieve recognition from other political units. Faced with a lack of normative
order that regulates the relationship between the political units within the
pluriverse, each unit projects an image of its power ability, looking to define
and obtain recognition of the limits of its sovereignty. Moreover, its percep-
tive sensibility tries to perceive and demarcate its strategic sovereign position
from other political units. As such, with the projection of the image and the
perceptive sensibility, the limit of the normative order and the decisions of
each political unit, and the relationship between them, are established. This
external projection of power of the political units makes up the network of
forces in the mutual recognition and delimitation of the respective strategic
statures of the decision-making units, or empirical material of international
security. The legal formation of this relationship of forces constitutes the
international law that defines and normalizes war and peace, conflict and
cooperation, and the core of international politics. In this way - as Raymond
Aron affirms - the internal sphere of the decision-making unit and pluriverse
is defined in relation to the difference of use of force (internally a monopoly
140
and externally open to competition).20 Also, vice-versa in which the same

phenomenon unequivocally shows the different nature of force used in each
case: as internal organizer and protector, and external and lethal defender,
as I will now discuss.
The Institutional Difference Between Defence and Security

The principal challenge and ongoing concern of the leader is, on the one hand,
the security of the subjects and the maintenance of order that ensures the
status quo of the decision-making unit, and on the other, the defence of this
status quo in the face of eventual threats to the group of decision-making
units that make up the pluriverse. Internally, the role of force is the protector
of the subject and the preserver of order within the monopoly, producing
what is known as public security, internal security, citizen security,
that, in the complexity of the modern state, is normally administered by jus-
tice ministries, interior ministries, and more recently ministries of security21
created in light of the growing gravity in the types of threats that make the
general public uneasy. With the lethal nature of defence, the monopoly of
force, in an environment of open competition with other units, is intended
for combatting and eliminating sources of potential hostility and deterring
hostile intentions of military organizations that go against the status quo of
the political unit and its decision-making capacity.
This double role of the legitimate monopoly of force, in compliance with
its specific purpose, requires the expansion of a jurisprudence that legalizes
and normalizes the conditions and limits of its use, and that univocally de-
fines the responsibilities that allow legal proceedings in the case that these
conditions and limits are not respected, both internally and externally. In the
majority of national constitutions, the regulation of the use of force in each
of its roles is addressed in specific sections.22 With respect to this regulation
and attempt at efficiency, each of these roles relies on a general doctrine and
specific purpose, and as such, requires certain preparations and weaponry.
The specific double nature of force in both these manifestations and its func-
tional permanence, obliges it to depend on administrative bureaucracies that
are also specific and permanent to fully follow through with the constitu-
tionally defined role, and to efficiently carry out the constitutionally assigned
missions with adequate professional training and education. The mainten-
ance of both institutional structures and their correct function depend on a
specific and adequate budget because they are vital to the preservation and
operation of the political unit, internal order, and external strategic status.
The government, which is in charge of administering the political unit, is
141
obligated to provide the appropriate and necessary means for the correct
operational function of both armed institutions. In the case that one of them
is inadequate or insufficient, the government should ensure its recovery. The
substitution of one for the other23 (a tendency that is increasingly more fre-
quent particularly in Latin America) can result in instrumental inadequacy,
ineffective results, and loss of specific function (because it has been diverted
from its original function), perpetuating the deficiencies of the state appar-
atus that it is substituting.
Difference in Purpose Between the Military and Police

Tyrtaeus said,
Not if he had all splendors except for a fighting spirit. For no man
ever proves himself a good man in war unless he can endure to
face the blood and the slaughter, go close against the enemy and
fight with his hands. Here is courage, mankinds finest posses-
sion; here is the noblest prize that a young man can endeavor
to win, and it is a good thing his city and all the people share
with him. When a man plants his feet and stands in the fore-
most spears; relentlessly, all thought of foul flight completely
forgotten.24
For Aristotle, the warrior was made up of something particular and

different from other humans. Whether it is ethical character or a particular
inclination, the moral constitution that drives a young person to embark on a
military career, knowing that his/her life is at stake while fighting in defence
of their country, against other warriors that put themselves at risk, is clearly
different from those that enroll in a police academy to fight against delin-
quents and misdemeanors. This motivates one to protect citizens, repress de-
linquency, and maintain social order, and prepares them to confront threats
that put the decision-making and sovereign capacity of the political unit at
risk. Police prepare themselves to help citizens and, through detention, deal
with those that operate against the laws regulating social relations. The mil-
itary is prepared to deter, kill or be killed in combat against foreign forces
and the enemy that put the political unit at risk. To the Greeks, war (Polemus)
was waged against non-greeks and against the other (Xenos). For internal
conflicts, other terms were employed such as stasis and metabole.
Notwithstanding, police also run risks; their beliefs and values, upon
entering the police force, are different from those that enter into a military
142
career. For that matter, career in arms refers to a career in the military and
not in the police force. I believe that any change in a profession defined by a
clear vocation is frustrating, and as such, I imagine that it must not be very
gratifying for military personnel to be employed as police.
Differences in the Means of Defence and Public Security

In relation to the instruments available for carrying out their function, there
are many differences that can be observed. Whilst defence requires weap-
onry of large scale lethal power and destruction, sufficient for deterring or
confronting other armies of large operational and destructive capabilities,
the police are armed with non-lethal weaponry, sufficient to guarantee police
security, repress delinquent acts, and preserve social order. In the external
sphere in which defence is meant to be employed, the use of destructive and
lethal violence is limitless beyond political needs. Even though domestic vio-
lence statistics are alarming,25 police need to be preventing and decreasing
violence using non-lethal means.
The difference in doctrine between control of internal security and
external defence can be summed up in the following way: even the worst
criminal assassin and drug trafficker should have their life and dignity guar-
anteed by police and the judicial system, while even a saint can die in war
without it constituting a crime. Human rights guide the behavior of police,
and humanitarian rights guide the warrior.
Lastly, intelligence, a tool used by both professions, is also radically dif-
ferent. On one hand, defence intelligence comprises the eyes and the percep-
tive system of the political unit, as detailed by Sun Tzu, and is necessary to
anticipate certain actions in an unpredictable environment that, through the
fault of the normative univocalism, requires calculation - as Aron affirms.26
Intelligence has to try to understand the strategic meaning of the gestures of
the neighouring political units as well as the situation and use of the defence
mechanisms in comparison with its own. In the case of public security, intel-
ligence serves the judicial system by collecting evidence that will be part of
the judicial process leading to the arrest and conviction of the delinquent,
who will remain isolated from society to avoid reoffending. In some cases,
for example drug and arms trafficking and organized crime, intelligence is
carried out via infiltration into the crime group, which entails a high level
of familiarity between the intelligence agent and the crime. It is precisely
within this context of familiarity that the agent becomes vulnerable to the
economic opportunities of crime and becomes fragile to corruption. By pla-
cing the armed forces in this combat role is to run the risk of failing to collect
143
intelligence and corrupting the forces; as a result, a soldier, upon entering a

favela (shantytown or slum), will not be able to distinguish between a delin-
quent and a regular worker.
Final Considerations
In all scientific areas, conceptual definition is central and thus occupies an
important place in scientific production. On the one hand, conceptual preci-
sion strengthens the univocalism that allows for the comprehensive com-
munication of scientific activity; and on the other, a well-defined concept
guarantees important access to the part of reality under analysis. However,
in the specific area of security the significance of these norms is intensified,
since, given prior epistemological concerns, these concepts become oper-
ational in political discourse with real political and social consequences for
which academics do not assume responsibility.
Multidimensionalism, as a general focus or even notion of security, is
heuristically infertile, analytically insufficient, and operationally dangerous.
It had been gradually introduced in the hemispheric declarations in the area
of security under political pressure by those who rely on force to make deci-
sions about conceptual ambiguities.
The perceptive nature of threats contradicted the hegemonic pretentions
of defining hemispheric agendas, but permitted the search of strategic sub-
regional identities. This search identified and distinguished such identities
not just based on the perception of threats, but also the conceptual, institu-
tional, and operational distinction between defence and security.
Lastly, as a general conclusion resigned to the limits of objectivity: for
science that strives for recognition in international scientific dialogue, it
is insufficient to simply study concepts, test theories, and repeat the pro-
cesses of mainstream scientists. Instead, scientists should identify their own
problems, formulate questions and concepts, practice their methods, and
construct their theories with the precision of someone that does not fear the
autonomous and comprehensive discussion of their results.
Notes
1 Declaration on Security in the y/o poltica de una regin o pas, in
Americas, adopted October 28, 2003, Nuevas Amenazas: Dimensiones y pers-
accessed July 20, 2013, http://www.oas. pectivas. Dilemas y desafos para la Argen-
org/documents/eng/DeclaracionSecu- tina y el Brasil, eds. Ernesto Lpez and
rity_102803.asp. Marcelo Sain (Quilmes: UNQ, 2004),
57.
2 Ernesto Lpez ironically says, pobres
extremos puedan devenir pobres 3 Declaration on Security in the
extremistas y amenazar la paz social Americas, adopted October 28, 2003,
144
accessed July 20, 2013, http://www.oas. 11 In reality, the Greeks did not have a
org/documents/eng/DeclaracionSecu- concept of society but rather they
rity_102803.asp. believed man was a political animal
where the politicity was a specific
4 See, for example, the article by Gastn
difference that defined men (see Aris-
Chillier and Flaurie Freeman O Con-
tteles, Poltica).The conflict, for the
ceito Novo de Segurana Hemisfrica
thinkers of this hypothesis, is inherent
da OEA: Uma Ameaa Potencial, In-
in the socialization of man. See Julien
forme Especial de WOLA, 2005.
Freund, Sociologie du conflict (Paris:
5 UNASUR, accessed July 25, 2011, http:// Press Universitaries de France, 1993).
www.ppt unasur.com/contenidos.
12 Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau were
php?menu=3&submenu1=8&idiom=1
the first to defend the agreement as a
[site discontinued].
social foundation from different theo-
6 Ibid. retical perspectives.
7 Una reconceptualizacin de las nue- 13 Rather unjustly, Hobbes is remem-
vas amenazas de la subjetividad de la bered for this statement and the chaos
percepcin a la Seguridad Cooperati- or anarchy normally associated with
va, in Nuevas Amenazas: Dimensio- the hobbesian state. However, it
nes y perspectivas. Dilemas y desafos is important to remember that for
para la Argentina y el Brasil, eds. Er- Hobbes this was merely a pre-social
nesto Lpez and Marcelo Sain (Quil- situation at which perhaps he arrived
mes: UNQ, 2004). More recently in E. while being confronted with the hor-
Rizzo de Oliveira, As novas ameaas ror of the English revolution, from
s democracias latino-americanas: which he escaped to France. His intel-
uma abordagem terico-conceitual, lectual efforts philosophically found-
in Segurana & Defesa Nacional. Da com- ed society through a pact that allowed
petio cooperao regional (So Paulo: men to overcome their situation to live
Ed. Fundao Memorial da Amrica in peace and security.
Latina, 2007).
14 As a result, freedom is exercised in
8 Ibid., 23. voluntary decision-making between
possible alternatives, but, as J.P. Sartre
9 For some countries, such as in the case
says, the result of redundant selection
of Colombia, that confront important
is the death of alternatives (once one is
and chronic internal conflicts and
selected, the others cease to be alterna-
are involved in a confrontation in
tives) and consequently freedom.
which they cannot gather sufficient
institutional efforts to maintain the 15 The Greeks considered Plemos, war, to
monopoly of violence and a legal uni- be an armed confrontation with oth-
vocalism for the national territory, it ers, such as non-Greeks. Amongst
is difficult, if not impossible, to make themselves, there could be discord,
conceptual differences between secu- subversion and revolts that they called
rity and defence. Therefore, decisions metabole or stasis. However, the Greeks
about methods of combat seem cynical were aberrant to the idea of an inter-
because in reality they are obligated nal enemy. From this point of view,
to use everything at their disposal to the idea of an internal enemy that
weaken the threat that confronts them. was introduced in Latin America with
the erroneous National Security Doc-
10 Marcela Donadio Las Definiciones
trine is a digression on the part of the
Polticas in Atlas Comparativo de la De-
government, a social pathology, and a
fensa en Amrica Latina (Buenos Aires:
political deviation. The introduction of
Ser en el 2000, 2008).
the concept internal enemy presents
the possibility of eliminating, without
145
constituting a crime, all of the fellow of Security in light of increasing or-

citizens that do not agree with the re- ganized crime. The creation of this
gime or form of governance, with the ministry, apart from allowing for a
governing party, social or economic better organized response to specific
order; therefore, breaking the social threats, provides a clear separation
pact and the actual idea of society. of the national defence and public se-
curity agendas. As such, Argentina is
16 Carl Schmitt, El concepto de lo poltico
on the vanguard of a clear distinction
(Buenos Aires: Folios Ediciones, 1984)
between defence and security and is
especially pages 3 and ss.
taking institutional steps to confront
17 Note that the origin of the term po- the challenges of each use of force.
lice is the same as politics, Polis.
22 See the specific analyses by country
18 For Schmitt, just as the essence of eth- and the comparisons made by the re-
ics is what allows the distinction be- search group ADEFAL at http://iugm.
tween good and evil, an aesthetic of es/adefal/inicio/documentacion/.
beautiful and ugly, an economy of
23 A tendency that is increasingly fre-
profitability and unprofitability,
quent in Latin America, given the
the essence of politics is what allows
uncontrolled growth of violence and
the distinction between friends and
criminality improving public security
enemies. Internally nonexistent, the
initiatives, is the reinforcement of the
enemy is created in relations with
police force, and even its substitution
other political units through which it
by the armed forces. This has resulted
distinguishes groups of friends and
in the unprofessionalization of the
groups of enemies.
armed forces because of the misuse
19 As Schmitt observes, Del carcter of its original purpose and, in many
conceptual de lo poltico deriva el cases, corruption in the face of eco-
pluralismo del mundo de los Esta- nomic opportunities of crime. The
dos. La unidad poltica presupone la results were, in the best case scenar-
posibilidad real del enemigo y, por ios, merely superficial, related to the
consecuencia, de otra unidad poltica perception of security and not the
coexistente con la primera El concepto, actual levels of violence. Removing
49. the armed forces from their specific
role weakens them, and does not solve
20 Raymond Aron justifies the existence
the issue of public security but rather
of the discipline International Rela-
hides the problem, making it appear
tions by referring to the use of force
to be resolved. In order to truly resolve
(internationally legal and internally
the issue of public security, the police
monopolistic) that allows to divide
force must be adequately adapted in
the international subsystem. See this
order to confront the current chal-
authors Paix et Guerre entre les Nations
lenges.
(Paris: ditions Calmann-Lvy, 1962).
Also his epistemological analysis re- 24 Werner Jaeger, Paidia. A formao do
garding the issue, Qu uma Teoria homem grego (Braslia: Martins Fontes,
das Relaes Internacionais? in tu- 1986), 83.
des Politiques (Pars: Gallimard, 1972).
25 In some cases, the number of deaths
21 The institutional design and the caused by police violence has been
structural name attributed to the considered to constitute a war.
maintenance of security vary country
26 Paix et Guerre, Introduction.
to country. The Republic of Argentina,
in March 2011, created the Ministry
146
Multidimensional Security, Ungoverned

Areas and Non-State Actors
Bernardo Prez Salazar, UN Habitat and
Corporacin Nuevo Arco Iris
Introduction
Today the threat to the countries of the region is not the military
force of the adjacent neighbor or some invading foreign power.
Todays foe is the terrorist, the narcotrafficker, the arms traf-
ficker, the document forger, the international crime boss, and the
money launderer. This threat is a weed that is planted, grown,
and nurtured in the fertile ground of ungoverned spaces such
as coastlines, rivers, and unpopulated border areas. This threat
is watered and fertilized with money from drugs, illegal arms
sales, and human trafficking. This threat respects neither geo-
graphical nor moral boundaries.
General James Hill, Commander of U.S.
Southern Command, 2003.
As recognized by the Presidents 2011 Strategy to Combat

Transnational Organized Crime, transnational organized crime is
a global issue with global implications that directly impact the
United States. In the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibil-
ity, these powerful groups exploit under-governed areas where
state capacity is weak and corruption and impunity are ram-
pant to consolidate control over drug, money, weapons, and
human smuggling networks that span the hemisphere.
General John Kelly, Commander of U. S. Southern
Command, 2013.
A
decade ago, at the time when General James Hill as Commander
of U.S. Southern Command stated his appreciation about ungov-
erned spaces as a major source of hemispheric insecurity, the
Organization American States (OAS) was broadcasting multidimensional
security as a renewed approach to deal with threats and challenges to the se-

security, ungoverned areas and non-state actors
curity of states in the Western Hemisphere in the twenty-first century. Apart

from geopolitical and military matters, these threats concern terrorism and
the possible access, possession, and use of weapons of mass destruction and
their means of delivery by terrorists; the global drug problem, trafficking
in persons and other forms of transnational organized crime including cor-
ruption, asset laundering, attacks to cyber security, and illicit trafficking in
weapons; environmental degradation and natural and man-made disasters
as well as HIV/AIDS and other diseases coupled with extreme poverty and
social exclusion of broad sectors of the population; and the potential for dam-
age arising from accident or incident during the maritime transport of pot-
entially hazardous materials, including petroleum and radioactive materials
and toxic waste.
To face these cross-cutting challenges the OASs Security in the Americas
Declaration, adopted in Mexico City on October 28, 2003, posits the need for
appropriate hemispheric cooperation and multifaceted responses involving
partnerships between governments, the private sector, and civil society.
Specifically in regard to the challenge represented by transnational organ-
ized crime, the multidimensional security concept commends criminalizing
money laundering, kidnapping, illicit trafficking in human beings, corrup-
tion, and other related crimes in order to strengthen domestic legal frame-
works so that the assets from the proceeds of these crimes are identified,
traced, frozen or seized and are ultimately confiscated and disposed of. It
also commits governments to increase multilateral cooperation in particular
through the exchange of information, mutual legal assistance, and extradi-
tion in order to reinforce national institutions dedicated to preventing and
sanctioning transnational crimes and identifying and prosecuting members
of transnational criminal organizations.
Yet, judging by the statement made before the U.S. Senate Armed
Services by the present Commander of the U.S. Southern Command, General
John Kelly in March 2013, the measures implemented in the multidimen-
sional security framework have not succeeded in modifying major aspects
of hemispheric insecurity, in particular, the consolidation of powerful crim-
inal structures exploiting under-governed areas that control illicit drug,
money, weapons, and human smuggling circuits by means of networks that
span the hemisphere.
This article discusses the theoretical flaws as well as evidence concern-
ing the shortcomings of this hemispheric security concept, which has tacit
underpinnings related to standard doctrine of counterinsurgent and stabil-
ization operations, particularly in dealing with the challenge represented by
148
bernardo prez salazar
non-state actors criminalized by the state-centric multidimensional security

doctrine. Following this introduction, a first part criticizes the view that the
state is necessarily the best actor capable of providing governance goods
and services. It also deals critically with subsequent development agendas
focused on strengthening state military and policing capacity as the main
cornerstone of state-building. The next part will look specifically at the case
of Colombia, where counterinsurgent, antinarcotic and stabilization doctrine
and operations have been applied for decades with increasing troop density
to no avail as all the countrys border areas continue to rank among the major
terrorist safe havens identified by the U.S. State Department in the Western
Hemisphere. A third part discusses the risks associated with nation-building
agendas that unintendedly favor partnerships between criminal organiza-
tions and local political entrepreneurs. A final section pulls overall conclu-
sions from the balance presented concerning multidimensional security,
ungoverned areas, and non-state actors.
The State, Non-State Actors and Hybrid Political Orders

In the future, will governments or non-state actors lead in solving problems
caused by growing world population, rapid urbanization, and climate
change? Which will be more successful in confronting global challenges
such as boosting economic productivity, managing efficient and sustainable
use of water, energy, and land, and generally procuring safe and healthy
livelihoods and environments? Which will find the path to deliver overall
upward social mobility and control of corruption?
Such is the scope of the questions posed by the National Intelligence
Council in its most recent outlook of the world in 2030.1 Though there are no
straightforward answers, the study presages that the future will probably
reward those able to adapt fast enough to harness change instead of being
overwhelmed by it.
States in the Western Hemisphere are committed to fighting new threats
to security, among them transnational crime, by means of confidence and
security-building measures based on international law, the respect for state
sovereignty and non-intervention, faithful compliance of treaties and coven-
ants and acting appropriately in accordance with constitutional provisions
of each state, respect for and promotion and defense of human rights, soli-
darity, and cooperation. Yet, even though the concept of multidimensional
security formally addresses other public concerns that can negatively affect
human security, such as global pandemics, climatic variability, and its influ-
ence on natural and man-made disasters as well as massive environmental
149
degradation and extreme poverty and social exclusion, its main objective is
clearly focused on national security.
This is especially evident in the case of transnational organized crime,
which is not dealt with as a public security problem but as a national se-
curity threat precisely because these criminal structures allegedly have
the ability to challenge state sovereignty in areas where local governance
structures are not under state control. These areas naturally offer favorable
conditions for criminal activity to thrive without detection and with impun-
ity, and provide their perpetrators refuge from efforts to combat or counter
them, making them convenient launching pads for terrorist attacks against
nation-states and the interests they represent.2
Understandably, diplomatic apprehensions render inadmissible the use
of terms such as ungoverned territory in official OAS documents. Yet, the
concern for territorial vacuums outside the control of a nation-state is a ma-
jor feature in the security doctrine that guides counterinsurgency, counter-
terrorism, antinarcotics, and stabilization and peacekeeping operations that
are carried out by member states in dealing with the challenges identified in
the framework of the multidimensional security approach.3
Yet as Robert Kaplan (1994) notes, understanding authoritative territorial
governance in todays world is not well served by political maps comprising
hundreds of countries marked by sharp, bold borders and uniform colors.
An invention of European colonialism, these political maps are conceived
to offer a way to classify national organisms, making a jigsaw puzzle
of neat pieces without transition zones between them (58). However coun-
tries such as Sierra Leone and Nigeria, or Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or
Indonesia, constantly ridden with ethnic and religious strife and violent
political instability, are far from the national organisms which appear as
evenly stained blots in political maps because they are not populated by
homogeneous cultural identities.
The U.S. Department of States Country Reports on Terrorism, which in
August 2010 identified a dozen terrorist safe havens in the world,4 seems to
corroborate Kaplans 1994 insight5 that the state as a governing ideal cannot
be transported functionally to areas outside the industrialized world as a
fool-proof model for successful territorial governance. Apart from the coun-
tries named above, the State Departments map includes the Trans-Sahara
(Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger), Yemen, Somalia, the maritime borders
of Indonesia, Malasia and the Philipines, Venezuela, the Colombia border
region (Brazil, Ecuador, Panam, Per, and Venezuela), and the Tri-border
area (Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay).
150
Indeed the U.S. State Departments map (Figure 1) may be an understate-

ment, as quasi-states or areas of limited sovereignty characterized by a
disconnection between legal and effective sovereignty account for about two-
thirds of the planet according to studies carried out during the past twenty-
five years.6 Yet the fact that governance structures are not controlled by
nation-states in these territories does not mean that they are ungoverned.
Instead, alternative forms of governance controlled by non-state actors based
on tribal, sectarian or clan relations or even persistent insurgencies, are better
positioned to compete for the loyalty of populations they serve or control
because they are often more effective than the nominally legal territorial
sovereign in providing for protection from violent threats to individuals and
various forms of socio-economic and political inequity, as well as access to
sources of income, shelter, health, and educational services, among others.
In sum, the notion of ungoverned areas mainly reflects a biased concep-
tion of governance rooted in a normative preference for territorial rule by
sovereign States.7
Figure 1. Terrorist Safe Havens Identified by U.S. Department of State, 2010.
(Source: U.S. Department of States Country Reports on Terrorism released in August

2010, cited by GAO 2011, 5.)
151
Perhaps a better conceptual framework to understand territorial govern-

ance outside the Western industrialized world is the model of hybrid political
orders. Emergent in the context of constitutional liberal democracies, hybrid
political orders operate according to formal, legally enforceable rules, but must
compete with conflicting and alternative territorial governance models based
on other forms of socio-political order that are rooted in non-state, indigenous
societal structures that rely on a web of social relations and mutual obligations
to establish trust and reciprocity. In some cases, cleavages observed in state
territorial authority, capacity, and legitimacy are so deep that the control of
violence, resources, and rulemaking is firmly accrued by territorial elites by
means of their own militias, courts, and even basic services.8
The expansion of authoritative territorial governance structures con-
trolled by non-state actors is favored by the fact that globalization under-
mines effective territorial authority of sovereign nation-states. As a result
of conditions tied to economic aid and development assistance from Western
and international donors during the 80s and 90s, global diffusion of neo-
classical economic liberalism has led to increasing private control in markets
and decreasing state regulation. Deregulation of trade and financial markets
have increased porousness of national borders compromising governments
ability to regulate cross-border flows of goods, services, information, tech-
nology, and people, as well as to collect tariffs and taxes. Fiscal restraints
progressively have undermined social and economic safety nets as well as
the ability and legitimacy of government efforts to provide the governance
goods that create favorable conditions for equitable domestic economic pros-
perity and national social cohesion.9
The bottom line is that in the context of globalization, economic growth
has ceased to be a path leading to distributive justice for many social groups
in many places, undermining the legitimacy of state controlled territorial
governance structures where this trend pervades. Consequently in settings
where misdistribution of wealth increases, working conditions deteriorate
and social safety nets shrink, parallel markets and governance structures
controlled by non-state actors may become socially, economically, and pol-
itically relevant, if they prove capable of connecting willing suppliers with
willing customers for goods and services (including criminalized goods
and services such as drugs, smuggled goods, and money laundering, among
others); warranting protection from hostile law enforcement and public
regulators; defining property rights and regulating disputes; operating
social safety nets to take care of vulnerable households and dependents of
those killed or jailed; and even serving as lenders of last resort.10
152
With the global diffusion of ideas about democracy and human rights,
and the spread of standards that equate good governance with the rule of
law, government accountability, respect for human dignity, and universal
provision of access to basic goods and services, these alternative govern-
ance structures are commonly framed as transnational and subnational
challengers of state sovereignty threatening national and international
security. Consequently, areas under control of non-state actors that do not
comply with the referred standards, tend to be prime targets for stabiliza-
tion and nation-building operations, whether in the form of humanitarian
non-governmental organizations providing emergency service delivery, or
international financial institutions and Western governments conditioning
assistance on improvements in transparency, human rights, and environ-
mental protection, and, in extreme cases, by means of armed intervention
directed to support nation-building processes based on strengthening
state military and policing capacity in order to reestablish state-centric
democratic governance standards.11
States legitimize these interventions by criminalizing non-state actors
and their activities, often in accordance with the multidimensional secur-
ity guidelines, even though in many cases the latter have local support and
legitimacy precisely because they are able to offer working solutions that
satisfice local needs. Naturally, non-state actors labeled as criminals in
these settings do not define themselves as criminals and instead frame their
activities as strategies to sustain or improve their livelihoods under specific
given circumstances. As a result, criminalization in these types of settings
tends to blur the line between war and crime, and burdens the task of the
occupying military and police forces trying to win the hearts and minds
of the locals. Thus, as the case of Colombia discussed in the next section will
illustrate, counterinsurgency and stabilization operations in areas controlled
by non-state actors prove ineffective, even when military and police forces
are deployed with high troop densities.
Counterinsurgency and Non-State Territorial Governance

Dynamics
Counterinsurgency doctrine assumes that competing territorial governance
structures controlled by non-state actors can be undermined and defeated
by occupying and transforming the targeted political hybrid order. The
strength of these feral governance structures lies in the relationship be-
tween non-state actors that control these structures and the general popula-
tion, which provides intelligence, logistics and, ultimately, a sanctuary that
153
allows non-state actors to blend into the population and disappear under
pressure. Counterinsurgency argues that severing this relationship is pos-
sible by offering economic incentives, making deals with emergent elite fac-
tions and protecting the population from insurgents who might conduct
retributive attacks for collaborating with the occupying force. In this reckon-
ing, counterinsurgency misjudges the fact that values as well as social and
political identities such as kin relationships, religion, and tribalism are very
real among many populations. Therefore the occupying forces ability to
alter these values is dubious, no matter how helpful, sincere, and sympathetic
the occupying force is. In sum, the assumption that a mass of military and
police troops can achieve more than intimidate an occupied population for a
given period of time is highly questionable.
And yet, after the debacles that followed the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq during the decade ending in 2010, estimating military and police
forces needs for occupation control in critical limit situations remains a
crucial issue for defense and security planners.12
Multiple questions have been raised concerning troop density in
counterinsurgency and stabilization operations. Should the number of
troops deployed be defined based on enemy strength, population density or
the extension of the territorial area of operation? In calculating troop density
needs, are indigenous police forces counted as own troops? What proportion
of troops should be used to perform police work?
Presently, there seems to be consensus on some answers to these ques-
tions. Military manuals agree that the main criterion for determining troop
density in occupation scenarios is population density, so troop per popu-
lation rates are now universally used. Historical experience of successful
counterinsurgency and stabilization campaigns in different contexts sug-
gests that required troop densities are in the range of 60210 per 10,000 of
the local population (McGrath 2006, 162). There is also consensus concerning
the need for greater troop density where the intensity of insurgent activity
is higher. In this regard, some analysts propose troop density for three dif-
ferent levels of intensity in counterinsurgency and stabilization operations.
In settings where insurgencies exhibit ongoing military activity (intense
level), troop density needs are estimated in the range between 100 and 200
per 10,000. In situations characterized by frequent clashes between civil-
ian factions (intermediate level), troop density requirements are reckoned
in range between 40 and 100 per 10,000 inhabitants. In generally peaceful
contexts (low level), a typical troop density is assessed in the range of 2040
per 10,000.13 Furthermore, historical experience suggests that about one third
154
of the force in counterinsurgency or stabilization operations should be al-

located to address police work, including vehicle checkpoints, protection and
escort of persons, crowd control, tactical operations, crime prevention and
control, and conflict mediation, among others.14
These parameters drawn from counterinsurgency doctrine shed light
in considering present day military and police troop density figures for
Colombia, a country where counterinsurgency operations persist in periph-
eral areas and scarcely populated areas while stabilization operations mainly
prevail in more densely populated areas to counter the activities of criminal
structures dealing with the challenges focused on by the multidimensional
security approach, among them, drug trafficking and other activities such
as trafficking in persons, corruption, asset laundering, and attacks to cyber
security and illicit trafficking in weapons, among others. An outstanding fea-
ture in the case of Colombia is widespread diffuse social violence expressed
in a national murder rate in 2012 of around 33 per 100,000 inhabitants, with
more than a quarter of its 1,122 municipalities recording murder rates equal
to or above the national average.
The overall situation in Colombia corresponds to an intermediate stage
of operational intensity, which according to counterinsurgency parameters
reviewed above, demanding troop density in the range between 40 and 100
troops per 10,000 inhabitants. Recent reports on the size of the security forces
in Colombia mention figures in the range of 285,000 troops in the armed
forces and 161,000 troops in the national police.15 Based on an estimated total
population of 46,581,823 for 2012,16 Colombia currently has a density of 96
troops per 10,000 inhabitants, of which nearly a third are committed to police
work, suggesting that troop density is situated in the upper end of the range
established by counterinsurgency doctrine for intermediate intensity oper-
ational scenarios.
This balanced troop density in Colombia is the result of efforts for more
than a decade spent fighting guerrillas, paramilitaries and, more recently,
criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking (CGLDT)17 in order to regain gov-
ernment control of territories previously under the influence of these groups,
many of which were home to large extensions of illicit coca crops. Combined
counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency efforts have significantly reduced
the numbers of guerrilla, paramilitary, and CGLDT combatants as well as of
illicit coca cropping areas.
In 1999, when the illicit coca cropping area in Colombia was nearly
160,000 hectares, 85 percent of this area was concentrated in twenty-nine
municipalities. A decade and US$5 billion later, coca cropping area was
155
slashed to nearly 67,000 hectares, and the 30,000 strong standing forces of
non-state illicitly armed groups had been cut to a quarter of their original
size. Municipalities affected by their activities fell from over 500 in 2004 to
around 300 in 2009.18 See Figure 2.
Figures provided by the Colombian Ministry of Defense reckon that
numbers of non-state illicitly armed units, as well as their standing forces
operating in different parts of the country have significantly declined since
2004:
In 2004, 168 non-state illicitly armed units totaled a joint stand-

ing force estimated in the range of 24,50049,200 combatants;
nearly 40 percent belonged to the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC) (estimates range between a minimum of
10,300 and a maximum of 20,000), 40 percent to the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) (10,02519,950), and
the remaining 20 percent to National Liberation Army (ELN)
(4,1759,250).
In 2006, 111 non-state illicitly armed units summed together
an estimated standing force in the range of 11,85023,350 com-
batants; two thirds belonged to FARC (7,77516,150), 20 percent
to CGLDT (2,4254,300), and the remaining 15 percent to ELN
(1,6502,900); and
In 2009, forty-eight non-state illicitly armed units gathered an
estimated standing force in the range of 7,85017,550 combat-
Colombia:
Total Illicit Coca Cropping Area
Figure 2. Total Illicit Coca Cropping Area, Colombia 1999-2010.
1999 - 2010
(Hectares)
180.000
135.000
90.000
45.000
0
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
(Source: SIMCI, 2000 -2011.)
156
ants; three fourths belonged to FARC (5,47513,350), 20 per-

cent to CGLDT (2,0753,650), and less than 5 percent to ELN
(300550)19 See Figure 3.
Despite these significant reductions, the shortcomings of the combined

anti-narcotic and counterinsurgency strategy are increasingly visible as a
result of the successful adaptation of these non-state armed actors to counter-
insurgency and coca crop eradication efforts: according to the Ministry of
Defense and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), illicit
armed groups persist in approximately 150 municipalities where major coca
cropping areas have been resilient to eradication efforts.20
As the number of illicit armed units and their standing forces have
declined over time, a trend has emerged: there is growing concentration of
illicit armed units in forty-nine municipalities that persistently record 7880
percent of the total annual coca cropping area in Colombia during the second
half of the decade ending in 2010. According to the location and estimated
force of non-state illicitly armed units reported by the Ministry of Defense,
the referred municipalities sheltered 36 percent of their estimated standing
forces in 2004, 42 percent in 2006, and 73 percent in 2009.21
Several hypotheses can be offered to interpret this trend. An obvious one
has to do with the financial support provided by rents forcefully extracted
from coca croppers and buyers. Another is the fact that municipalities where
coca crops have persisted in the past usually have areas which are densely
Colombia: Illicit Armed Groups

Figure 3. Illicit Armed Groups in Colombia:
Estimated Estimated
Standing Force 2004,Standing Force 2004, 2006, 2009.
2006, 2009
50.000
37.500
ELN
25.000
CGLDT
12.500 AUC
FARC
0
MIN MAX MIN MAX MIN MAX
2004 2006 2009
(Source: UNODC/ Government of Colombia 2005; 2007; 2010; calculations and graph by
author.)
157
planted with landmines, mainly to resist manual crop eradication imple-

mented by the government since 2005, making them more defensible in the
face of ground based counterinsurgent operations. Finally, areas where coca
cropping persists over time are likely to have been affected by permanent
forced displacement of their original tenant, and in many cases have been
repopulated with households that are subordinated or loyal to the locally
dominant illicit armed group.
Complementing the counter-narcotic effort is the counter-insurgent
National Territorial Consolidation Plan (PNCT), which aims to ensure
sustainable security and peace in regions affected by illicit crops and the
presence of illicit armed groups. Consolidation areas are selected based on
the historic convergence of destabilizing factors such as fragile state pres-
ence, persistent illicit cropping and presence of illicit armed groups, high
rates of forced displacement and victimization, as well as widespread en-
vironmental destruction. The implementation of the PNCT began in the
Macarena region (Meta) in 2007 and is expanding to other keys areas such
as Catatumbo (Norte de Santander), Montes de Maria (Bolivar and Sucre),
northern Antioquia, Crdoba, Putumayo and the Pacific Coast Lowlands in
Nario, among others. To achieve its goals the PNCT develops and maintains
local legal economic activities supported on strategies designed to ensure
institutional presence with social development.22
Weighing the results of a decades worth of war on drugs in Colombia
it seems that government policy makers and officials have helplessly painted
themselves into a corner while leaving open room for non-state illicitly
armed groups to carry on with their business. In effect, anti-narcotic and
counterinsurgent efforts have pushed drug traffickers and non-state illicitly
armed groups to find an extended number of locations within the countrys
vast and scarcely populated territory that offer them adequate conditions to
continue pursuing their business, thus overextending the state military and
police force capacity to sustain authoritative legal territorial governance
structures on a permanent basis, even with troop densities in the high end
of the range established by counterinsurgency doctrine in medium intensity
operational scenarios.
In the process of being displaced by counter-narcotic or counter-
insurgent operations from one location to another, non-state armed actors
have figured out local governance arrangements that allow them to readily
reestablish their cash flows by means of illicit coca crops in areas abandoned
in the past by forceful pressure. Upon their return, fallow cropping areas
and economically viable cropping extensions are easily reactivated on the
158
basis of past experience, as are sources for local labor and production input.
Processing infrastructure is easily set up as well as commerce for produce. As
the cycle repeats itself, traffickers and non-state illicitly armed groups have
become more efficient in expanding coca cropping areas rapidly with the
aid of previously trained locals that remain loyal or subordinated to them,
as well as by exploiting other cash generating activities such as extracting
rents from gold mining, timber, and land grabbing activities, together with
certain local legal enterprises. In short, the war on drugs has taught them
to adapt temporary governance structures to take advantage of an immense
territorial extension (the combined area of the forty-nine municipalities in
observation totals nearly 300,000 km2, roughly an area equivalent to the size
of Poland), with quick access to cash and broad opportunities to momentarily
gain military and political initiative in the pursuit of their businesses.
In fact, after a decade of being targeted by combined counter-narcotic
and counter-insurgent operations, Colombias non-state illicitly armed
groups have successfully installed in their tactical book what Bruce Bagley
has labeled the cockroach effect. That is,
the displacement of criminal networks from one city/state/

region to another within a given country or from one country
to another in search of safer havens and more pliable state
authorities.23
Nation-Building or Building Local Partnerships Between Political

Entrepreneurs and Criminal Organizations?
In the framework of efforts directed to regain state control of territorial
governance structures functioning under hybrid political orders, nation-
building initiatives represent the other side of the same coin of counterinsur-
gent and stabilization operations. Nation-building is promoted as a strategy
for constructive state-society engagement.24 States often tend to legitimize
counterinsurgent and stabilization operations as a necessary step in order to
introduce democratization. Yet in many cases democratization unintendedly
favors partnerships between political entrepreneurs and criminal organiza-
tions, delivering them control of official rule-making powers which can be
used to benefit a few and to put the majority at graver risk than in previous
social and political orders.
Political entrepreneurs are usually figures specialized in leading
struggles for legitimacy and recognition of a social group and its claims.
They normally specialize in creating and manipulating political identity as a
159
powerful lever to encourage collective action. They also motivate and drive
collective action by means of their connections with specialists in violence,
such as non-state illicit armed groups or organized criminal structures,
willing to provide their technical and professional skills. In sum, political
entrepreneurs generally specialize in threatening to use violence in order to
advance their claims.25
Thus electoral democratization in local contexts incentivizes polit-
icians to seek votes in poorer, under-governed districts by establishing
relationships with local strongmen and exchanging personal or public assets
for votes. The outcome is the development of complex relationships between
local strongmen, some of whom dominate criminal structures, and public
administration circuits. The resulting alliances usually gain incontestable
position to manipulate local electoral machines and take over the local state
apparatus through the corruption of political authorities eager for cash to fi-
nance their campaigns. In time, these relationships usually allow the former
to accumulate enough influence on their own to shed their original political
patrons, and substitute them putting up their own candidates in office.26
Criminal activities thrive as local authorities are overwhelmed by the
task of governing conflicting interests and claims, particularly in environ-
ments of inequality, exclusion, and progressive informalization. In the
resultant hybrid political system, law and order emerge as a result of a
variable symbiosis between officials (local government agents, police, and
justice administrators), local power players (common criminality, non-
state illicitly armed groups), and moral authorities (local leaders, priests,
evangelical pastors, and successful local entrepreneurs), in shifting alliances
that oscillate between selective involvement, insulation, and abandonment,
alternately seeking forms of accommodations and confrontation with the lo-
cal legal and illicit power brokers.27
Colombia provides an illustrative case of the political and institutional
dynamic described above. As a result of political and fiscal decentralization
reforms that were passed during the 1980s in the attempt to create meaning-
ful access to the political system, non-state actors gained and strengthened
their grip on public budgets in territories and populations under their influ-
ence. In this manner a significant share of decentralized public resources
were in fact made available to finance the expansion of armed clientelism by
illegal groups on both the left and right.28
Subsequently, in 2003 new political movements backed by right wing
paramilitary groups were able to elect 251 mayors and nearly 400 town
councilmen in different regions of the country.29 Over the past ten years,
160
many elected officials representing these movements have been brought to

justice before Colombias Supreme Court, and legal electoral reforms have
raised the voting threshold needed for a political movement or party to be
officially recognized by the National Electoral Organization.30
Yet in 2011 the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE), a non-government-
al organization monitoring local electoral campaigns on the ground in order
to assess risks concerning use of political violence and electoral fraud, found
the highest risk ratings in municipalities located in border areas associated
with drug, firearms, and ammunition smuggling routes operating through
Ecuador and Venezuela, as well as municipalities included in the National
Territorial Consolidation Plan mentioned in the previous section. This, in
spite of efforts and resources spent for more than a decade on major counter-
insurgency and antinarcotic operations in Colombia.
Even more alarming, the findings point to the fact that the overall risk
of electoral fraud has not declined since 2006 and that most of the present
risk is endorsed to corrupt politicians and public servants threatening to rig
elections from within the Electoral Organization.31
Conclusions
This article began by considering the scope of the future outlook of the
world in the next couple of decades, as recently proposed by the National
Intelligence Council (NIC). According to the NIC the probable outcome will
be shaped by the way in which tensions between governments and non-state
actors are resolved in the different dimensions of development, including
economic, social, political, and cultural issues. The result will depend on
how each part proves able to adapt in order to harness change instead of
being overwhelmed by it.
The NICs framework offers a vantage point to consider governments
concerns regarding security in todays world. Presently government efforts
in this respect are increasingly focused on non-state actors involved in drug
trafficking, sex slavery, corruption, asset laundering, attacks to cyber security,
and illicit trafficking in weapons, all of which have emerged in the globalized
world as a multidimensional challenge to human and state security. Thus
the multidimensional security approach argues for the need to develop
appropriate hemispheric cooperation and multifaceted responses involving
partnerships between governments, the private sector, and civil society in
order to successfully deal with these complex challenges.
Yet when considering concrete cases in which states are committed to
fighting these new threats to security, as in the case of Colombia for the past
161
couple of decades, measures are clearly directed to warrant a state-centric

model with evident underpinnings related to the standard doctrine of
counterinsurgent and stabilization operations, bluntly reducing security pri-
orities to national security objectives. This perspective generally overlooks
the security needs of people with particular identities, political values, and
demands that may best be met by responses led by non-state actors. This
omission is one of the main flaws of the counterinsurgent and stabilization
doctrine that aims to impose democratic governance standards in a top-
down fashion, as is reflected in the unsatisfactory results obtained to the
present with this type of operations in areas of the world labeled by the U.S.
Department of state as terrorist safe havens.
Lack of nuance in this regard has led policymakers to characterize terri-
tories not under control of state-centered governance structures as potential
threats to national security. Hence the concepts of ungoverned or under-
governed areas negatively express the preference of states for state-centered
territorial governance structures, and legitimize international crusades
to criminalize non-state actors that govern these territories not following
proper democratic governance standards.
Clearly some of these safe havens are under control of criminal organ-
izations and offer favorable conditions for criminal activity to thrive without
detection and with impunity, and provide their perpetrators refuge from
efforts to combat or counter them, making them convenient launching pads
for terrorist attacks against nation-states and the interests they represent. Yet,
universal contempt for territorial vacuums outside the control of a nation-
state may lead to wrongful demonization and criminalization of non-state
actors that are able to legitimately deliver to a compliant social base adequate
governance services and goods more effectively than the nominally legal
territorial sovereign. Such policies may lead to more instability in the future
without bringing the world any closer to resembling the simplistic, nation-
state based political map of the world.
In 2030 it is probable that concerns related to the security needs and
demands of peoplethat is, human securityas well as the security of the
state, will still be linked to principles and institutions such as international
law, the respect for state sovereignty and non-intervention, faithful compli-
ance of treaties and covenants, and acting appropriately in accordance with
constitutional provisions of each state. However, the relevance and incidence
that these principles and institutions will have in delivering governance
goods and servicessecurity among themwill depend on the ability of
national and international policymakers to expand their understanding of
162
security beyond the state-centric conception, and to develop approaches that

allow states to live with territorial governance responses that have non-state
actors at their heart.
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Annual Convention, San Francisco, 113th Congress Senate Armed Servic-
March 26-30. es Committee. March 19. http://www.
southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/
Romero, Mauricio, ed. 2007. Parapoltica.
SOUTHCOM%202013%20Posture%20
La ruta de la expansin paramilitar y los
Statement%20FINAL%20SASC.pdf.
acuerdos polticos. Bogot: Corporacin
Nuevo Arco Iris/Intermedio. UNODC/Government of Colombia. 2005.
Colombia. Coca Cultivation Survey
SIMICI. 2000. Cultivos de coca. Estadsti-
2004. Accessed June 11, 2011. www.
cas municipales censo 31 de diciembre
unodc.org/pdf/andean/Part3_Colom-
bia.pdf.
SIMICI. 2001. Cultivos de coca. Estadsticas
UNODC/Government of Colombia 2007
municipales censo 31 de diciembre de
2000. Bogot: UNODC.
SIMICI. 2002. Cultivos de coca. Estadsti- unodc.org/pdf/andean/Part3_Colom-
cas municipales censo 31 de diciembre bia.pdf.
UNODC/Government of Colombia. 2010.
SIMICI. 2003. Cultivos de coca. Estadsti- Colombia. Monitoreo de cultivos
cas municipales censo 31 de diciembre de coca 2009. Accessed June 11,
de 2002. Bogot: UNODC. 2011. www.unodc.org/documents/
crop-monitoring/Colombia/Colombia-
Censo-2009-web.pdf.
de 2003. Bogot: UNODC. UNODC/Government of Colombia. 2011.
Colombia. Monitoreo de cultivos de
coca 2010. Accessed June 11, 2011.
www.unodc.org/documents/crop-
monitoring/Colombia/Colombia-Cen-
SIMICI. 2006. Cultivos de coca. Estadsti- so-2009-web.pdf.
SIMICI. 2007. Cultivos de coca. Estadsticas Notes
municipales censo 31 de diciembre de 1 NIC, Global Trends 2030. Alternative
2006. Bogot: UNODC. Worlds (Washington, D.C.: National
Intelligence Council, 2012).
164
2 Angel Rabasa, et al. Deradicalizing 12 John J. McGrath, Boots on the Ground:

Islamist Extremists (Santa Monica CA: Troop Density in Contingency Operations
Rand Corporation, 2010), xv-xxiv. (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat
Studies Institute Press, 2006); Dob-
3 James Dobbins, et al. The Beginners
bins et al.; Steven Goode, A Historical
Guide to Nation-Building (Santa Monica,
Basis for Force Requirements in Coun-
CA.: Rand Corporation, 2007), xxiv
terinsurgency. Parameters XXXIX, 10
xxviii.
(Winter 2009): 45-57.
4 GAO, Combating Terrorism: U.S.
13 James Quinlivan, Force Require-
Government Strategies and Efforts
ments in Stability Operations Param-
to Deny Terrorists Safe Haven, Ac-
eters 25 (Winter 1995): 59-69.
cessed on August 15, 2013. http://www.
gao.gov/products/GAO-11-713T, 2011, 14 Quinlivan; McGrath.
5.
15 James Hackett, ed., The Military Balance
5 Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anar- (London: Routledge /International In-
chy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopu- stitute of Strategic Studies, 2010), 74-77.
lation, Tribalism, and Disease Are
16 National Administrative Department
Rapidly Destroying the Social Fabric
of Statistics, DANE 2012.
of Our Planet. The Atlantic Monthly
273, 2 (Feb. 1994): 58-60. 17 The OAS Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia (MAPP-OEA)
6 Robert Jackson, Quasi-States, Dual
issued warnings that after demobili-
Regimes, and Neoclassical Theory:
zation of the Autodefensas Unidas de
International Jurisprudence and the
Colombia (AUC) between 2004 and
Third World. International Organi-
2006, new criminal gangs linked to
zation 41, 4 (1987): 519-49; Thomas
drug trafficking (CGLDT) emerged,
Risse, Governance in Areas of Lim-
with their standing force coming from
ited Statehood: How Far Do Concepts
remobilized or non-demobilized
Travel? (Paper presented at the Inter-
combatants, as well as newly recruited
national Studies Association Annual
combatants (MAPP-OEA, Sexto
Convention, San Francisco, March
informe trimestral del Secretario
26-30, 2008).
General al Consejo Permanente sobre
7 Anne Clunan and Harold Trinkunas, la Mision de Apoyo al Proceso de Paz
eds. Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives en Colombia. Bogot: MAPP-OEA
to State Authority in an Era of Softened (2006): 6-11.
Sovereignty (Stanford, CA.: Stanford
18 UNODC Colombia. Monitoreo de
Security Studies, 2010), 283-285.
cultivos de coca 2009. Accessed June
8 OECD, Supporting Statebuilding in 11, 2011. www.unodc.org/documents/
Situations of Conflict and Fragility: Pol- crop-monitoring/Colombia/Colombia-
icy Guidance DAC Guidelines and Ref- Censo-2009-web.pdf.2010, 16-17.
erence Series, OECD Publishing. http://
19 UNODC/Government of Colombia
dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264074989-
en.2011, 24-25.
9 Robin Naylor, Wages of Crime. Black unodc.org/pdf/andean/Part3_Colom-
Markets, Illegal Finance, and the Under- bia.pdf. 2005, 40; UNODC/Govern-
world Economy (Ithaca (NY): Cornell ment of Colombia Colombia. Coca
University Press, 2004), 40-43; Clunan Cultivation Survey 2006. Accessed
and Trinkunas, 277-282. June 11, 2011. www.unodc.org/pdf/
andean/Part3_Colombia.pdf.2007, 68;
10 Naylor, 22-24.
UNODC/Government of Colombia
11 Clunan and Trinkunas, 278-280. 2010, 71.
165
20 MAPP-OEA 2009, 3; UNODC/Govern- Colombia. Security Studies 15, 4 (2006):

ment of Colombia 2010, 71. 549-559; Enrique Arias Understand-
ing Criminal Networks, Political
21 UNODC/Government of Colombia
Order, and Politics in Latin America.
2005, 40; UNODC/Government of Co-
in Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to
lombia 2007, 68; UNODC/Government
State Authority in an Era of Softened
of Colombia 2010, 71.
Sovereignty, Anne Clunan and Harold
22 UNODC/Government of Colombia Trinkunas, eds. (Stanford, CA.: Stan-
2011, 79. ford Security Studies, 2012), 120.
23 Bruce Bagley Drug Trafficking and 27 Dirk Kruit and Kees Koonings Vio-
Organized Crime in Latin America lence and Fear in Latin America. in
and the Caribbean in the Twenty Societies of fear: The Legacy of Civil War,
First Century: Challenges to Democ- Violence and terror in Latin America,
racy. Accessed May 15, 2012. http:// Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, eds.
lasa.international.pitt.edu/members/ (London: Zed Books, 1999), 1-30)
congress-papers/lasa2012/files/696.
28 Eaton, 549-559.
pdf. undated, 20.
29 Mauricio Romero, ed. Parapoltica.
24 OECD Supporting Statebuilding in
La ruta de la expansin paramilitar y los
Situations of Conflict and Fragility:
acuerdos polticos (Bogot: Corporacin
Policy Guidance. DAC Guidelines and
Nuevo Arco Iris/Intermedio, 2007), 31.
Reference Series, OECD Publishing. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264074989-en, 30 MOE, Mapas y factores de riesgo electoral.
2011, 13. Elecciones de autoridades locales, Colom-
bia, 2011 (Bogot: Misin de Observa-
25 Tilly, 2003, 30-35.
cin Electoral, 2011), 41.
26 Kent Eaton, The Downside of De-
31 Ibid., 43.
centralization: Armed Clientelism in
166
IV:
INSURGENCIES AND
ORGANIZED CRIME
The Background and Current

Negations with FARC
Ambassador Alfonso Lpez Caballero,
Former Colombian Ambassador to Canada
W
hen I was first elected to Congress, another junior congressman
was Ivn Mrquez, who today heads the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia/Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia) negotiating team in Havana, Cuba. He had been elected with the
slate of the recently created Unin Patritica. At the time, nobody knew he
was a FARC Commander. We had a cordial relationship and on one occa-
sion I invited him and his girlfriend to have lunch at my home. One day,
as the leaders of the Unin Patritica started to get killed, he soon vanished,
having gone underground. Some ten years later, I was appointed minister
of the interior. As such, I was partly responsible for security in the country
and the Ministry was the ward of the leaders of the guerilla groups that had
demobilized, such as M-19 (Movimiento 19 de abril/19 of April Movement), EPL
(Ejrcito Popular de Liberacin/Popular Liberation Army) and ELN (Ejrcito de
Liberacin Nacional/National Liberation Army) during the Barco and Gaviria
peace processes and with whom the government had made some commit-
ments. During this time, I got to know them and became friends with some
of the former guerilla leaders who I occasionally consult on matters regarding
security. A couple of years later, the new government made me part of the
negotiating team in the peace process. As a government negotiator, I went to
San Vicente del Cagun for a couple of days every other week to meet with
the guerrillas. I then had the opportunity to again see Ivn Mrquez, who
was one of the rising stars in the FARC.
Regarding the ongoing peace talks, I am cautiously optimistic.
Circumstances have changed substantially over the past years. I think there
is an important incentive for FARC to negotiate on three levels: at the military,
political, and international level. At the military level, the armed forces have
been tremendously strengthened with over 7 billion dollars of American
aid through Plan Colombia, with a very substantial increase in the number
of professional soldiers (vs. recruits) and with a very effective intelligence
service, especially on the part of the police. As a result, whereas the historic
leaders of FARC died of old age while still in the leadership, their successors

the background and current negotiations with farc
were killed by the army after only a few years of assuming leadership. Mono
Jojoy was bombed by the air force, and Alfonso Cano was followed by police
intelligence and killed by the army in his camp. Of particular importance has
been the fleet of war helicopters Sikorski Blackhawks that came with Plan
Colombia. They are armored craft, equipped with intelligent missiles, and
fly fast and quietly, including in poor weather conditions. The days when
FARC could concentrate on over a thousand guerrillas and overrun an army
base like Patascoy or Las Delicias are over. Now the rapid deployment force
of these helicopters can reach any point in the country within hours and dis-
pose of attackers. As a result, FARC has had to revert to old guerrilla tactics:
isolated ambushes, snipers, and attacks on infrastructure. Their offensive
capability has been substantially reduced. Even though they have not been
defeated and they continue to have the potential to cause substantial harm,
they are contained and it is unrealistic that they are able to come to power
through the force of weaponsand they know it. The only fate the leaders
can expect, if they continue the war, is to end their days in the jungle running
from the army (as was the case with Cano) until one day they are killed.
At the political level, the paradox is that FARC has become an obstacle
for left-wing populism to gain power by the regular electoral process, as
has been the case in most of Latin America. The former guerilla leaders, or
sympathizers, are in office by popular elections. Such is the case with for-
mer guerrillas in Brazil, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Salvador, or persons close
to that ideology, such as the leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, and
Ecuador. FARC has had the effect of a vaccine against left-wing populism.
As a result, the country, in contrast with most of Latin America, has turned
right. The current progressive government is center-right and the strong op-
position comes from the hard right.
At the international level, countries that might have supported FARC in
the past have changed priorities. Russia and Eastern Europe are no longer
communist, nor is China interested in guerrilla wars. Cuba, which in the
1960s and 1970s, sponsored guerrilla groups and supported guerrilla inva-
sions in Colombia with the M-19, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and
Bolivia with Che Guevara, who had vowed to turn the Andean Mountains
into a new Sierra Maestra, is no longer interested in playing that role. Cubas
priority today is to get the United States to lift the fifty-year old trade em-
bargo, which is strangling them especially after the end of the support of the
Soviet Union. For that, Cuba needs the solidarity of the rest of the continent
to pressure the United States. Consequently, the country is induced to play
a constructive role and have done so. Fidel Castro declared not long ago that
170
alfonso lpez caballero
guerilla war is no longer a valid option to reach power, and in the case of
Colombia, his influence has been positive. When the brother of President
Betancur was kidnapped by the ELN in 1983, it was through Castros inter-
mediation that he was freed (President Betancur had just reestablished re-
lations that had been broken after the M-19 invasion). When the brother of
President Gaviria was kidnapped by a fringe guerilla group in 1996, President
Gaviria appealed to Castro for assistance, who sent an envoy that managed
to liberate him shortly before he was due to be executed. When, after the
capture of Rodrigo Granda (now FARC negotiator) in the streets of Caracas in
2004, Chvez broke off relations with Colombia and the two countries were
on the brink of war. Subsequently, Castro sent his vice-minister of foreign
affairs to Venezuela and another official from the Ministry to Colombia to
normalize relations. Thus, for Cuba it is an advantage to play a constructive
role and host the current peace negotiations.
As for the Venezuela of Chvez, it is evident that to appear as an ally of
FARC does not produce sympathy in Colombia. On the contrary, FARC is an
obstacle for the expansion of chavismo in Colombia by electoral means, as has
been the case in other countries. It is in their political interest also to support
the peace process.
There are clear indications that the current peace negotiations are mov-
ing in the right direction. The five point negotiating agenda agreed to by
FARC closely mirrors the governments program:
Agrarian issues (Ley de tierras)

Victims of the conflict (Ley de vctimas)
Participation in politics (Marco jurdico para la paz)
Drug trade
End of the conflict
The government has declared emphatically that any major changes in

the political or economic structure can only be brought about through the
regular political process by obtaining the required majorities to pass the
desired laws.
What is really at stake is some form of amnesty for the guerrillas and
the potential opportunity to participate in politics. In past peace processes
with the M-19, the EPL, and a sector of the ELN, upon demobilizing they
were not prosecuted and many quickly entered politics. The leaders of the
M-19 became presidential candidates, governors and mayors, and one is cur-
rently the mayor of Bogot. Several guerrillas from the EPL became mayors
171
the background and current negotiations with farc
of towns in the Urab region, and one of them joined the Uribe government
and was in charge of human rights in the vice-presidency. But now things
are not so simple. On the one hand, there are international factors such as the
International Criminal Court, and the fact that some of them have extradition
requests from the United States. On the other hand, and more importantly,
the climate of public opinion has changed and there is a very strong current
against granting them impunity.
There are many very influential voices that are against the peace process
if it means impunity for the guerrillas. Among them the most popular polit-
ician in the country: former President lvaro Uribe, as well as the Attorney-
General and the National Federation of Cattle Breeders, to mention only a
few. The president has said that the agreements reached at the negotiating
table require some popular validation, presumably a referendum, and it is
not absolutely certain that it would be won. However, as previously men-
tioned, I am cautiously optimistic.
If the peace process is successful, the political element will be withdrawn
from the violence that affects some sectors of Colombian society. Presumably,
it will mean the end of attacks by FARC on the armed forces and the countrys
infrastructure (pipelines and power installations). It will not be translated
immediately into increased security since, for the most part, violence in the
main cities is due to common criminality.
172
Corruptive Destabilizing Influences of

Powerful Organized Crime Groups on
Weak Security Institutions in Latin
America: An Intelligence Perspective on
Mexico and Colombia
Greg Purdy, International Risk Advisor,
CKR Global Risk Solutions
I
n an extensive assessment written by the Canadian Security Intelligence
Services (CSIS) Research and Analysis branch back in 2000 on the sub-
ject of international corruption and the rapidly growing global threats
by various transnational criminal groups throughout various areas of the
world, the Service noted the following in its initial preamble on this very
tangible and growing threat:
In any nation where transnational criminal groups are extremely

powerful, even though the state may have nominal control over
its sovereignty, the reality is that criminal syndicates are likely
holding the reins. This has security implications not only for the
country itself, but also, given the borderless nature of crime in
todays world, for the neighbors of any such criminalized state.
Unchecked transnational criminal activity can challenge a na-
tions sovereignty in other ways. Other nations may adopt (tactic-
al and strategic) measures designed to protect their country and
citizens from transnational crime which may have (far-reaching)
extra-territorial consequences...Given that transnational crime
groups do not consider international borders as impediments,
they are not only a threat to the nations where they are based,
but threaten any society where they conduct their activities.in
the case of less advanced nations with weak structures and/or
tenuous legitimacy, the power wielded by transnational criminal
organizations can even rival that of the state.1

Corruptive destabilizing influences of crime groups
In addressing the internal corruption problems even further, the Service

went on to add that cooperation among transnational criminal organiza-
tions, already a major factor in the new world order of crime, is expected to
continue and expand. Partnerships, bartering arrangements and alliances,
either short or long-term, allow these syndicates to better evade law enforce-
ment agencies, to share existing infrastructure and to improve risk manage-
ment (through corruption of existing state security organizations).2 This
intelligence assessment also noted that, in many regions of Latin America,
extremely powerful organized crime groups (also sometimes referred to
as drug cartels) have a stranglehold on local and regional economies and
their various security institutions. Further, they have also become entangled
with such terrorist organizations as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) in Colombia, the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru
and, to some extent, smaller domestic reactionary movements throughout
the region. When there is close cooperation between the drug organizations
and these various other reactionary forces that have long held sway in Latin
America, an additional dimension is added to the corruptive issues already
existing within weak national, state, and local security institutions.3
The Service also has previously assessed that while the relationship
between drug dealers and these groups has been contentious at times, insur-
gents are sometimes paid (in some form whether it is cash or the actual nar-
cotics itself) to provide security services for drug traffickersthey often tax
drug operations in areas they control and, in some instances, they are directly
involved in narcotics cultivation.4 In so doing, the organized crime group/
cartels and the insurgent organizations have clearly formed an important
bond, which is central to their continued operations and which, together, can
undermine the overall stability of the countries in which they operate often
with impunity and freedom from investigation and/or attacks by the local,
state, or national security agencies in the region that have been corrupted. It
would not be incorrect to suggest the weaker developing third world coun-
tries in parts of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America are extremely
susceptible to the corruptive influences of existing transnational organized
crime groups and, unfortunately, this can also apply to even stronger Western
countries as well. Fast-forward to 2013 and this critical assessment still holds
true and, in many ways, is perhaps even more valid now in certain Latin
American countries of note. For the purposes of this rather short and limited
study, the two most maligned countries discussed are Mexico and Colombia,
which have received the most notoriety of all the countries battling the drug
cartels and corruption within Latin America as a whole.
174
greg purdy
Mexico
Perhaps no other country in Latin America has been more pointedly tainted
or perceived as being out-of-control with corruption and drug wars as Mexico
where daily headlines of the ongoing pitched, violent battles between the se-
curity forces and drug cartels and inter-cartel battles have seemed unending.
Mexico has been experiencing a tremendous upsurge in violence in recent
years and to put a perspective on all of this, it is important to remember that
of the numerous major drug cartels throughout the world today, eight are
Mexican-based and they include the Sinaloa, Tijuana, Gulf, Beltran Leyva,
Los Zetas, La Familia, Carillo Fuentas, and the Arellano Felix organiza-
tions. Other so-called splinter groups include the Cartel Pacifico Sur, New
Federation and the Knights Templar. They all currently control a minimum
of seventeen to eighteen of the thirty-two Mexican States with thousands los-
ing their lives since former President Caldern came to power and declared
war on these gangs in Mexico, deploying more than 50,000 military troops
and federal police into the battle. These statistics include more than 47,000
people having been killed since Caldern launched his military offensive
against the cartels back in 2006 and this figure is likely to climb higher as
the new Pea Nieto administration continues its war on the cartels.5 With
more than 90 percent of the cocaine now entering Canada from Mexico, that
country has truly become a major source of concern for Canadian police au-
thorities with various news sources now reporting the growing influence of
the Mexican cartels into the lower mainland area of British Columbia and the
local organized crime groups operating there.6
During a recent meeting with two former and current senior officials
with the Mexican security establishment, the subject of internal corrup-
tion arose and one bluntly admitted that Mexican security institutions
cannot even protect their own citizenry now, let alone foreigners who visit
the country.7 His reasons were clear: the reach of the various drug cartels
throughout the entire Mexican security apparatus is so pervasive and the
corruption levels so high that to even consider successfully combating this
well organized and clearly overwhelming threat must acknowledge the in-
herent failings and weaknesses of the states security institutions themselves,
which continue to be unable to effectively battle the ongoing corruption from
within. In February 2009, a U.S. government report warned that Mexico had
certainly made significant inroads in the battle against its various domestic
organized crime groups (cartels) but cautiously also noted that the Mexican
governments progresscomes against a backdrop of continuing high levels
of corruption and turmoil within Mexicos security and judicial bodiescor-
175
ruption throughout Mexicos public institutions remains a key impediment

to successfully curtailing the power of the drug cartels.8 Two years later,
the Rand Corporation would state that in assessing the overall roots of cor-
ruption within Mexico, it would appear that while corruption levels in some
security institutions have indeed fallen due to Mexicos serious attempts at
serious reform, which include heightened continuity in elected officials and
their policies, coordination within and between levels of government, and
transparency and accountability, unfortunately police corruption (itself)
has remained generally stable at a high level.9
Of course, much of these problems can be traced to poor salaries, in-
adequate training, no accountability and non-existent whistle-blower
mechanisms with which to report incidents of corruption and cooperation
with organized crime groups by individual security officers. The National
Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) has reported that these incidents
include police, especially at the state and local level, [being] involved in
kidnapping, extortion, and in providing protection for, or acting directly
on behalf of, organized crime and drug traffickers. [with] local forces in
particular being poorly compensated and directly pressured by criminal
groups, leaving them most vulnerable to infiltration.10 The CNDH goes on
to note that the overall responsibility for investigation abuses at the fed-
eral police level rests with the Attorney General or the Secretariat of Public
Administration, depending on the type of offense; but it is important to re-
member that corruption also extends into these latter two federal offices as
well, thus complicating the entire question of official oversight both within
and outside the Mexican government security apparatus.11
In January 2009, the government took a more stringent line to try and
get a handle on the overall corruption problem by passing legislation that
established a four-year deadline to (in essence) vet all the personnel
then serving in Mexicos roughly 2,600 police forces using what was then
termed a series of testing mechanisms. This particular legislation, termed
Operation Cleanup, required all police forces to not only meet certain
compensation and/or training standards but also gave federal, state, and
local authorities the power to fire corrupt or officers deemed unfit for duty.
Following the commencement of Operation Cleanup, authorities began ar-
resting politicians, judges, and police officers and this included: the arrest of
ten mayors, a judge, and sixteen police officers in Michoacn;12 the arrest of
ninety-two police officers in Hidalgo; the takeover of the entire police force of
Guadalupe; the arrest of senior officers (including the police chief) of Ciudad
Jurez; the dismissal of some 3,200 federal police officers (or 10 percent) of the
176
greg purdy
federal force; the dismissal of an additional 465 state and local police officers;
and the arrest of several prison guards and officials implicated in the mass
prison escape of over 130 gang members in the State of Coahuila.13 Other
arrests included federal migration officers, custom officers, and other private
security officials working in the corporate sector. While this so-called na-
tional vetting process has been successful in weeding out some of the worst
instances of police corruption, it is important to note that ten of the thirty-one
states have not even evaluated half of their overall police forces yet and there
is no indication exactly when the program can be considered completed and
deemed a success.14
Of course, this unprecedented effort to clean house within the nations
police forces and other security institutions throughout the country also in-
volved the role of another key security institution: the Mexican Intelligence
Service (CISEN). CISEN itself is relatively new in the intelligence world hav-
ing been established in 1989; however, this security institution has since its
inception certainly progressed in a very positive and professional direction
through the recruitment of trusted officers. Indeed, CISEN has long played
a very strong role in trying to root out corruption within the various fed-
eral, state, and local government and security institutions throughout the
country. Several years ago, CISEN and other trusted departments were al-
located a relatively new but important responsibility, namely the lengthy
and time consuming task of polygraphing all individuals working in various
key security sectors of the Mexican federal government. While a seemingly
admirable and effective attempt to clean up corruption within the country,
it unfortunately has only been successful in processing 1015 percent of the
designated personnel at various government levels throughout the country.15
This is largely due to the sheer immensity of the task and the fact that Mexican
public officials involved in ongoing security investigations are constantly
moving around to different positions as the government changes every six
years and the screening process is simply not designed to be conducted on a
regular basis.
In many ways, it is a losing battle not so much because the effort is not
there but more because the sheer power of the drug cartels, which have in
so many ways destabilized an already weak Mexican security structure
whether it be at the federal, state or local levels where poor salaries and al-
most negligible training have served to cripple the governments war against
the various organized crime groups throughout the country. Hillary Clinton,
then U.S. Secretary of State, paid a visit to Mexico a couple of years ago and
proclaimed before her official arrival that Mexico was looking more like
177
Colombia roughly twenty years ago when the narco- traffickers under Pablo
Escobar controlled certain parts of that country.16 While good headlines, lit-
erally, nothing could be further from the truth. Mexicos drug cartels are col-
lectively far more powerful than the old Escobar cartel ever was in Colombia
and it could be said that there are perhaps nine or ten Pablo Escobars now
running around in Mexico right on the very doorstep of the United States
and each have the capability to destabilize certain regions of Mexico should
they choose to do so. To date, these various violent groups have left the
Mexican tourism industry alone although they have carried out attacks
against security forces and other gangs within such tourist zones as Puerto
Vallarta, Cancn, and Mazatln. The Mexican government is extremely
concerned about the impact that its public perception of being a dangerous
country with corrupt security forces could have on its very vibrant and lucra-
tive tourist industry, and it has launched a very public campaign to reassure
visiting tourists that it is a safe country to visit. The important difference to
remember here is that the tourism industry in Mexico is still very strong but
the various government departments linked to this industry are themselves
open to corruption by the various drug organizations operating in the same
tourist zones. With corruption running rampant throughout the police and
security institutions, the new Pea Nieto administration is now reportedly
intent on continuing an intensive and wide ranging policy review previously
initiated by the Caldern government as to the best way to proceed from
this point forward and get the countrys corrupted security institutions back
under some form of manageable control.17 This now includes the creation of
a new national police force that will seek to recruit some 10,000 newly vetted
and screened police officers and the creation of a unified command of all
state police forces throughout the country.18
While much of former President Calderns counter drug cartel efforts
have involved the use (and reliance upon) the military due to the seemingly
systemic corruption within the ranks of the local, state, and even federal law
enforcement agencies at the highest levels of the security bureaucracy, the
situation is now becoming both very dire and increasingly urgent in Mexico.
In a recent U.S. security publication, it was noted (in stating the obvious) that:
Bribery/corruption has long been widespread throughout

Mexican politics. Mexico is well known for its illegal drug trade
and the corruption the industry fostersCorruption is rooted
in the national culture of Mexico. There is a deeply entrenched
culture of impunity and corruption in Mexicos government,
178
greg purdy
particularly at the state and local level.Mexicans view their

police (and security agencies) as having the lowest legitimacy of
all governmental functions due to corruption and lack of profes-
sionalismPolice corruption and involvement in criminal activ-
ity occurs in most parts of Mexico.19
It is well known that the so-called cartels have successfully infiltrated

most security agencies at all levels throughout Mexico. In 2008, the govern-
ment arrested its own Director of Counter Narcotics who had been recruited
by one of the organized crime groups to pass along any and all critical oper-
ational intelligence related to the ongoing counter-narcotics activities in the
country.20 Intelligence sources that advised this shocked U.S. drug enforce-
ment authorities and revealed just how high up within the Mexican security
bureaucracy at all levels both the corruption and overall reach of the drug
cartels had gone. Over the past two years, while the government has made
its usual pronouncements of making positive headway against the various
organized crime groups and corruption within even the highest ranks of its
security institutions, these pronouncements did not factor in the combina-
tion of high levels of poverty, weak institutional security frameworks and
increasingly powerful organized crime groups, which have created what the
Guardian calls a perfect storm of increasing corruption and drug-related
violence within Mexico.21
The Latin America Monitor further noted in 2011 that countries with
weak institutions will (inevitably) fall victim to narco-trafficking with
greater ease, and the lure of drug money has proved difficult to resist for
many poorly paid army and police officersand often higher ranking of-
ficialsacross the Latin American region.22 Fired police officers in Mexico
often tend to join the criminal ranks (taking their training and information
with them) thus only further complicating an already serious situation for
all local, state, and national security authorities. President Caldern com-
mented on this fact as far back as March and October 2009 when he stated
that corruption was an extremely serious problem within the various levels
of police forces throughout Mexico and was thus a primary reason for his
governments decision to turn the counter-narcotics fight in Mexico over
to the military adding that the future of democracy in Mexico is at stake
in the governments fight against corruption and organized crime.23 This
despite continued reliance on U.S. security support which was outlined in a
U.S. diplomatic cable back in 2009 (and outed by Wikileaks in 2010) which
indicated the Mexican security apparatus was fractured, ad hoc, and reliant
179
on U.S. support to weather the high levels of corruption within.24 It has been
the degree of U.S. support that has always been a contentious issue within
Mexican political circles but it has also been accepted as a necessary evil and
one which often receives unwanted publicity not only for Mexican secur-
ity officials but also their U.S. counterparts. In early August 2012, two C.I.A.
officers were wounded in an Embassy vehicle travelling south of Mexico
City. The vehicle, which also held a Mexican naval officer, was attacked by
gunmen believed to be Mexican federal police officers. President Caldern
had previously authorized a much larger role for U.S. counter-narcotics oper-
ations within Mexico but this latest incident (similar to the killing of an I.C.E.
agent in 2011 in a U.S. Embassy vehicle), has again called into question the
overall quality of the federal police force, with one observer stating that
we are seeing the unraveling of what was supposed to be the main achieve-
ment in the fight against Mexican organized crime, which is the creation of a
trustworthy national police.25
These latest incidents have only given added firm credence to one of
President Calderns final public statements on the overall progress against
organized crime in Mexico when he said that after six years and 60,000
deaths, it is impossible to stop the drug trade, an ominous prediction for
incoming President Pea Nieto and President Obama in dealing with what
some analysts have characterized as a country which may currently be in the
throes of a second Mexican Revolution with corruption within its security
institutions at its very heart.26 As one U.S. think-tank stated back in 2010,
Mexico has ironically become a tremendous beneficiary of the drug trade
and internal security corruption with some $35$40 billion now flowing into
the national economy each year, with the Mexican police and military almost
unmotivated to take the necessary risks to stem this huge assault on its in-
ternal stability and security which, ironically, also provides jobs and added
income to Mexican families throughout the country.27 This economic impact
is another very important factor to consider when looking at Mexicos inher-
ent inability to successfully combat corruption within its security ranks.
Colombia
With the longest running democracy in South America, Colombia has had
a long and violent history with terrorist and criminal groups, which, at one
point in the mid-1990s, gave rise to Colombia being characterized as likely
the most dangerous and corrupt country in the world. As with Mexico, cor-
ruption within Colombias security institutions has been instrumental in
its ongoing problems in dealing with these domestic threats to peace and
180
greg purdy
stability within the country. The major difference now is that the corrup-
tion is being increasingly driven by the power of the Mexican drug cartels
that control both their Colombian counterparts and the degree of corruption
within the Colombian security apparatus, particularly the recently disbanded
Departamento Administrativo del Servicio (DAS) in 2011.28 This prompted
the Pea Nieto administration to plan to increase its overall strategic and
tactical ties with Colombia in the fight against crime and drug trafficking as
it impacts their own respective security institutions in Mexico.29
Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland asserted in 2002 that Colombia
is the only instance where a criminal group has directly attacked a modern
government through successfully exploiting the corruption issues within
a countrys security institutions and the power of narcotrafficking.30 This
certainly sets Colombia apart from other countries in Latin America where
attacks upon security forces and intelligence agencies, rather than the foun-
dations of government, have been the norm. Most discussions with security
officials within the Colombian government tend to center on how the federal
government itself will engage the hostile FARC and its related tentacles in
so-called peace negotiations rather than how the government can tackle
internal corruption, which is acknowledged as self-evident throughout
even the most recent history of Colombia.
Throughout the years, Colombias security forces have consistently been
deemed to be one of the most challenged, sophisticated, and yet problematic
institutions in that particular region of Latin America as a whole. Indeed, it
would not be incorrect to say that the primary concern for Canadian security
interests is less the FARC, ELN (National Liberation Army) or paramilitaries
per se, although we have always been concerned about any members of these
terrorist entities being able to successfully enter Canada via an already
swamped immigration visa process. The real concern is how our own intel-
ligence and police agencies deal with an organized crime and narcotics traf-
ficking network in Colombia whose activities often reach well into Canada
and are supported by corrupted security forces throughout the region, the
least of which is Colombia itself. Most foreign security forces operating
within Colombia do so in the context of cooperation and trying to counter the
flow of drugs and weapons that transit that country to/from various destina-
tions around the world. Both the United States and the United Kingdom are
the first and second largest donors of security assistance to Colombia, which
comes in various forms such as military equipment, advisors, training, and
intelligence sharing to select Colombian security departments. As with U.S.
military help, this British assistance has included SAS training to the nar-
181
cotics division within the Colombian National Police, military advice to the
Colombian armys counter-insurgency forces, additional military hardware
and intelligence equipment, and assistance in setting up an elite intelligence
center and a joint intelligence committee.31 In addition to contributing to
these pro-active measures and further to the concerns about known corrupt
elements within Colombias overall security apparatus, this security assist-
ance has also had to deal with any links it may have with violations of human
rights activities by domestic security forces within the country as a whole.32
These combined factors provide an extremely difficult and challenging oper-
ating environment for all Western foreign police and intelligence services
presently working in Colombia.
Evidence of Russian, Irish, Asian, and other organized crime groups as
well as Mexican drug gangs cooperating with the FARC have been detected
for years and this influence has added to the whole corruption scene within
Colombias security environment. As evidenced in other past and publicly
available reports, Colombia has struggled for years with corruption within
the old DAS itself with at least three of the former Directors being arrested
on various charges. In response to this fact, foreign security and intelligence
services had tended to rely more on the military and Colombian National
Police (CNP) intelligence directorates for key liaison and operational pur-
poses, although certainly dealing with the DAS was still a requirement in the
interests of overt diplomatic cooperation with Colombia in the ongoing fight
against the organized crime groups throughout Latin America.
The ongoing requirement for foreign agencies to liaise with the DAS in
Bogot was complicated by the high turnover rate within the intelligence
service that included key individuals right up to and including the Director
of the DAS itself. In this regard, it is important to note that unlike Mexico,
which uses its intelligence service to root out corruption within the nations
security bureaucracy, Colombia had exactly the opposite situation where its
former intelligence service was one of the major security institutions to be
distrusted. This had tremendous ramifications for those foreign intelligence
services operating in the host country where daily operational requirements
necessitated close liaison with the very agency that was suspected of being
corrupt. In such an operating environment, ongoing efforts to maintain a
cooperative and trusted relationship between Colombian and various for-
eign security forces as a whole often was very problematic to the detriment of
all joint counter-narcotic/terrorist operations in the country.
Allegations that the DAS was corrupt are not new and have come from
a range of sources including those within the DAS itself. This included an
182
greg purdy
allegation in 2009 by a former DAS official, Rafael Garcia, that the Colombian
intelligence services as a whole have facilitated paramilitary drug traffick-
ing.33 This also covered ongoing suspicions that the DAS had both supported
the paramilitaries in their anti-FARC and narcotrafficking activities as well
as defended the prevailing governing political party against its political
opponents. The latter allegations took on major implications in 2008 when
information surfaced that Mara del Pilar Hurtado, a former Director of the
DAS, may have cooperated with the prevailing President Uribe administra-
tion in spying on the political opposition and court judges through the use of
unauthorized wiretaps.34
Ms. Hurtados actual role and whether President Uribe knew what was
going on may never be known as she defected to Panama in 2010 causing a
brief flurry of protests from Colombia to the Panamanian government, an
issue which continues to occupy the new Santos administration but which
will likely not receive any firm resolution anytime soon. Ironically, Panamas
own Attorney General at the time, Ana Matilde Gmez, had been earlier
suspended and banned from travelling abroad for having allegedly illegally
authorized wiretaps against some of that countrys political opponents.35
Without question, the Hurtado/DAS scandal was a major one for the
Colombian government of the day and it is one which continues to impact
the credibility of all Colombian security institutions to this very day. Even
as far back as 2000 during the Pastrana administration, the FARC and ELN
were making comments that the entire Colombian government was so cor-
rupt that only a revolution would resolve the situation, a claim that clearly
was self-serving but certainly brought the issue even further into the political
spotlight.36 In 2010, The Economist published an article entitled Spying and
Corruption in Colombia - The Dark Side that essentially dealt with corruption
within Colombias political and government structure as a whole noting that
even the nations presidents had been complicit in the ongoing web of deceit
and lies all in the name of national security.37
As noted earlier, the influence of the Mexican organized crime groups
cannot be overestimated when dealing with their strong influence over both
the power of the Colombian organized crime groups and the actual level of
corruption within the Colombian security apparatus throughout all sectors
of government. One of the major Mexican cartels, Los Zetas, has combined
its operations in Colombia with a Colombian group known as Los Rastrojos
and together they control much of the territory within Colombias La Guajira
department.38 It is important to remember in this discussion of the weak-
nesses of the Mexican and Colombian security structures that the level of
183
sophistication and depth of the various organized crime groups in both

countries is extremely effective and the capabilities of their own respective
intelligence networks should never be under estimated. It is both extensive
and professional and includes counter-intelligence operations, covert sur-
veillance (including electronic), false flag and undercover operations against
government security forces, rival cartels, and other targets of interest. These
are operational capabilities that work in the favour of these crime groups at
all times. In the mid-1990s, a key member of the Cali Cartel was recruited
by U.S. and Colombian security authorities and was instrumental in the
destruction of the cartel, which was making over $7 billion per year at that
point. Jorge Salcedo would go on to write a tell-all book entitled At the Devils
Table and briefly noted the following:
Drug cartels, whether in Colombia or Mexico, cannot function

without massive assistance from compromised officials at all lev-
els. Corruption is the oxygen that keeps organized crime alive.
the Colombian (and Mexican) public needs tosweep out offi-
cials at all levels who have sold their souls to organized crime
neither country can succeed against its drug gangs without chok-
ing off much of the bribery and intimidation that sustain them.39
Salcedos primary job was overseeing security for the Cali cartel and
was directly paying bribes to hundreds of high-level Colombian security and
political officials. This included one chief of staff to a military commander
who received $20,000 a month, paying off justice officials and prosecutors
to lose evidence, misplace paperwork, block search warrants or release pris-
oners before they could be arrested. He added that some judges became
overnight millionaires .while politicians were considered a long-term
investment (and) a total of $6 million in secret donations made Ernesto
Samper our President.40
Having effective and timely advance intelligence about internal police,
intelligence, and rival gang operations is a primary objective for each of the
organized crime groups in Mexico and Colombia and they have shown to
date that they are not only very good at securing that information but getting
it at any cost. The Zetas are particularly adept at this particular activity as
many of their members are ex-military and/or ex-police previously trained in
intelligence functions for the Mexican government. This specialty has been
passed along to their Colombian counterparts including the FARC and ELN.
Coopting informants within a host countrys intelligence and/or police forces
184
greg purdy
is a major preoccupation of the organized crime groups in Colombia, Mexico,

and elsewhere in Latin America and that process is greatly enhanced when
there are already problems within the host countrys security apparatus that
make potential informants susceptible to a recruitment approach (i.e. poor
salaries, inadequate training, and threats to family members).
Conclusions
Clearly, corruption reigns supreme in both Mexico and Colombia and this
short paper only begins to touch on both the extent and depth of this prob-
lem for most, if not all, of the security institutions within this large region. In
addition to those noted above, most other Latin American countries notably
Peru, Honduras, Guatemala, and Argentina have been wrestling with cor-
ruption within their own domestic security agencies for years. This battle has
taken on added complexity as the Mexican drug cartels have extended their
influence further down into those particular countries in South America. In
many ways, the Mexican drug cartel problem has become a Latin American
problem as a whole from a corruptive destabilizing standpoint. The power
and the reach of the Mexican cartels are both far-reaching and overwhelm-
ing for the vast majority of security officials who are extremely susceptible to
these forces for a variety of reasons already stated. This is particularly true
for the smaller countries, which have little resources and even less money
to employ in any protracted counter-narcotics war in Central and/or South
America as Mexico and Colombia have done in recent years. Unfortunately,
the respective drug cartels operating throughout Latin America are also
very aware of this deficiency. Indeed, it has only reinforced their own efforts
to pursue any and all corruptive actions to both undermine every facet of
police, intelligence, and military security operations being employed against
them and bring instability to many countries in this particular region of the
world.
Notes
1 Canadian Security Intelligence Ser- 5 Calgary Herald, September 17, 2012.
vice, Perspectives Report, August 2000.
6 Calgary Sun, September 15, 2010.
2 Ibid.
7 Mexican Government, personal meet-
3 James Woolsey, Organized Crime and ing with author, June 2011.
Threats to U.S. International Security
8 U.S. State Department, Annual Report
(Washington: Center for Strategic &
on Global Counter-Narcotics, February
International Studies, 1994).
28, 2009.
4 Canadian Security Intelligence Ser-
9 Beth J. Asch, Nicholas Burger, and
vice, Commentary, 1996.
Mary Manqing Fu, Mitigating Cor-
185
ruption in Government Security Forces: 25 Randal C. Archibold, Americans

The Role of Institutional Incentives and Shot in Mexico Were C.I.A. Operatives
Personnel Management in Mexico (Santa Aiding in Drug War, New York Times,
Monica, California: Rand Corpora- August 28, 2012.
tion, 2011).
26 The Economist, November 23, 2012.
10 Global Security, accessed March 9,
27 Stratfor Global Intelligence, accessed
2012, http://www.globalsecurity.org.
April 6, 2010, http://www.stratfor.com/.
11 Ibid.
28 The DAS was disbanded on October
12 Ibid. 31, 2011, and replaced by the new
National Directorate of Intelligence
13 Stratfor Global Intelligence, accessed
(DNI).
September 26, 2012, http://www.strat-
for.com/. The Guardian, November 1, 2011.
14 The Economist, October 20, 2012. 29 Stratfor Global Intelligence, accessed
on September 18, 2012, http://www.
15 Mexican Government, personal meet-
stratfor.com/.
ing with author, June 2011.
30 Peter Reuter, Conference on Orga-
16 The Guardian, September 09, 2010.
nized Crime and Corruption of State
17 Mexican Government, personal meet- Institutions (paper presented, Univer-
ing with author, June 2011. sity of Maryland, November 18, 2002).
18 Stratfor Global Intelligence, accessed 31 The Guardian, July 9, 2003.
December 17, 2012, http://www.strat-
32 Ibid.
for.com/.
33 Colombia Reports, September 18, 2009.
2012, http://www.globalsecurity.org. 34 The Economist, November 22, 2010.
20 Mexican Government, personal meet- 35 Ibid.
ing with author, June 2011.
21 The Guardian, September 9, 2010. 2012, http://www.globalsecurity.org.
22 Latin America Monitor, accessed 37 Spying and Corruption in Colombia
November 21, 2011, http://www.latina- - The Dark Side, The Economist, No-
mericamonitor.com. vember 4, 2010.
23 Global Security, accessed March 9, 38 The Economist, April 28, 2012.
2012, http://www.globalsecurity.org.
39 CNN, January 18, 2012.
24 The Guardian, September 9, 2010.
40 Ibid.
186
Organized Crime, Institutions, and

Security in Central America
Jos Miguel Cruz, Florida International University,
United States
I
n March 2010, Guatemalan authorities arrested the national police direc-
tor and the chief of the police anti-drugs unit on charges of drug-traffick-
ing, abuse of authority, and obstruction of justice. Those detentions came
only six months after the preceding head of the Guatemalan national police
had been also linked to drug cartels and criminal networks operating inside
the police.1 Two years later, in March 2012, another former director of the
Guatemalan police, the first woman leading a law-enforcement institution
in the country, was also arrested for her involvement in a number of extra-
judicial killings in 2009.2
These cases exemplify the extent of the infiltration of criminal networks
within Central American state institutions. Guatemalan institutions are a
particularly egregious case but similar events also appear in other Central
American countries besieged by criminal violence. In the last five years, top
law-enforcement officials in Honduras and El Salvador have been linked
and prosecuted for criminal activities ranging from murder to connections
with criminal organizations. The cases of top government officials regularly
involved in illegal activities reflect an important aspect of the current crisis
of public security in Central America: the participation of state agents as
perpetrators and partners in criminal structures.
The northern triangle of Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Honduras) stands as one of the most violent in Latin America and the world.
According to the latest official statistics on crime in the region, by 2010 these
three countries had a combined average murder rate of 62 homicides per
100,000 inhabitants.3 In the last decade, the countries of Central America
have experienced an increase in homicidal violence and an unrelenting
process of penetration of the security forces by criminal organized groups.
Most literature has explained the current security crisis as a direct result of
the proliferation of youth gangs known as maras,4 as well as an ever deeper
penetration of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in Central America
following the Mexican drug on wars launched in 2007.5 According to these
views, there are two factors that explain the emergence and rise of the main

organized crime, institutions, and security in central america
security threats mentioned above. One, the shifting routes of drug flows in
the 1990s from the Caribbean to Central America and Mexico; and two, the
policies of deportation that led to the arrival of thousands of gang members
from the United States to northern Central America at the end of the 1990s.6
While these phenomena have indeed contributed to the increase of violence
in the region, I contend that the current security crisis cannot be understood
without looking at the history of policies and political decisions that have
repeatedly ignored the importance of strengthening criminal justice institu-
tions. These strategies have derailed efforts to develop comprehensive ap-
proaches to fight corruption and the penetration of organized crime in local
institutions while pumping up the heavy hand approaches in tackling crime.
During the last decade, security policies have swung back and forth be-
tween suppression-only approaches and well intentioned overreaching, but
haphazardly implemented, policies of security. The result has been that the
governments of the northern triangle of Central America have neglected the
development of security policies that incorporate long-term strategies aimed
at mitigating the structural causes of violence, while tackling at the same
time the situational and contingent precipitants of crime. Governments,
furthermore, have neglected the creation and enforcement of accountability
mechanisms within the security and justice apparatuses. Corruption and
lack of accountability are, arguably, the main obstacles to implement a crim-
inal-justice system capable of dealing with the crisis of security in Central
America, especially in the northern triangle. As such, they are also one of
the most important causes of the current security governance crisis in the
region.
In light of this, the decision of the governments to authorize and priv-
ilege the use of military forces in their fight against criminal organizations
has had negative, even if unintended, consequences for the states institu-
tional capacities to confront crime and to maintain (and in some cases attain)
citizens trust in its institutions. As pointed out by Santamara and Cruz
(2013), the use of the armed forces and law-enforcement tactical teams has
been justified under two interrelated premises. First, the persistence of weak,
corrupted, and poorly coordinated police forces at the local and national lev-
els; and second, the upsurge of criminal organizations which proliferating
levels of violence and state penetration have demanded a rapid and alterna-
tive security apparatus capable of articulating effective responses to crime.
Based on these two premises, the governments of the region launched a set
of militarized strategies under emergency decrees followed by a declaration
of war against gangs and criminal organizations. The most famous decrees
188
jos miguel cruz
revolved around the so-called mano dura plans, which became popular in
northern Central America between 2000 and 2007. These strategies constitute
what Santamara and Cruz (2013) have referred to as the new wars, that is,
wars directed against criminal actors whose main objective is not to attain
and/or transform political power but maximize profits from criminal and
illegal activities.
The aim of this paper is to describe the security crisis in Central America
and examine the institutional efforts that have been implemented to address
the issue of insecurity in the region. This paper has four sections. First, it
delineates the current security crisis in the region. Second, it reviews the
main strategies adopted by the governments of these countries in order to
confront criminal organizations, particularly criminal organizations and
the maras. In the third section, the paper discusses the main contributions
in terms of regional cooperation with particular emphasis on the Security
Commission of the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the
Regional Initiative for Central Americas Security (CARSI). Finally, the paper
concludes with a fourth section where potential policy recommendations are
presented in order to improve current sub-regional cooperation strategies on
issues of security.
The Security Crisis

According to different sources, the countries of the northern triangle of
Central America are now considered the most violent region of the world.
In the late 2000s, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
entertained the idea that Central American nations may have recently sur-
passed the traditional world leaders in the number of murders committed
per 100,000 members of the population.7 By 2011, there is little doubt that
countries such as Honduras and El Salvador have gone well beyond the his-
toric threshold established by other Latin American countries. Police figures
indicate that in 2011 Honduras topped the homicide rate of 86 per 100,000
inhabitants mark, whereas El Salvador reached more than 70 murders per
100,000 populations.8 According to unconfirmed official data from 2011, only
Guatemala has experienced a relatively stable trend in homicides (42 per
100,000 inhabitants), although the northern region of Petn might see rates
above 90 per 100,000.9 Still, the Guatemalan rate of homicides is noticeably
high, even for Latin American averages.
Homicide rates are just one of the most dramatic indicators of the recent
security crisis in the sub-region. Equally important are the high levels of
perception of crime and insecurity amongst Central Americans. According
189
to the 2012 Americas Barometer, in Guatemala and El Salvador, more than

30 percent of the population feels insecure due to crime.10 In Nicaragua and
Costa Rica, perceptions of insecurity are also high, although their levels of
homicidal violence do not reach the soaring levels of the northern neighbors.
Besides victimization itself, the role played by criminal organizations
of different sort in the production and reproduction of higher perceptions
of violence cannot be underestimated. Extensive networks of youth gangs
and domestic criminal organizations linked to Mexican and Colombian
drug cartels constitute an important variable of this crisis in El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras. These organizations are responsible for extor-
tions, kidnappings, arms trafficking and hit-men networks. Youth gangs
are perhaps the most prominent among these groups. Estimates for gang
membership reach 28,000 in El Salvador, 20,000 in Honduras, and more than
15,000 in Guatemala.11 There are conflicting data about the extent of gangs
participation in homicides in those three countries, but a review of the most
consistent data collected in El Salvador shows that the participation of gang
organizations in homicidal violence has been mounting throughout the
2000s. Figure 1 shows the percentage of murders attributable to youth gangs
in El Salvador since 1999.
According to an internal report of the Investigation Division of the
Salvadoran police, 76 percent of extortions committed in that country were
Figure 1. Percentage of Gang-Related Homicides Recorded by the IML per Year in

El Salvador, 19982008.
(Source: Authors research based on data from Instituto de Medicina Legal, 1999, 2002,
2009.)
190
jos miguel cruz
perpetrated by youth gangs, primarily the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and

Barrio 18.12 The same report indicates that in those cases investigated by
the police, street gangs demanded nearly $4 million from their victims in
2011. Guatemalan police reported that local maras collected an estimated $2
million in the suburban community of Villanueva.13 Youth gangs have also
become an indispensable labor force for criminal activities conducted by
stronger cartels in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Street gangs pro-
vide security to the corridors of drugs in Central America, conduct retalia-
tion operations against other groups, and control some of the street markets
for narcotic leftovers.
In the case of Nicaragua, street gangs had, up until recently, retained
a much more traditional profile. That is, they had operated in atomized
groups whose main goal was to create a sense of cohesion, solidarity, and
respect amongst their members. What is more, they were characterized by
a rather marginal presence in the production of violence and their partici-
pation in criminal activities, limited regularly to robberies and other minor
offenses, was aimed at getting resources for drug and alcohol consumption
within the gang but did not appear as a main driver of the organization.14
However, Nicaraguan youth gangs have become more closely associated
with drug trafficking organizations in recent years, participating in the local
distribution of drugs and providing illegal arms for these groups. Among
other things, Nicaraguan gangs have lost their connection with the commun-
ities in which they operate, integrate less and more disciplined members, and
their organization is oriented towards the sale of drugs, particularly crack.15
Nonetheless, it is important to say that in the case of Nicaragua, more than
the street gangs of the urban centers of the countries, it is the local criminal
organizations working in the economically and socially neglected region of
the Caribbean Coast who have developed a greater role in the transnational
trafficking of drugs and arms from Nicaragua to other countries in the
Americas.16 This penetration of DTOs is even more ostensible in the Atlantic
coasts of Honduras and Guatemala.17
The current landscape of violence and insecurity is mainly driven by
the increasing and overpowering presence of transnational DTOs, but in
reality, drug trafficking organizations have been operating in Honduras and
Guatemala long before the end of the political conflicts of the 1980s, when
they established drug transshipment routes in Central America with the help
of government officials and military personnel.18 However, the deranging of
the drug flows in the Caribbean in the 1990s and the drug wars in Colombia
and Mexico during the 2000s led to the consolidation of transnational crime
191
in the institutionally weak states of Central America. DTOs in Guatemala

and Honduras have effectively taken control over wilderness areas along the
Atlantic coast and used them as safe havens and launch pads for internation-
al drug trafficking. Groups such as the Mexican Zetas, the Sinaloa cartel, and
the scraps of former large Colombian criminal organizations have introduced
new conflicts over the control of territories and drug routes, and contributed
to the growing death toll. The increasingly transnational character of Zetas
in the sub-region deserves closer attention. In contrast to other Mexican
DTOs that have established collaborative networks in Honduras, El Salvador,
and Guatemala through alliances with local criminal organizations (mostly
engaged in smuggling of drugs, firearms, and contraband products),19 the
Zetas have actually decided to recruit nationals from Guatemala that report
directly to their organization without the use of intermediaries. In particular,
building on their own experience as former Mexican Special Forces units,
there is evidence of Zetas having been able to recruit former members of
the Kaibiles, an elite counter insurgency unit of the Guatemala army.20 The
expansion of the Zetas, through the recruitment of former Guatemalan of-
ficials, further illustrates the level of vulnerability of Guatemalas institutions
in regards to DTOs and organized crime. It also highlights the need to work
towards cooperation initiatives that can strengthen this countrys institu-
tional and accountability capacities and should serve as a cautionary tale in
regards to the inclusion of Kaibiles in counter-narcotics operations along the
Guatemalan-Mexican border.21
The Security Strategies

Since the mid-1990s in Central America, security policies have constantly
swung back and forth from zero tolerance, heavy handed all-out-war-
against-crime campaigns, to rather vague initiatives along some notions of
community policing and prevention. The mano dura plans implemented with
different degrees by the three countries of the northern triangle constitute
the best example of the zero tolerance type of programs in vogue during most
of the 2000s. Mano dura policies revolved around new laws and penal codes
that dictated the criminalization of youth by banning any street group, the
expansion of police power by providing them with discretionary faculties,
and the limitation of civil rights.22 They allowed police intervention based
heavily on military-type strategy.
Honduras and El Salvador both approved laws or legal reforms allowing
security forces to pursue and capture youths suspected of belonging to a
gang without evidence. In doing that, governments moved to reclaim the use
192
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of national armies in operations against gangs, and developed operations

that allowed for the capture and mass incarceration of gang members, thus
saturating and overpopulating inadequate penitentiary systems. In fact, one
of the first controversial results of the zero tolerance programs in Central
America was extreme prison overcrowding. In El Salvador, the National
Civilian Police captured nearly 31,000 gang members from 2003 to 2005,
although most of them were released immediately after.23 In Honduras,
operations aimed at incarcerating gang members resulted in a much smaller
number of gang members in prison. Approximately 5,000 persons were
incarcerated in a two-year span, accused of forming part of illegal asso-
ciations, a legal category under which gang members could be jailed.24 The
intensity of operations in Honduras, which legal system permitted longer
prison sentences for gang members, reduced the number of gang members
on the streets during the first months and, along with them, the number of
later arrests. However, human rights conditions deteriorated as these policies
were implemented.25 Guatemala never reformed or enacted a special anti-
gang law as part of a zero tolerance plan, but under the Alfonso Portillo ad-
ministration (2000-2004), this country was the first in allowing the police to
use artifices in the existing laws to carry out massive crackdowns on gangs.
Between 2003 and 2000, more than 22,000 persons were detained for gang-
related crimes. However, the operations frequently returned poor results in
sending all detainees to prison, as judges did not find sufficient evidence for
indictment or determined that the evidence was collected illegally.26
Mano dura programs yielded mixed results in Central America. In
Honduras, homicide rates remained high but relatively stable (around 45
homicides per 100,000 inhabitants) during the implementation of President
Maduros zero tolerance program. However, homicides increased rapidly
during Zelayas administration and skyrocketed following the 2009 coup
dtat. By 2010, murder rates had increased by nearly 190 percent in compari-
son with 2004.27 In Guatemala, rates increased from 26 murders per 100,000
people in 2000 to 36 per 100,000 during Portillos tenure and continued to
climb to 46 by 2009 .28 Nonetheless, it is in El Salvador where the mano dura
programs seem to have produced a significant increment in the levels of
crime. Rates went from 36 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2003, the
year of the implementation of the first mano dura plan, to 49 murders per
100,000 people in 2006, when a new phase of the plan was announced by the
administration of President Antonio Saca. By 2006, rates reached 65 murders
per 100,000 populations. The explicit heavy-handed plans were abandoned
in 2007. Although murder rates experienced important declines during 2007
193
and 2008, the last two years of the Saca administration, violence soared again
in 2009, the first year in the government of President Funes (see Figure 2).
In sum, zero tolerance programs left the region not only with more homi-
cidal violence but also with pressing problems in the penitentiary systems,
human rights crises, and stronger street gangs. Post mano dura initiatives have
been characterized by tensions between continuing with aggressive crime-
suppression approaches and designing more comprehensive approaches that
include intelligence gathering, prevention, and accountability. For instance,
the failure of the heavy hand plans in El Salvador prompted President Saca
to declare in a summit of the Central American Integration System (SICA)
in 2007 that crime prevention should be the most important element in the
regional initiatives against crime. 29
In Honduras, after the zero tolerance years of President Maduro,
President Zelaya adopted a preventive approach, which nevertheless turned
out to be more rhetorical than real. After some time, security programs under
Zelaya slipped back to more traditional law-enforcement-only approaches,
while increasingly using the police and army for political tasks. The growing
political conflict and the economic crisis of 2008 ended up diverting the main
attention of Zelayas government on security. Public security issues and the
fight against organized crime were then almost completely neglected dur-
ing the 2009 coup detat and during the Micheletis government. The police
Figure 2. Number of Homicides in El Salvador, 1998-2011.
(Source: Polica Nacional Civil de El Salvador, 2012.)
194
jos miguel cruz
as well as the armed forces devoted most of their attention to control the
political opposition and the pro-Zelaya movement.
After the restoration of constitutional order with the general elections
of 2009, President Porfirio Lobo refocused governments efforts on security.
He increased the urban police patrols, enacted an emergency decree in order
to send military troops to perform public security tasks, and promoted laws
to increase accountability over drug seizures.30 However, these efforts did
not stop the spiraling levels of violence, the infiltration of international drug
cartels, and, more importantly, the involvement of law-enforcement officers
and top government officials in organized-crime activities. Scandals that
unveiled the vast networks of corruption within the Honduran police ended
up pushing the civilian security apparatus back to the military.
Guatemala, as noted in the introduction, is an interesting case for reveal-
ing the conflictive relationships within the governments when enacting and
implementing policies against criminal violence. It is also a cautionary note
about the spins of the extreme reliance on repression to combat crime. By the
mid-2000s, during the administration of President Oscar Berger, top officials
in the social and economic cabinets were not inclined to repressive approach-
es to gangs, but favored preventive plans. In 2005, the government enacted
a comprehensive National Policy of Youth Violence Prevention as part of an
effort to implement a broader approach to crime. However, law-enforcement
officials, including the minister of the interior and the chief of the police,
promoted a harsher line to the crime problem. The prevention policy was
never fully implemented and the police continued cracking down on crim-
inal groups supported by the public opinion. Some crackdowns degenerated
into extralegal cleansing operations, such as the extrajudicial execution of
seven inmates in the top-security prison of Pavn.31 Top government officials
were later indicted and imprisoned for their involvement in illegal oper-
ations. Given the levels of corruption and chronic weakness of Guatemalan
institutions, this country approved the creation of an in-situ international
body capable of conducting investigative and prosecutorial activities within
the country. The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala
(CICIG) was sanctioned by the Guatemalan Congress in 2007 and started its
operations in January 2008. Although mired in controversies during the first
years of the mandate given its faculty to participate as an external comple-
mentary prosecutor in criminal proceedings against Guatemalan public offi-
cials and organized crime, the Commission has quickly produced significant
results. It has successfully conducted investigations regarding high-profile
cases, against organized-crime organizations, and against corrupted offi-
195
cials. In some way, CICIG has become the underpinning of the Guatemalan
criminal justice system. It has contributed to the professionalization of rule
of law institutions, and has pushed for regulations, policies, and institu-
tional reforms that advance the capability of the government to fight against
crime.32 Yet, critics point out that such advances would fade away as soon as
CICIG ceases operations in 2013, as institutional transformations have not
taken root across the system.33
In El Salvador, after the cessation of the Super Mano Dura plan, the gov-
ernment turned to a more balanced approach against crime, and devoted
significant efforts to promote regional cooperation in the fight against or-
ganized-crime groups. The new government of Mauricio Funes pledged to
a comprehensive anti-crime program. The president backed his approach by
reshuffling his security cabinet and creating high-cabinet commissions that
would oversee the advances in the areas of law-enforcement and prevention.
He also proceeded to the formulation of a national policy of public security
and mid-term institutional strategies in every area of public security. These
strategies included the strengthening of the investigation capabilities in
the police, the underpinning of accountability mechanisms within the law-
enforcement institutions, reforms in the penitentiary system, and a signifi-
cant increase of funds for prevention programs to 14 percent of the security
budget.
However, the latter were also characterized by tensions between con-
tinuing with aggressive crime-suppression approaches and designing more
comprehensive approaches that incorporate intelligence gathering, preven-
tion, and accountability. In El Salvador, for instance, a new government
initiative has promoted the creation of municipal committees for violence
prevention. These groups aim to increase citizen participation in crime pre-
vention activities. However, a survey conducted by Vanderbilt Universitys
Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) showed in 2012 that only 20
percent of Salvadorans have heard of those initiatives.34
Despite these changes, law-enforcement agencies were unable to prevent
crime rates from ascending, and the effort to enact a comprehensive preven-
tion strategy stalled as a result of internal disputes at the different levels of
the government. In late 2011, Funes responded to the security crisis by re-
organizing his security cabinet. He appointed a military general as the new
minister of security and an army colonel as the new director of the National
Civilian Police. As a result, another reshuffle in the police ranks brought
the old guard to the forefront of the law-enforcement institutions and the
government turned again to the traditional suppressive approach. However,
196
jos miguel cruz
in a startling policy turn in 2012, the Salvadoran government engaged in a

process of talks with the leaderships of the major gang organizations in the
country. Those negotiations yielded a truce between the chapters of MS-13
(Mara Salvatrucha) and the Eighteenth Street Gang (Pandilla 18) in exchange
for the decision of the government to transfer gang leaders to less-restrictive
prison facilities and some concessions to the gang organizations.35 The pact
abruptly reduced the number of killings, and the average murders went
down nearly 45 percent from 2011 to 2012. While government officials have
refused to disclose the details of the negotiation process to the public, and
important sectors of the Salvadoran society remain skeptical about the impli-
cations of the truce for the rule of law in a country already affected by weak
institutions and poor governance, the truce has received credit and support
from the Organization of American States (OAS), and has been promoted as
a model for reducing violence in the region.36
Regional Cooperation
Since the end of the civil conflicts in the 1990s, Central American govern-
ments have stated their willingness to work together on security issues and
to form a unified block when approaching external donors to fund regional
initiatives. However, their integration has been more symbolic than factual.37
The Security Commission of SICA led the efforts to prepare a regional secur-
ity strategy that was adopted by the Central American governments in 2007.
Such strategy addressed eight threats to regional security: organized crime,
drug trafficking, deportees with criminal records, street gangs, homicide
rates, arms trafficking, terrorism, and corruption. However, the 2009 coup
in Honduras and the difficulties to secure enough funds upset the oper-
ational development of the strategy. In 2011, after a significant revision of
the strategy and the involvement of new international actors, SICA secured
the promise of nearly US$1.1 billion in additional funding for the regional
security initiative.
External cooperation has been instrumental in advancing security initia-
tives in Central America. Since the 1990s, international organizations, such
as the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United
Nations, USAID, and the World Bank have significantly supported security
efforts by investing and funding criminal-justice reform programs, especial-
ly in the areas of law-enforcement, prevention, and justice administration.
According to a study conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank
and the Washington Office on Latin America, between November 2009 and
June 2010, Central American countries benefitted from 375 internationally
197
funded security programs that added up to nearly US$1.6 billion. Ninety

percent of those funds were allocated to national governments, whereas
only 7 percent of the recipients were local governments and municipalities.
However, most prevention programs are conducted from city halls, not
national governments, and that has contributed to scattered efforts in the
implementation of preventive measures.
The United States stands as the most important single source of inter-
national cooperation for the Central American countries with a total of
US$377.9 million (33.4 percent of total funds), whereas the Inter-American
Development Bank, the World Bank, and Spain have each contributed with
a little more than US$140 million (12.5 percent each). Other donors are the
European Union, the United Nations, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Canada.
Nearly thirty-five percent of the funds are channeled to institutional
strengthening; that is, the development of institutional capacities related
to citizen security and management. Twenty percent of the international
funds for security are aimed to support prevention programs. Projects for
enhancing the institutional capacity to fight against organized crime receive
nearly 13 percent of the cooperation funds, and only 0.6 percent is devoted to
strategic information development.38
The Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) represents
the most important cooperation program on matters of security between
Central America and the United States. CARSI was created originally as part
of the Merida Initiative, an anti-drug trafficking program developed by the
Bush Administration focused on Mexico in 2008. As conditions of crime and
insecurity have worsened in most Central American countries during the
last years, the Obama Administration decided to strengthen the capacities of
the seven countries of the isthmus to address the security challenges as well
as the underlying economic conditions that contribute to them. From 2008
to 2012, Central America has received more than US$460 million in security
assistance from the United States through the CARSI package. Although an
important share of the funds has been devoted to economic development
programs, more than 62 percent of the assets have been oriented to narcotics
control and law enforcement, in addition to foreign military fundswhich
represent less than 7 percent of the appropriated funds. In any case, these
resources are heavily oriented to support drug interdiction operations and
enhance law-enforcement capabilities of the Central American institutions.
However, not all U.S. security assistance is channeled through CARSI.
In 2011, the United States announced another program called the Central
America Citizen Security Partnership, which would add nearly US$200 mil-
198
jos miguel cruz
lion to security assistance in the region through other bilateral and regional
programs.39 While most of those funding programs have revolved around
tackling drug-trafficking and suppressing criminal organizations by step-
ping up manpower capabilities, weapons, and military resources, most re-
sulting strategies have neglected the necessity of dealing with the problems
of corruption and crime inside Central American institutions. Consequently,
criminal justice institutions remain chronically pervaded by criminal organ-
izations and crooked officials.
Some Policy Recommendations

The security strategies adopted by most Central American countries have
privileged heavy handed and all-out-war approaches to criminal violence.
Considering the limited results that such policies have brought in, how could
the current security strategies and cooperation initiatives in the region be
strengthened? The institutional reforms developed to date have focused on
improving the professional and technical capabilities of the criminal-justice
systems while they have neglected the enforcement of accountability mech-
anisms and of preventive measures, which are urgently needed to secure
sustainable effects in combating crime and violence. However, any success-
ful security strategy requires state institutions and operators that are robust
and accountable enough to fulfill their mandates without violating the rule
of law. Regional efforts and international cooperation should put this issue at
the top of the list of initiatives to be implemented in the short term.
It is possible to consider three different potential ways in which inter-
national cooperation agencies can contribute to reinforce institutional
capabilities and transparency mechanisms in the region. These options go
from the characterization of institutional strengthening as an essential goal
for security reform to a more refined redirection of funds to accountability
institutions. Firstly, in many cases, international cooperation agencies can
advance significant institutional reform if they are willing to affirm and de-
mand unrestricted transparency and political commitment to institutional
accountability on the side of recipient countries. This course of action means
a reconsideration of the institutional structure of the security apparatuses,
and is, perhaps, the most radical among the set of choices available to actors
involved in reform process. In addition, it is also highly politically sensitive.
But it also should be one of the options that has to be put on the table as
recourse to address the problems of lack of transparency and institutional
weakness. Often, in the absence of a strong political commitment on the side
of the international community, local institutions continue tolerating ineffec-
199
tual structures and illegal practices that reproduce the problems of security
from the same government operatives.
Secondly, cooperation agencies can lobby for the creation of external
independent commissions responsible for investigating abuses, crim-
inal involvement, and impunity in institutions. The implementation of the
International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) by the
United Nations, with the support of the Guatemalan government, is an im-
portant case in point. The CICIG has been operating in the country since
2007 and aims to support and consolidate Guatemalas investigative and
prosecuting capacities against clandestine security organizations and state
agents participating in illegal forms of violence. Although some observers
claim that the CICIG is supplementing but not necessarily strengthening
Guatemalas institutions, it is important to underscore the fact that the com-
mission has taken steps in the right direction. Some authors have suggested
that this model could be followed by Honduras and El Salvador, which share
some of the challenges that Guatemalas security and justice apparatuses
have. As in the case of Guatemala, however, a political coalition would be
needed in order to be able to invite this initiative. Up until now, there seems
to be an ongoing dialogue in both of these countries in order to consider a
Honduran or Salvadoran commission, and some have even suggested that
a sub-regional commission could be created. In any case, this path of action
involves a strong sense of intervention from external actors, and a solid en-
gagement from the international community to see the commission become
operative and its recommendations implemented.
Finally, international cooperation agencies can redirect an important
share of their assets to the development of comptrollers offices and account-
ability mechanisms in the criminal-justice institutions of the region. This is
no easy task. In the seemingly insurmountable need to tackle the extreme
levels of insecurity and crime, international cooperation gets caught in the
never-ending urgencies of blocking the latest threat, and institutional reform
is pushed back in the queue of tasks. Thus far, most of the programs directed
to institutional strengthening, such as CARSI, have been concentrated in
equipment and training of public security forces, in the hope that better
equipped and skilled personnel will yield more professional and transparent
institutions. Except for some early programs supporting the creation of inter-
nal affairs units in the Central American police organizations, very little has
been done to underpin accountability mechanisms within law-enforcement
institutions. Even so, international cooperation can play a significant role in
reducing the problems of institutional weakness and corruption by concen-
200
jos miguel cruz
trating key assistance funds to programs of vertical and horizontal account-

ability, and by raising the overall political importance of these programs.
Although the intervention of international cooperation agencies in the
support and implementation of needed anti-corruption reforms in the region
can be perceived as an unacceptable course of interference, it may be a pol-
itically helpful strategy in order to sidestep the common internal resistances
and hurdles that every reform process faces. Under a regional commitment
to institutional reform, in which all countries participate and establish a
common set of goals, policy makers and reform stakeholders may garner not
only political support and legitimacy for their efforts, but also set the basis
for other constructive cooperation across the region. The seeming success
of countries such as Colombia and Brazil in exporting their security reform
models to other Latin American countries has gone hand in hand with the
promotion made by third-party cooperation agencies, who understood the
importance of using their leverage to bestow legitimacy to some local and
previously overlooked initiatives.
In Sum
The levels of transnational crime and violence present a significant challenge
to Central America, especially its northern triangle. The expansion of DTOs,
the evolution of youth gangs, and the skyrocketing rates of local crime
demand comprehensive responses. Given the regional and transnational
character of the problems, policy makers and stakeholders should corres-
pondingly incorporate concerted cross-national responses to those challen-
ges. This paper has focused on the magnitude of the crime problem in the
region and the extant international cooperation around it. Although massive,
most of the cooperation has neglected the need to address the problems in a
regional perspective and the importance of local institutional strengthening
beyond training and equipment of criminal justice institutions. Hence, in
addition to the initiatives that are already in place across the region, it is es-
sential to put institutional reform to boost accountability mechanisms at the
top of policies to confront violence in Central America. These countries have
already devoted a significant amount of resources, manpower, and equip-
ment to beef up institutions and programs that are nonetheless flawed and
ridden with corruption. It is time to use the political capital that international
organizations, cooperation agencies, and the countries themselves have
when they work in tandem, as well as when they engage in the creation of
models that can be used by their closest neighbors. International cooperation
agencies have an essential role in such tasks. They cannot only create the
201
incentives and spaces for this enterprise to happen, but they also can help to
ease the tensions that every effort of institutional transformation produces
by creating regional consensus and local responsiveness.
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Salvador. Enero a noviembre de 2011 (San
24 Ungar, 2009.
Salvador: PNC, 2011).
25 Amnesty International, Honduras:
13 (Polica Nacional Civil Situacin de
Zero Tolerance for Impunity. Extra-
maras en Guatemala. in Observatorio
judicial Executions of Children and
Centroamericano de la Violencia (OCA-
Youths since 1998. London: AI., 2003.
VI), 2007.
204
jos miguel cruz
26 Elin Cecilie Ranum . Street Gangs of Second Chances. in Organized Crime

Guatemala. in Maras. Gang Violence in Central America: The Northern Tri-
and Security in Central America, Thomas angle.
Bruneau, Luca Dammert, and Eliza-
33 Lpez, 2011.
beth Skinner. eds.(Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2011). 34 Ricardo Crdova Macas and Jos
Miguel Cruz, Cultura poltica de la de-
27 IUDPAS Instituto Universitario de De-
mocracia en El Salvador y en las Amricas,
mocracia, Paz y Seguridad. Boletin de
2012. Hacia la igualdad de oportunidades
Mortalidad y Otros. Observatorio de la
(San Salvador: FUNDAUNGO-USAID,
Violencia 24 (2012): 1-15.
2013).
28 Cruz, 2011.
35 Douglas Farah Transnational Or-
29 Peter Meyer and Clare Ribando Seelke ganized Crime. Central American
Central America Regional Security Initia- Gangs: Changing Nature and New
tive: Background and Policy Issues for Patterns, Journal of International Affairs
Congress (Washington, D.C.: Congres- 66, 1 (2012): 53-68.
sional Research Service, 2011).
36 Randal C. Archibold, Gangs Truce
30 James Bosworth Honduras: Orga- Buys El Salvador a Tenuous Peace,
nized Crime Gained Amid Political New York Times, August 27, 2012.
Crisis. in Organized Crime in Central
37 Meyer and Seelke, 2011.
America: The Northern Triangle, Cyn-
thia J. Arnson and Eric L. Olson, eds. 38 WOLA and IDB, Mapping Study of
(Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Internationally Funded Citizen Security
International Center for Scholars, Projects in Central America (Washing-
2011). ton, D.C.: WOLA, 2011) http://www.
wola.org/wola_publications.
31 Lafitte Fernndez, Crimen de Estado. El
caso PARLACEN (San Salvador: Aura 39 Meyer and Seelke, 2011.
Ediciones, 2011).
32 Julie Lpez Guatemalan Crossroads:
The Democratization of Violence and
205
(In)Security in Latin America:

Three Policy Options
Pablo Policzer and Elizabeth Pando-Burciaga,
The Problem
L
atin America is arguably the most violent region in the world.1 More
people die as a result of armedmostly criminalviolence in Latin
America than as a result of civil wars in Africa, the next most violent
continent.2 Arguably the most visible face of this problem of violence and
insecurity are gangs and drug trade related violence (i.e. violence produced
as a result of states efforts to curb drug trade activities or as a result of
rivalries between drug cartels). A common assumption is that the criminal
and state spheres are two separate domains without significant interaction
other than repression by the state in order to maintain its monopoly on the
use of violence. However, this paper challenges this view and argues that
the relationship is more complex than commonly assumed. There are two
types of complexities that need to be understood. The first is that criminal
actors and the state are not always antagonistic to each other, but often
have an organic, complex, and at times mutually beneficial association. In
such cases, the state may not have a clear interest in eliminating or even
antagonizing criminal organizations. Second, the organizational structure
of criminal organizations such as gangs is itself complex. This means that
traditional policies of repression and force toward gangs may not be effect-
ive, and different types of tactics may be required. Some Central American
states have already begun implementing innovative strategies beyond sim-
ply applying force in their dealings with criminal organizations, with some
level of success.
The first section of this paper provides a brief illustration of the crime
problem in Latin America, especially as posed by gangs and drug trafficking
organizations. The second section discusses the kind of complex interaction
and relationship between states and criminal groups, and suggests why it
may undermine traditional state approaches to containing violence. The
third section considers these traditional approaches in more depth, and fo-
cuses on some innovative new approaches to dealing with gangs.

(in)security in latin america: three policy options
The Gang Problem

Although gangs have long featured in Latin American societies, they have
grown in the past few decades. Reliable information on the scale, dynam-
ics, and demographics of gangs is scarce.3 Estimates of the total proportion
of contemporary regional violence attributable to gangs vary wildly from
10 to 60 percent, while they have been accused of a whole slew of crimes
and delinquency, ranging from mugging, theft, and intimidation, to rape,
assault, and organised/petty drug dealing.4 Reports from Central America
estimate anywhere from 70,000 (official figures) to 200,000 (academic figures)
gang membership.5 Even a lower estimate suggests that the numbers of
gang members rivals the armed forces of most countries in Central America:
Nicaragua and Honduras each have armies of about 12,000 active soldiers,
while El Salvador and Honduras have about 15,000 each.6 In other words,
even though gangs do not aim to take over the state, such as a rebel group
might, they are a serious challenge to the states ability to enforce the rule of
law and maintain sovereignty.
There are two main types of gangs in Central America: the pandillas and
the maras. Maras have transnational roots, while the pandillas originate dur-
ing the transition from war to peace in the region during the late 1980s and
early 1990s. During this period, demobilised youth combatants in Nicaragua,
El Salvador, and Guatemala returned to their home communities and faced
situations of heightened uncertainty, insecurity, and socio-economic flux
within a broader context of weak and fragile states unable to enforce the rule
of law. Some of these young men formed localised vigilante-style self-defence
groups in an attempt to provide a measure of order and predictability both
for themselves and their local communities.
The maras, on the other hand, are groups that can be directly linked to
specific migrations. Formally, there are just two maras, the Barrio Dieciocho (18)
and the Salvatrucha (MS). They originate especially in Los Angeles, dating
back to even the 1960s. 18 and MS rapidly became bitter rivals, and frequently
fought each other on the streets of Los Angeles. During the 1990s the State
of California implemented strict anti-gang laws and prosecutors charged
young gang members as adults instead of minors, sending hundreds to jail
for felonies and other serious crimes. By 1996, the U.S. Congress established
the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which
ensured that non-U.S. citizens sentenced to a year or more in prison were to
be repatriated to their countries of origin. Even foreign-born U.S. naturalised
felons could be stripped of their citizenship and expelled once they served
out their prison terms. As a result, between 2001 and 2010 the United States
208
pablo policzer and elizabeth pando-burciaga
deported almost 130,000 convicts to Central America.7 Deportees rapidly

began to found local chapters of their gang in their communities of origin,
which in turn rapidly began to attract local youth and either supplanted or
absorbed local pandillas.
In Brazil, the gangs have somewhat different origins, dating especially
to the prison populations of 1970s-80s. During this time, when Brazil was
under authoritarian rule, political and criminal prison populations were held
together in the same Brazilian jails. Originally small-scale and loosely organ-
ized criminal gangs grew in scale and organizational sophistication when
their leaders learned operational and organizational tactics from the political
prisoners with whom they were jailed.8 Today a number of sometimes well-
organized gangs operate throughout Brazil, especially in some of the largest
cities. They maintain close connections to the prison population, but extend
their reach into many sectors of society, and even the upper echelons of the
economic and political hierarchies.
The Drug Trade Problem

Drug trade organizations are not only an illegal economic activity, but have
proven to be a threat to Latin America security. In Colombia drug cartels
resorted to terrorism in their efforts to continue to freely pursue their eco-
nomic activities, sometimes including the murder of state officials, judges,
military officers, and politicians. In Mexico, drug cartels have also resorted
to terrorist practices against the civil population and regularly engage in
gruesome public violence against their competitors and enemies. In addi-
tion, these organizations are capable of co-opting judicial forces thanks to
the profitable business that the drug trade represents, as well as branching
out into other illegal activities such as extortion, kidnapping, and human
trafficking.
Initiatives such as the Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative illustrate
the amount of resources governments need to enlist as well as the limited suc-
cess of such initiatives in trying to establish security in the region. Initiatives
of this kind, aimed at fighting organized crime, terrorism, and drug trade
organizations, focus on the transfer of technology, intelligence, and military
assistance in the war against drugs. Colombia, considered during the 2000s
one of the most dangerous places in the world due to drug-related violence,
has been in the centre of U.S.-led efforts to combat drug-trafficking organ-
izations in the region. Almost US$8 billion during the ten year period from
2000 to 2010 were provided by the United States and used primarily for the
disruption of paramilitary involvement in drug trade.9 Under the Merida
209
Initiative, Mexico and Central America have received nearly $1.4 billion from
the United States to be used to provide equipment, training, and technical
assistance in the fight against organized crime and in the promotion of the
rule of law.10
In spite of initiatives such as the Plan Colombia and the Merida
Initiative, drug-related violence in Latin America has not been eradicated in
the last decade. Whereas in the 1990s and early 2000s governments faced
mainly hierarchical drug cartels (such as the Cali and Medelln cartels in
Colombia, and the Tijuana and Jurez cartels in Mexico), as a result of such
efforts, drug organizations have undergone a process of fragmentation and
decentralization.11 The vacuum left by the disappearance of large centralized
organizations such as the ones mentioned, has been occupied by a larger
number of smaller groups, in which members have more autonomy and less
control from the upper cadres. This mode of organization has made drug
cartels, albeit smaller and less capable of openly confronting the state, much
more resistant to law enforcement and dismantling. Given the proliferation
of drug trade organizations, Latin America is subject to the violence and
criminality caused by the fight for drug routes and markets by these smaller
cartels. Populations in slum neighbourhoods from Medelln to Ciudad Jurez
are subject to violence as drug traffickers fight for control of routes and access
to consumers. Here, the gang phenomenon becomes intertwined with the
drug-trade; gangs such as MS, 18, Barrio Azteca or La Lnea, act as protection
and enforcers for these new smaller drug cartels.
For example in Mexico, the government has pursued a strategy of dis-
articulation by capturing cartel leaders. This strategy has, however, had
the consequence of creating intra cartel violence as members seek to become
leaders, resulting in internal splits, and the creation of additional cartels.12
Thus, for example, while in 2007 drug cartels were present in twenty-one
Mexican states, by 2010 they were present in all except but one state.13 While
in 2006 there were six major cartels operating in Mexico, the number of active
cartels increased to sixteen by 2011.14 As the Mexican government increased
the arrests of major cartel leaders, individuals in middle management, usu-
ally jefes de plaza and jefes de sicarios, obtained more autonomy to establish
their illegal activities such as extortion and kidnapping. In addition, a cartel
leaders sudden departure creates a vacuum, resulting in internal conflict for
control, and usually in the fragmentation of the organization.15 To illustrate
the decentralization of Mexican cartels, the Sinaloa cartel has come to be
known as The Federation, as control of a territory is delegated to a different
chief.16
210
States and Criminals

The connections between the state and criminals have been noted in recent
literature.17 Some authors have focused on uncovering the connections be-
tween criminal groups and state formation in Latin America, or more spe-
cifically how formation and solidification of the state was advanced thanks
to the association between state officials (as well as political parties) and
criminals. In the case of Mexico, for example, Knight (2012) argues that the
Mexican state of the early twentieth century depended on practices such as
corruption and rent seeking from illicit activities. As the post-revolutionary
state attempted to regulate the life of its citizens more comprehensively and
systematically but without strong judicial institutions, rent seeking and cor-
ruption became institutional strategies. Rent seeking from illicit business is
fundamentally different from that of licit activities; illicit business is particu-
larly vulnerable to rent seeking because the state has an obligation to close it
down. This leads Knight to state that, in the relationship between polticos
and narcos, the real Mafia was found among the former.18 What Knight
suggests is that the Mexican state operated like a Mafia, in that it provided
protection (from itself) to drug organizations in return for high payments. It
is important to notice that for Knight, politicians sought personal rents from
this kind of practice, while preferring traditional forms of clientelism to gain
mass political support.
In the case of Colombia, Schulte-Bockholt (2006) argues that political
elites have used violence in their efforts to contain insurgent groups, not-
ing, the Colombian state is part of a protection racket that employs violence
against the excluded to maintain the supremacy of the oligarchic struc-
tures.19 Schulte-Bockholt argues that politically and ideologically, drug car-
tels and political elites are much more integrated, and their goal is virtually
the same: both are interested in containing guerrillas to protect, in the case
of the former, their economic investments and political advancement (what
he terms narcoburguesa), and for the latter, a stable economy for Colombia
and to maintain the political structures created after the civil war. In sum, in
the mutually beneficial relationship between drug cartels and political elites
in Colombia, elites provide drug cartels with political and economic power,
in return for drug cartels application of violence (through paramilitary and
counterinsurgent groups) to the enemies of the regime.20
Other analyses focus on more contemporary interactions between the
state and rival criminal groups. For example, Arias (2006) does not subscribe
to the view advanced by ODonnell (1993), which derives criminality from
the states incapacity to penetrate certain social and geographic areas, or
211
brown areas, where in turn the rule of law does not operate systematically.
Instead, Arias argues, the case of Rios favelas points not to the absence of
state or democracy, but to a particular articulation of state, social and crim-
inal relations which actively deploy state power in the service of criminal
interests.21 According to Arias, the predominant view that criminality is
caused by state failure fails to analyze the interactions between the full range
of actors (criminals, society, and state officials) which make criminality and
violence possible. On the one hand, traffickers depend on the residents of
their favela for protection, thus, they must maintain good relationships with
the community. Thus, once civic leaders have entered into an arrangement
with a politician for specific resources, criminal organizations appropriate
the distribution and access to such resources by the community. On the other
hand, politicians need the support of criminals in order to secure votes; it
is not enough for politicians to pact with civic leaders, because traffickers
control the distribution of selective incentives. For Arias, this relationship
becomes mutually reinforcing and beneficial for criminals and politicians.
The former need politicians who will bring in funds for community develop-
ment; by appropriating distribution of funds and resources, they maintain
their status as benefactors of their favelas, thus, ensuring protection by the
community. The latter need criminals in order to secure access to votes;
however, civic leaders broker the negotiations and in this way, politicians do
not have to appear to be making concessions to criminal groups. According
to Arias, such networking arrangements are highly sustainable, thus, sup-
porting the ongoing criminal and violent context.
Thus, the literature converges on the idea that the arrangements and
cooperation between criminal groups and the state is not accidental. While
at times either may have a political, military or economic advantage over
the other, both groups actively seek arrangements that are mutually bene-
ficial, because they depend on each other to fulfill their goals. The second
finding is that this mutually beneficial and reinforcing relationship occurs
within a democratic state. While the state may maintain its presence and
reach, its authority need not be confronted by criminals, but may be sup-
ported by them, in mutual support of each others goals. Democratization
has advanced in Latin American countries, with the weakening of one-
party hegemony or the end of authoritarian regimes, and the establishment
of relatively free and fair elections. For the foreseeable future, criminality
and violence will likely coincide with democracy. Against this backdrop of
sometimes close connections between the state and criminals, in the next
section we discuss the broad range of policiesranging from force to dia-
212
loguethat states in the region have resorted to in addressing the problem

of criminal violence.
Policies to Combat Crime

States have traditionally adopted three broad sets of policies to deal with
armed actors that challenge them, whether political or criminal groups:
force, public goods, and dialogue.
Often the first response to the problem of insecurity is the use of force.
There are many examples of such policies throughout the continent, espe-
cially in areas such as Central America, where the crime and insecurity
problem has been most acute. For example, in 2003, El Salvador adopted
a Mano Dura policy to combat the threat posed by criminal gangs. Under
this policy, gang members who flashed signs in public or bore gang tattoos
could be immediately jailed for up to five years. Between 2003 and 2004 about
20,000 gang members were arrested, although most were eventually released
without charge when the Mano Dura law was declared unconstitutional by
the Salvadoran Supreme Court for violating the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).22
A new Mano Super Dura package of anti-gang reforms was rapidly ap-
proved, which respected the provisions of the UNCRC but stiffened the pen-
alties for gang membership to up to five years in prison for ordinary gang
members, and nine years for gang leaders. Although under the new law the
police are required to demonstrate proof of active delinquent behaviour in
order to arrest an individual, El Salvadors prison population has tripled
from 4,000 to 12,000, a large portion of whom are gang members.23 Similar
policies have been adopted elsewhere in the region (e.g. Cero Tolerancia in
Honduras, Plan Escoba in Guatemala, similar programs in Brazil and of
course many places in North America, especially major U.S. cities), usually
with wide public support. Yet at the same time, the use of forceespecially
indiscriminate force that results in human rights or humanitarian law viola-
tionsalso carries a significant risk, especially to a states legitimacy.
One of the consequences of the increasingly connected world we live
in is that states need to be concerned not only with domestic but also with
international legitimacy, including how they treat their own citizens. Fewer
and fewer states around the world can brutalize their own citizens with im-
punity. In Latin America, where democratic regimes are the norm, the use of
indiscriminate force is politically more difficult than it was a generation ago,
when authoritarian regimes were the norm. Yet such use continues, despite
the fact that mano dura policies have failed to curb the rise in violence; and
213
there is evidence that these interventions have been generating significant

changes in gang dynamics, with increasing reports that the widespread
heavy-handed repression of gangs is leading to their becoming more organ-
ized, more adept at evading government authorities, and more violent.
When force fails or proves counterproductive, states sometimes try a
second approach, to provide public goods, or carrots as incentives to get
armed actors to move out of gangs, or to prevent them from joining gangs
in the first place. In Central America some states have shifted from a first
generation of mano dura policies to a second generation of mano extendida
policies, which include a range of activities, e.g. environmental design in
slums, targeted education and public health initiatives focusing on at
risk youths, gun-free zones, neighbourhood watch or public awareness
programs.24 While it is difficult to generalize about such a varied range of
programs and policies, it is safe to say that they are visible throughout the
region, directed either by governments, non-governmental organizations or
both in cooperation.
It is perhaps too early to say whether these policies have resolved the
problem of gang violence. This kind of second generation or public goods
approach is part of an emergent new framework that stresses an integrated
approach to violence prevention and reduction, which aims to address the
root causes of violence. What we can say, however, is that these policies are
often accompanied by what can be distinguished as a third approach, which
is different from simply providing public goods such as education or health
programs: dialogue.Dialogue involves direct engagement with an armed
actor: talking to them. This is part of somenot allpublic goods policies.
In many cases, non-governmental organizations or other actors (even states)
directly engage gang members, for example to persuade them to leave the
gang and move from violence to peace. Although such direct engagement is
a central component of other policies (such as disarmament, demobilization,
and reintegration programs), it bears considering as a separate policy instru-
ment because it has its own challenges.
First, it poses a political challenge, insofar as many of the critical actors
that need to be engaged are by definition outside the law, and states espe-
cially are as unwilling to talk to criminals as they are to talk to terrorists.
Yet we know that notwithstanding such bluster, direct engagement is as
commonplace with criminal organizations as it is with political groups. If
force fails to defeat the group in question, states in many cases move from
a we dont talk to criminals or terrorists position to directly engaging the
same actors they previously demonized.
214
One example of this is the innovative experiment in dialogue in El

Salvador in 2012, where leading political and civil society authoritiesin-
cluding the Salvadoran government, the Church, and even the Organization
of American States (OAS)helped broker a truce between the countrys two
major gangs, the 18 and the MS. While gangs have always negotiated with
each other (in addition to fighting each other), what is significant here is the
involvement of the government and the OAS, which have provided good
offices for the dialogue. In December of 2012, the gangs accepted a plan, in
which the maras promised not to commit crimes in ten violence-ridden mu-
nicipalities, and to hand their guns over to the authorities to prove that their
intentions were sincere. Under the plan, the gangs would work with non-
governmental organisations, churches, the government, and local mayors, to
create the conditions necessary for the social reinsertion of gang members.
This example shows that the security threat posed by gangs in El Salvador is
such that a desperate state is willing to think outside the box and experiment
with an innovative policy.
The second and probably the most critical challenge involved in dia-
logue with armed actors is that it is easier to engage an organization with a
clear central command than one that is more loosely organized. If an NGO
or even the government engages with the leaders of a hierarchical and cen-
trally organized group, they can reasonably expect their counterparts to be
able to deliver their organizations compliance with an agreement they
reach. But notwithstanding the fact that political leaders such as the OASs
Secretary General met the gang leaders, the maras themselves, and certainly
many other gangs in the region and elsewhere, are really networks of actors
and organizations, lacking such a hierarchical central command, or complex
blends of hierarchies and networks. Who does one talk to, and how?
When a decentralized group lacks a coherent central command, dialogue
and engagement are possible but need to be decentralized. What engagement
means needs to be redefined: it is not necessary to engage the core of the net-
work in order to engage its periphery, and it is not necessary to address the
whole of the issues dividing the state and its challengers in order to address
some of them. This can be called decentralized and dispersed engagement.25
At the same time, it is more difficult and easier than centralized engagement
with an organizations leadership. On the one hand, multiple peripheral
parties and players matter and may need to be engaged. On the other, such
engagement often involves a series of local problems and concerns that may
be more amenable to resolution than the single overriding conflict between
the state and the group in question.
215
Decentralized engagement may be more time-consuming and involve

more transaction costs (because more people may need to be engaged), and
it may be more ambiguous (because there are likely to always be holdouts,
meaning it is harder to reach a decisive end to the problem). But at the same
time it has lower start-up costs, because it is possible to engage a part of the
network, and address some very local issues or concerns without having to
address all of them.
This network and decentralized system perspective is consistent with
what we are coming to understand about the dynamics of insecurity in the
region. A common assumption about the problem of insecurity in the region
is that it is caused by the absence of the state. Guillermo ODonnell distin-
guished between blue areas of strong institutions and high presence of the
state, and brown areas of state absence in Latin America, where only low
intensity citizenship is possible.26 Framing the problem this way immedi-
ately suggests the solution: to reinforce the state and the rule of law. While
this view certainly has a great deal of merit, others dispute this approach.
E. Desmond Arias (2006), for example, notes that criminal and public
interests are deeply linked; that the rise of crime occurs not in the absence of
but in partnership with state agents. Criminal activity emanates from state
actors themselves. Referring to the favelas in Rio, he writes:
Persistently high levels of violence result not from the failure

of institutions, [but] rather, from networks that bring criminals
together with civic leaders, politicians, and policemen Rather
than creating parallel states outside of political control, these
networks link trafficker dominated areas with Rios broader pol-
itical and social systems.27
In other words, there is a complex network of connected state and

criminal actors and activities, not a hierarchical state pyramid versus strictly
separated criminal groups.
Conclusion
The seriousness of the security crisis in the region, and the failure of force to
address it, has forced a reassessment of failed policies, and innovation with
sometimes very counterintuitive ideas. But this crisisespecially in light of
a complex networked system with multiple actors with overlapping bound-
aries and jurisdictionsalso forces us to engage in a broader reassessment:
this is not only a security crisis but a governance crisis.
216
In a hierarchy, the top of the state pyramid makes policies, and the rest
of the organization implements them. In a complex networked system, even
hierarchically organized states cannot necessarily do this. The system con-
tinuously evolves as different actors innovate and adapt to changing circum-
stances. The nature of the problems that need to be addressed also changes.
Solutions to past problems no longer work, and can create new problems
of their own. Governance in such a system requires flexibility, adaptation,
experimentation, and continuous re-evaluation: learning by doing and by
monitoring what others are doing.28 Governments in this system are not
necessarily the final deciders, but key coordinators and facilitators. In Latin
American societies historically accustomed to hierarchical governance, this
conceptual shift may be the greatest policy challenge.
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8 Elizabeth Leeds Cocaine and Parallel
Shirk, David A. 2011. The Drug War in Mex- Politics in the Brazilian Urban Periph-
ico: Confronting a Shared Threat. New ery: Constraints on Local-Level Dem-
York: Council on Foreign Relations. ocratization. Latin American Research
Review 31, 3 (1996): 47-83.
Small Arms Survey. Small Arms Survey 2010:
Gangs, Groups, and Guns. Cambridge: 9 Bruce Bagley The Evolution of Drug
Cambridge University Press, 2010. Trafficking and Organized Crime in
Latin America. Sociologia, Problemas e
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Prticas 71 (2013): 103.
Crime and Development in Central
America: Caught in the Crossfire. Vienna: 10 David A. Shirk, The Drug War in Mex-
United Nations, 2007. ico: Confronting a Shared Threat (New
York: Council on Foreign Relations,
2011), 6.
Notes 11 Bagley.
1 The Geneva Declaration, Global Burden
12 Eduardo Gutierrez-Guerrero Los
of Armed Violence 2011: Lethal Encoun-
Hoyos Negros de la Estrategia contra
ters. Cambridge: Cambridge University
el Narco. Nexos: Sociedad, Ciencia, Lit-
Press (2011) estimates violent death
eratura 32, 392 (2010): 27-35.
rates in Central America for 2004-2009
as follows: Global 7.9/100,000; Central 13 Ibid., 29.
America above 30/100,000; Jamaica
14 Ibid., 30.
~40/100,000; Honduras ~47/100,000;
Colombia ~46/100,000; Venezuela 15 Ibid.
~44/100,000; Guatemala ~39/100,000.
16 Thomas Kellner and Francesco
2 Ibid. Pipitone Inside Mexicos Drug War.
World Policy Journal 27, 1 (2010): 31.
3 Official statistics are unreliable, due to
chronic underreporting, poor data col- 17 Alfredo Schulte-Bockholt, The Politics
lection, and even political interference, of Organized Crime and the Organized
given that governments often have an Crime of Politics: A Study in Crim-
218
inal Power (Lanham: Lexington Books, 24 Ibid.

2006); Alan Knight Narcoviolence
25 Ram Manikkalingam and Pablo
and the State in Modern Mexico. in
Policzer, Al Qaeda, Armed Groups,
Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in
and the Paradox of Engagement.
Twentieth Mexico: the Other Half of the
in Transnational Armed Groups: Legal
Centaur, W.G. Pansters, ed. (Stanford:
and Policy Challenges Portal (Harvard
Stanford University Press, 2012); John
University and University of Geneva,
Bailey and Matthew M. Taylor Evade,
2007.
Corrupt or Confront? Organized
Crime and the State in Brazil and Mex- 26 Guillermo ODonnell, On the State,
ico. Journal of Politics in Latin America Democratization, and Some Con-
2 (2009); Arias . The Dynamics of ceptual Problems: A Latin American
Criminal Governance: Networks and View with Some Glances at Some Post-
Social Order in Rio de Janeiro. Journal Communist Countries. University of
of Latin American Studies 38 (2006). Notre Dame Helen Kellogg Institute
for International Studies, Working
18 Knight, 122.
Paper #192. (1993).
19 Schulte-Bockholt, 105.
27 Arias.
20 Ibid., 137.
28 Charles Sabel Moebius-Strip Organ-
21 Arias, 523. izations and Open Labor Markets:
Some Consequences of the Reintegra-
22 Dennis Rodgers Robert Muggah, and
tion of Conception and Execution in a
Chris Stevenson. 2009. Gangs of Cen-
Volatile Economy. in Social Theory for
tral America: Causes, Costs and Inter-
a Changing Society James Coleman, and
vention. Small Arms Survey Occasional
Pierre Bourdieu, eds. (Boulder: West-
Paper #23 (2009): 12. Accessed August
view Press, 1991): 3-63.; Pablo Policzer
6, 2013. http://www.smallarmssurvey.
A Complex Adaptive State System:
org/fileadmin/docs/B-Occasional-
Networks, Arms Races, and Moral
papers/SAS-OP23-Gangs-Central-
Hazards. Revista de Ciencia Poltica 32
America.pdf.
(2012): 3, 673-685.
23 Ibid., 12.
219
V:
MEXICO: HUMAN AND
NATIONAL SECURITY
The Anti-Femicide Movement in

Ciudad Jurez, Mexico
Zulma Y. Mndez,
The University of Texas at El Paso, United Sates
T
he work described in this paper is part of a larger project on which
Dr. Kathleen Staudt at the University of Texas at El Paso and I have
collaborated. It focuses on the topic of activism and resistance in the
Mexican border city of Ciudad Jurez, across from the Texas town of El Paso.
That larger project documents and analyzes the last five years of activism in
Ciudad Jurez, a city with a long tradition of organizing and activism across
a wide range of issues. In particular, Staudt and I focus on the emergence of
what we identify and recognize as an anti-militarization movement and its
convergence with the anti-femicide movement, the latter with a much longer
history that may be traced back to the last two decades.
Our analysis of these two social movements also considers the bi-na-
tional character (across the U.S.-Mexico border) that they have acquired as
activists and organizations have strategically sought and efficaciously built
coalitions with their counterparts in the United States but especially in the
city of El Paso, Texas, where organizations and activists have effectively visi-
bilized and exerted pressure on social issues that many view as binational in
their origins and in their possible solutions such as gun control, drug policy
reform, and immigration.

the anti-femicide movement in ciudad jurez, mexico
I will focus on the description of the anti-femicide movement and a part

of that ample organizing process in which activists and womens groups
especially have engaged in the city of Ciudad Jurez. I describe it and show
our analysis of how activism within the anti-femicide movement has played
a key role in the work towards a more equitable, non-violent society. In par-
ticular, I describe the ways in which the anti-femicide movement has:
1) visibilized gender violence against women;

2) monitored, documented, and denounced the problematic or
lack of implementation of security policy;
3) shaped and re-shaped policy aiming at the eradication of vio-
lence from womens lives.
This work abbreviates and responds to a body of literature that is multi-

disciplinary. We have looked into this literature to understand the political,
social, cultural, and economic environment, but also the local, national, and
bi-national context in which activism and the anti-femicide movement we
have witnessed in Ciudad Jurez operates.
Thus, our look into and review of the literature is extensive, as is our pro-
ject. It moves between narratives that frame and describe the city of Jurez as
a chaotic space, violent and lawless, implying a future of hopelessness1 in a
failed state,2 to work representing the city and the U.S.-Mexico border from
a state-centric approach by focusing on the relative easiness of commercial
trade and transit.3 The literature also advances a narrative about the border
that characterizes it as an interdependent region4 and hybrid5 with dynamic
and shared cultural and social ties in a context of common political and eco-
nomic issues that make the region and its inhabitants highly complex.
Moreover, an important segment of the literature inquires into the al-
ready complex U.S.-Mexico border region by examining it through a theor-
etical frame that draws from social constructions of gender to provide a more
nuanced analysis of the social context in the Mexican border city.6
Other research offers rich descriptions and analyses of the Jurez/El
Paso border region as one that is highly surveiled,7 or at war (against and
among drug cartels),8 but also one where activism has flourished and grown
at the local city level,9 and at a transborder, bi-national level10 to visibilize
gender violence and femicide.
Our review of the literature allowed us to understand the context in
which the anti-femicide movement unfolded in the last twenty years. For
instance, Fregoso and Bejarano (2012), Prez (2011), and Staudt (2008) focus
on documenting the political work and networks women have developed
224
zulma y. mndez
locally, nationally, bi-nationally, and internationally to denounce and situate

gender violence and femicide as a public issue. However, there less is said
on the ways in which they have organized to influence, shape, and reshape
policy. For as it is true that mobilization has provided them with political
leverage with which to demand governmental response, it is important to
recognize and detail how they network and develop a policy agenda around
various issues of interest. One in particular, which I will discuss further,
concerns a policy on security.
To understand and document how the process of influencing policy
occurred, we employed an ethnographic approach. Guided by Edward
Schatz (2009) work on political ethnography, we recognized the reach and
power of cultural immersiona cornerstone of ethnography as a methodto
provide a first-hand understanding of the dynamics and processes shaping
certain actions within the anti-femicide movement. That is why, in this work,
participant observation is privileged as well as the collection of documents
and other artifacts that we have managed to gather in the last five years.
Participating since the year 2009 in some of the actions called by some
womens groups in Ciudad Jurez, we had the opportunity to attend meet-
ings, talk formally and informally with the leadership and membership of
NGOs and grass-roots organizations within the anti-femicide movement. We
also generated and had access to visual materials such as photos and videos
of meetings and activities, and we were able to collectwith their consenta
series of documents that include flyers, public pronouncements, newspaper
clippings, and documents such as technical reports that NGOs produced as
part of their work.
Access to and the production of our own qualitative data during field-
work was possible as Staudt and I are academics and activists. We have lived,
taught, and conducted research at the U.S.-Mexico borderlands throughout
our professional trajectory, but in addition, we have witnessed and have act-
ively participated in some of the organizing processes that we narrate in our
work. Our analysis, in fact, draws from that experience and funds of know-
ledge. In doing so, we assume our academic endeavor as one that, as Agar
suggests, moves away from assumptions or presumptions of objectivity or
subjectivity, to achieve reflexivity. Thus, the experiences we document and
densely describe, following Geertzian tradition, are analyzed systematically
as they are sifted through our use of method and theory.
We believe that a method should not just guide the interpretation of ex-
periences, but also document and intervene; that is, to document, record, and
memorialize, as Riao-Alcal (2006) suggests in her ethnographic work in
Colombia. For, as Ruth Behar (1996) asks in her book The Vulnerable Observer,
225
in the face of horrorsuch as the horror that the anti-femicide movement

has confrontedshouldnt the observer who cannot stop it, at least try to
document it? And in our case as scholars, in the face of a complex social
and political context, shouldnt we, as Barsalou and Baxter (2007) contend,
document the efforts of the surviving communities to eradicate violence and
femicide through mobilization and efforts at shaping policy?
What we experienced and witnessed makes up the bulk of our qualita-
tive data; qualitative data that we organized and have begun to analyze, not
just following the ethnographic convention, but also guided by theory. In
this case, we analyze the anti-femicide movement guided by Tarrows (1998)
theory of structural political opportunity in which he affirms that the pro-
cesses that are exhibited in a particular social movement reveal much about
the political structure as thesemovements and structureexist in conson-
ance with the political environment. That is, social movements are a reflection
of a given states political structure and of a given institutional environment,
though movements are not constrained or determined solely by it.
Thus, using Tarrows (1998) theoretical lens, we have begun to analyze
the ways in which women groups within the anti-femicide movement have
visibilized gender violence against women, as well as monitored, docu-
mented, and denounced the problematic or lack of implementation of a
policy of security; and shaped and re-shaped policy aiming at the eradica-
tion of violence from womens lives in the last ten years.
But before I go into the description of the anti-femicide movement and a
preliminary analysis of their contributions to policy on security, let me first
briefly describe the social and political context that shapes it.
Anti-femicide movement emerged at the end of the peak years of the
transnational manufacturing industry that had settled in Ciudad Jurez in
the early 1960s given its strategic proximity to the Unites States. Initially,
this industry attracted and employed young female labor that until then
had remained unemployed. As the transnational manufacturing industries
expanded in the city, they demanded more and more labor and so males
became a significant part of its labor force too. By the 1970s and 90s, manu-
facturing plants contributed to the huge demographic explosion in the city
as it created and promoted migratory flows into an urban space that grew
chaotically and without any planning. Most maquila workers, with less than
nine years of education, settled in non-developed land or colonias that lacked
basic services such as water, electricity, and transportation and earning less
than ten dollars a day. The economic and social precariousness of this grow-
ing population added a layer to a sociocultural context that was already
characterized by unequal relations across gender, class, region, and ethni-
226
zulma y. mndez
city. In this complex environment, drug cartels also found the border region
strategic, and political elites and their economic interests all contributed,
according to various analyses, to a socioeconomic content that propitiated
violence and impunity.11
Between 1993the year when civil organizations and scholars at aca-
demic institutions began to record and document the cases of disappearance,
sexual torture, and murder of women in that border cityand 1997, Jurez
civil society organizations recorded 180 femicides. However, it was not until
after five years of monitoring and documentation from womens organiza-
tions that authorities began to recognize the problem, if only symbolically
and partially; that is, by calling for a minute of silence for the murdered
women of Jurez and by forming a legislators committee to inquire about
the state of investigations of those murders, which organizations denounced
as remaining in absolute impunity.
Notwithstanding the legislators committee, it took another year, in
1998, to create the first Office of the Special Prosecutor for the investigation
of murders of women in Ciudad Jurezjust a month prior to the ratifica-
tion by the Mexican State of the Convention of Belm do Par (1994) which
requires that governments prevent, sanction, and eradicate all forms of vio-
lence against women. By 1999, the political pressure was such that President
Ernesto Zedillo requested assistance of U.S. authorities and experts in the
investigations. Yet in Jurez, at the turn of the millennium, local authorities
had embarked in full-fledge campaigns and programs that addressed the
disappearances and murders of women in discriminatory and misogynous
ways; that is, blaming the victims by stating that they were killed as a conse-
quence of their lifestyle and going out at night, walking the streets alone,
or being provocatively dressed.
Table 1. Femicides and Murders of Women in Ciudad Jurez, 19931999.
Year #
1993 24
1994 20
1995 50
1996 45
1997 41
1998 39
1999 25
Total 244
(Source: Femicide and murder data from Julia Monarrezs data base at Colegio de la
Frontera Norte.)
227
From 2000 to 2007, a total of 257 women were added to the list for a grand
total of 501 murdered women since 1993again, the year when organiza-
tions started to document the murder of women in Jurez.
Table 2. Femicides and Murders of Women in Ciudad Jurez, 2000-2007.
Year #
2000 38
2001 41
2002 41
2003 30
2004 20
2005 34
2006 23
2007 30
Total 257
Frontera Norte.)
However in the period between 2000 and 2007, a series of important

events in womens activism and anti-femicide movement took place begin-
ning in 2001 when eight bodies of women who had disappeared one to two
months earlier were found with clear signs of sexual torture on what had
been a cotton field prior to the expansion of the manufacturing transnation-
als. The finding of these bodies represented to some observers the ways
in which women in Jureza city devoted to mass productionwere con-
strued as disposable. Public outcry and anti-femicide groups pressure was
such that within a few days two men were arrested and later confessed to
the rape and murder of the eight women. Yet, as it has been the case with
other cases that produce such public outcry, the men stated that they had
self-incriminated under torture. With this development, further exacerbating
social indignation, the federal congress approved and established a Special
Commission to monitor the investigations of the murders of women and girls
in Ciudad Jurez.
However, advised by womens groups with binational networks, in
2002 mothers of three of the femicide victims at the cotton field presented a
petition to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. By 2005, the
Inter-American Commission admitted the three cases to be tried by its court,
which finally condemned the Mexican State for human rights violations in
the cotton field in 2009.
The Cotton Field case, as anti-femicide groups recognize it, was a key
catalyst for much of the policies and programs that emerged between 2002,
228
zulma y. mndez
when a petition was first presented to the Inter-American System of Justice,

and 2009 when it finally found the Mexican State responsible and required
that it establish no repetition mechanisms. Among those changes were: the
creation of a joint agency for the attention of womens murders in 2003; the
creation of the Special Prosecutor for the attention of crimes relating to the
murders of women in Jurez; supervised by the Attorney Generals office in
2004, the creation of the Commission for the Prevention and Eradication of
Violence Against Women in Ciudad Jurez; also in 2004, the creation of a
special commission by the Federal Congress for the awareness and monitor-
ing of investigations relating to femicides in Mexico and the procuration of
justice; and the promulgation of state law on the right of women to a life free
from violence in the state of Chihuahua where the municipality of Jurez
was established in 2007. In 2009, the authority of the Commission on the
Prevention and Eradication of Violence Against Women was extended from
exclusively Ciudad Jurez to national jurisdiction.
Despite the fact that the bureaucratic response in the form of commis-
sions and the creation of offices and posts to attend to the gender violence
that never ceased was suspended in 2010, in the face of extreme social vio-
lence caused by militarization authorities once again began to minimize and
distort the extent of femicide in Jurez.
Though the number of women killed seemed to vary slightly, it was
stable until 2008 when former President Felipe Caldern launched what he
called inter-changeably a war against drugs or a war against cartels. The
latter involved the militarization of the city with the deployment of more
than 2,000 troops, and 2,500 federal police as part of what became known as
Operativo Conjunto Chihuahua which aimed, according to federal authority,
to combat organized crime, most specifically drug cartels that had purport-
edly launched a war for the control of the distribution routes. Jurez was a
strategic location given its vicinity to the United States. Towards the end of
2009, according to the various journalistic accounts12 it was estimated that
more than 10,000 military and federal police elements patrolled the city, in
addition to the 2,000 municipal policemen.
The Operativo Conjunto Chihuahua that the federal government
launched as part of its security strategy in the so-called war against drug
cartels was implemented with the endorsement and support of the state and
local authorities, thus generating a highly tense political and social environ-
ment as highly armed, face concealed, military personnel and policemen
patrolled the streets with their weapons aimed at people and their fingers on
the trigger. This display of force escalated the climate of fear and insecurity
229
that was perceived as a result of the violence that stemmed from criminal
organizations disputes throughout the streets of Jurez. Between 2007at
the beginning of President Calderns warand 2012, when the military
and federal police were returned to their military posts and removed from
the city, 935 women were killed. So, 935 women were killed in a period of
five years of militarization, versus 501 in a period of fifteen years prior to
militarization.
Table 3. Femicides and Murders of Women in Ciudad Jurez, 2007-2012.
Year #
2007 30
2008 131
2009 201
2010 304
2011 216
2012 83
Total 965
Frontera Norte.)
Between 1998 and 2000 a number of governmental actions were taken,

none of them can be said to formally constitute a policy of security. Instead,
there were scattered efforts with little input from womens groups who, at
the time, continued to protest, march, and were very present on the streets of
Jurez. Notwithstanding the absence of a clearly articulated security policy,
womens groups have insisted on the importance of public policies, and in
particular, of security policies that emphasize a gender perspective. A nota-
ble case has been Red Mesa de Mujeres with the launching of the European
Community funded project Seis Ciudades.
SeisCiudades13 is an initiative involving six cities in Mexico with the pur-
pose of monitoring, evaluating, and influencing security policy with a gender
and human rights perspective. The initiative is an important and promis-
ing attempt to bring governmental authorities, including those in charge of
security, and human rights advocates and organizations in Ciudad Jurez,
Guadalajara, Chihuahua, Culiacn, Tijuana, and Monterrey into monitoring
and evaluation of security policy. Most importantly, Seis Ciudades seeks to
influence the definition of policies and programs of security that are sensible
to womens issues and their right to a lifeand citiesfree of violence. Thus,
despite the long struggle, womens groups continue to work and contribute
to the construction of viable communities.
230
zulma y. mndez
References
Anzalda, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Fron- Payan, Tony. 2006. The Three U.S.-Mexico
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Frontline Dispatches From the Streets of ism at the Border: Gender, fear, and
El Paso and Jurez. Austin: University Everyday Life in Ciudad Jurez. Uni-
of Texas Press. versity of Texas Press.
Fregoso, Rosa-Linda, and Cynthia Bejarano. Staudt, Kathleen, and Irasema Coronado.
2010. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in 2002. Fronteras No Ms: Toward Social
the Americas. Durham: Duke Univer- Justice at the U.S.-Mexico Border. New
sity Press. York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Garca-Canclini, Nestor. 1995. Hybrid Cul- Staudt, Kathleen, and Zulma Mndez.
tures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Forthcoming. Courage and Resistance:
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Grayson, George W. 2009. Mexico: Narco- Tarrow, Sidney G. 1998. Power in Move-
Violence and a Failed State?. New ment: Social Movements and Conten-
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and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Story About the Gender Murders of
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Martinez, Oscar. J. 1996. Border People: Life
and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Border-
lands. Tucson: University of Arizona
Press. Notes
1 Charles Bowden, Jurez: The Laboratory
Monrrez Fragoso, Julia Estela. 2009. Trama
of Our Future (New York: Aperture,
de una injustica: Feminicidio sexual
1998); Charles Bowden and Julin Car-
sistmico en Ciudad Jurez. Tijuana
dona, Murder City: Ciudad Jurez and
BC: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
231
the Global Economys and New Killing El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2009);
Fields (New York: Nation Books, 2010); Wright 2010; Marta Estela Prez, Lu-
Poppa 2010; Sandra Rodriguez, La f- chas de arena: Las mujeres en Ciudad
brica del crimen (Mexico, DF: temasde Jurez (Ciudad Jurez: Universidad
hoy, 2012); Diana Washington Valdez, Autnoma de Ciudad Jurez, 2011);
Harvest of Women: Safari in Mexico: The Kathleen Staudt, Violence and Activism
True Story About the Gender Murders of at the Border: Gender, fear, and Everyday
Jurez, Mexico, 1993-2005 (Los Angeles: Life in Ciudad Jurez (University of
Peace at the Border, 2005). Texas Press, 2008).
2 George Grayson, Mexico: Narco- 7 Alejandro Lugo, Fragmented Lives,
Violence and a Failed State? (New Assembled Parts: Culture, Capitalism,
Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border
Publishers, 2009). (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2008).
3 Tony Payan, The Three U.S.-Mexico
Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration, and 8 Howard Campbell, Drug War Zone:
Homeland Security (Westport, Conn: Frontline Dispatches From the Streets of
Praeger Security International, 2006). El Paso and Jurez (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2009).
4 Oscar Martinez, Border People: Life and
Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands 9 Prez, 2011.
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
10 Kathleen Staudt and Zulma Mndez,
1996).
Courage and Resistance: Civil Society and
5 Gloria Anzalda, Borderlands/La Fron- Activism in Ciudad Jurez (El Paso: Uni-
tera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: versity of Texas Press, forthcoming);
Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987); Nestor Aikin 2011.
Garcia-Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strat-
11 Campbell, 2009; Washington Valdez,
egies for Entering and Leaving Moder-
2005; Rodriguez, 2012.
nity (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1995). 12 El Universal, 2009
6 Julia Estela Monarrez Fregoso, Trama 13 http://seisciudades.org/index.php/el-
de una injustica: Feminicidio sexual sis- proyecto.
tmico en Ciudad Jurez (Tijuana BC:
232
The National Security Policies of

the Felipe Caldern Administration:
Toward a Human Security Dimension?
Mara-Cristina Rosas,
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico
Introduction
I
n 2006, Felipe Caldern Hinojosa was proclaimed winner of a highly
disputed presidential election in Mexico. In December of that year, he
became President and shortly after he announced a security strategy to
fight criminal organizations, particularly those involved in drug trafficking.
This policy was the priority of his administration.
In order to secure the cooperation of the United States in this endeavor,
the Felipe Caldern administration (2006-2012) opened the doors of its se-
curity bodies to their American counterparts. This was done, mostly, in a
pragmatic way, without a national security doctrine capable of contributing
to better use of the material and human capital available to fulfill the ultimate
goal of fighting organized crime. It was not until 2008 that the Felipe Caldern
government announced a National Program of Public Security (2008-2012)1,
and a year later, the National Security Program (2009-2012) (Diario Oficial
2009). Previously, his administration had endorsed a very general security
policy, as defined in the National Development Plan (2007-2012).2
Despite the policies endorsed by Mexican authorities, between 2007 and
2012 violence perpetrated by organized crime, particularly drug trafficking
organizations, was perceived as a threat to citizen security and governance
in some parts of Mexico. Even though Mexico is not a failed state,3 there are
areas and regions within the country where the absence of governance is a
reality. This was also a point of concern for Canada, since violence in Mexico
during the Felipe Caldern administration created a negative perception
of the country in the eyes of Canadians at a moment when the profile of
Mexico-Canada relations had deteriorated.4
Violence in Mexico has increased U.S. and Canadian concerns about sta-
bility in Mexico, a key political and economic ally, and about the possibility
of violence spilling over into the United States. As it has been demonstrated,

National security policies of the felipe caldern administration
Mexican criminal organizations control the U.S. illicit drug market and are
considered the greatest drug trafficking threat the United States faces.5 On
July 25, 2011, the Obama administration even endorsed a Strategy to Combat
Transnational Organized Crime in which the prevailing situation in Mexico
is considered of concern, and criminal organizations such as the Zetas are
targeted as major threats to the security of the Western Hemisphere.6
Security and Violence in Mexico, 2006-2012

In general terms, violence in Mexico has in fact declined since late 2011
(Luhnow 2012). However, analysts estimate that it may have claimed between
60,000 and 70,000 lives over the presidential term of Felipe Caldern.7 As sug-
gested before, as soon as his term began in 2006, President Caldern launched
a large-scale crusade against organized crime, especially drug trafficking.
To do that, the administration faced several shortcomings both in material
and human capital, being of particular concern the absence of honest, profes-
sional, and well-qualified civilian police and law-enforcement agencies, as
well as technological obsolescence of intelligence capabilities, among other
problems. Thus, the Caldern administration decided to increase the budget
as well as the human capital for national security tasks (see Figure 1).
Given its weak capacity to face the threat of organized crime, the Mexican
government decided to use the military as the leading force to deal with the
monumental challenge. The use of the military to confront organized crime
has been considered an understandable yet risky decision, since the toll
includes deaths of military officials, corruption, desertions, and presumed
human rights violations. Also, the fact that the military has taken the lead
in public security matters raises concerns about diminished and limited ca-
pabilities of these bodies to face additional national security threats.
Figure 1. Public Security Ministry: Human Resources by Category, 2001-2012.
(Source: Presidency of Mexico.)
234
mara-cristina rosas
In Mexico there is no consensus about national security, threats, risks or

vulnerabilities. Each government body in charge of security issues, such as
the National Defense Ministry (SEDENA), the Naval Secretariat (SEMAR),
the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB), and the General Attorneys Office (PGR),
has its own concept of national security (Rosas 2011), and there are import-
ant differences among them. The same applies to the existing legislation on
national security. For instance, the National Security Law (2005)8 provides a
standard definition of national security that does not even address drug traf-
ficking as a threat. This law was enacted during the government of Vicente
Fox (2000-2006). In the Caldern administration, the National Development
Plan (2007-2012) did include drug trafficking as a threat. Despite this signifi-
cant difference, important overlaps do exist when it comes to national and
public security issues.
Probably the most important achievement in defining threats to national
security was accomplished in the National Security Program (2009-2012) in
which a broad concept of security and specific threats and risks are identified.
This program was announced in the context of the A H1N1 flu outbreak that
started in April 2009. Yet, both the National Development Plan (2007-2012)
and the National Security Program (2009-2012) are governmental initiatives
valid only for the Caldern administration, meaning that under Pea Nieto,
new programs and plans are being created with specific emphasis on those
that could be accomplished in the 2013-2018 period.
During the Felipe Caldern administration, several members of criminal
organizations were arrested, while many others were killed. It seems that
the effort of the Caldern administration has contributed to a more favorable
perception about security within the country; however, his national security
policy was perceived as one in need of adjustment and reconsideration under
his successor, particularly in dealing with the resulting death toll.
Achievements of the National Security Strategy, 2007-2012

In 2006, five criminal organizations dominated drug trafficking in Mexico
and the surrounding region. They were strong, well organized and had
important transnational connections. By the end of the Felipe Caldern ad-
ministration, the situation had changed dramatically due to a decapitation
strategy. As a result,
between 2008 and 2010, the Sinaloa Cartel witnessed the de-
mise of two important branches; one led by Nacho Coronel
and the other by Beltrn Leyva;
235
the Gulf Cartel and its army wing, the Zetas, was severely
damaged after the leader, Heriberto Lazcano, was captured;
the Tijuana Cartel, once dominant in the 90s, was unable to
deal with the ascendance of the Sinaloa Cartel in the new cen-
tury and, as a result, is presently very weak;
the Jurez Cartel faced a similar fate as the Tijuana Cartel; and
la Familia from Michoacn, following the capture of leader
Nazario Moreno, split into two rivals factions, los Caballeros
Templarios and a smaller la Familia.9
This does not mean that criminal organizations disappeared from the
Mexican landscape. Rather, small and medium-sized groups became prom-
inent, fighting each other and taking advantage of some institutional weak-
nesses. For instance, problems in cooperation and coordination between
the several security bodies in charge of fighting organized crime increased.
Also, the fact that the American security bodies could work openly with
any of the Mexican institutions, such as the Naval Secretariat, contributed
to a perception in Mexico that the war on drugs was conducted entirely
from Washington D. C., meaning key decisions on strategy were not even
discussed with their Mexican counterparts.
Other achievements of the Felipe Caldern administration include the
initiative to create a proactive, as opposed to the current reactive, Federal
Police to anticipate the moves of criminal organizations. To do that, the
government implemented a strategy to recruit and incorporate members of
the armed forces to serve with the Federal Police, whilst current police of-
ficers were being trained and subjected to confidence controls to determine
whether they were capable of accomplishing the required tasks. Intelligence
was another area that was reinforced within the police, so that it could antici-
pate the strategies of criminal organizations. At the same time, the Caldern
administration initiated a judicial reform so that crime could be better and
more efficiently prosecuted.
Yet, these achievements required a long term approach, that is, beyond
the Caldern administration, since organized crime is very dynamic and
changes on a daily basis. Criminal organizations function as networks by
taking advantage of the globalization and communications revolution. In
other words, this means that,
the diverse groups of a movement [criminal or not] are not iso-

lated from each other. Instead, they form an integrated network
236
mara-cristina rosas
or reticulated structure through nonhierarchical social linkages

among their participants and through the understandings, iden-
tities, and opponents these participants share. Networking en-
ables movement participants to exchange information and ideas
and to coordinate participation in joint action.10
To the contrary, the security structures of governments tend to be hier-

archical, from top to bottom, less dynamic and thus less capable of anticipat-
ing the strategies of criminal organizations. In order to face the challenge of
organized crime, government security bodies may need to think, organize,
and act, at least partially, as networks for the sake of efficiency.
In Mexico, criminal organizations have taken advantage of globaliza-
tion in terms of obtaining the required resources to operate. They possess
advanced weapons, financial logistics, human capital, and, in many cases,
social support to carry out their activities. This explains some of the chal-
lenges the authorities face in succeeding in the war on drugs.
The Role of the United States

The Caldern administrations policy against drug trafficking was initially
met with enthusiastic praise by the United States. In fact, the most important
cooperation program between the two governments has been the so-called
Merida Initiative, an assistance package that started in 2008 consisting
of counterdrug and anticrime programs for the benefit of Mexico, Central
America, plus Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Beyond the resources that
the United States allocated to finance the Merida Initiative, this program is
important because it engaged Washington in an effort that was largely pur-
sued by the Mexican authorities alone at great material and human resources
costs. The fact that the Bush and the Obama administrations have pushed the
U.S. Congress to approve the initiative shows a significant change in attitude
on the part of U.S. authorities in dealing with organized crime.
This is not so say that counter-narcotics and anticrime initiatives did
not exist between the two countries before the Merida Initiative. Yet, it is
expected that similar programs with improved funding will be supported
by the United States, which is the country with the largest market for drug
consumption in the world.
The United States began providing Mexico with equipment

and training to eradicate marijuana and opium poppy fields in
the 1970s, but bilateral cooperation declined dramatically after
237
Enrique Camarena, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

(DEA) agent, was assassinated in Mexico in 1985. From the mid-
1980s through the end of the 1990s, bilateral cooperation stalled
due to U.S. mistrust of Mexican counterdrug officials and con-
cerns about the Mexican governments tendency to accommodate
drug leaders. At the same time, the Mexican government was
reluctant to accept large amounts of U.S. assistance due to its
opposition to U.S. drug certification procedures and to concerns
about sovereignty. The Mexican government also expressed
opposition to the DEA carrying out operations against drug
trafficking organizations in Mexican territory without author-
ization. Mexican military officials proved particularly reticent to
cooperate with the U.S. military due to concerns about past U.S.
interventions in Mexico.11
The context, however, dramatically changed by the end of the twentieth

and beginning of the twenty-first century. Once Colombian cartels were
decapitated and weakened, Mexican drug lords became prominent in de-
livering drugs to the U.S. market.
The Merida Initiative was born due to the escalation of violence in Mexico
as part of the national security policies of the Felipe Caldern administra-
tion. From the point of view of the United States, a possible spill-over effect
into American soil was of concern, and thus Washington was convinced that
something needed to be done.
The Merida Initiative consists of four pillars:

Disrupting the operation capacity of organized criminal
groups;
Institutionalizing reforms to sustain the rule of law and re-
spect of human rights;
Creating a twenty-first century border; and
Building strong and resilient communities.12
The Merida Initiative needs approval from the U.S. Congress on a yearly
basis. Thus, the U.S. Congress has played a major role in determining the
level and composition of the Merida Initiative funding for Mexico. From fiscal
year 2008 to fiscal year 2012, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than $1.9
billion for Mexico to finance the Merida Initiative. In the first years the U.S.
Congress contemplated funding for Mexico in supplemental appropriations
measures in an attempt to hasten the delivery of certain equipment. The U.S.
238
mara-cristina rosas
Congress has also allocated funds in order to ensure that certain programs
are prioritized, such as efforts to support institutional reform. In fiscal year
2012the last of the Felipe Caldern administrationfunds provided for pil-
lar two have exceeded all other aid categories and has become a key concern
moving forward.13
A key concern of the U.S. Congress is the human rights situation and, as
a result, it has encouraged efforts to combat abuses and impunity in Mexico
by placing conditions on the Merida Initiative assistance. The American
Congress stipulated that 15 percent of certain assistance provided to Mexican
military and police forces would be subject to certain human rights condi-
tions. However, most recently, the Pea Nieto administration has changed
the way Mexican security institutions cooperate with their American
counterparts, namely by concentrating dialogue and responsibility under
the Mexican Ministry of the Interior. This development has not been well
received by the Obama administration, and may lead to delays in delivering
the assistance to Mexico.
The National Security Priorities of Pea Nieto

In December 2012, Enrique Pea Nieto became President of Mexico. On
December 17, 2012, he outlined a strategy that aims to achieve a Mexico in
Peace where human rights are respected and protected by implementing a
state security policy that involves binding commitments from all levels of
government and civic participation. The six pillars of the strategy include:
Table 1. Fiscal Years 20082014 Merida Funding for Mexico by Aid Account and Appro-
priation Measure.
(Source: U.S. Department of State, Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Opera-
tions, 2008-2014.)
Notes: ESF = Economic Support Fund; FMF = Foreign Military Financing; INCLE = Inter-
national Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement.
a. $6 million was later reprogrammed for global climate change efforts by the State
Department.
b. Beginning in FY2012, FMF assistance is not included as part of the Mrida Initiative.
239
Planning;
Prevention;
Protection and respect of human rights;
Coordination;
Institutional transformation; and
Monitoring and evaluation.
As suggested before, President Pea Nieto has centralized the structure

of Mexicos security apparatus under the authority of the Ministry of the
Interior and pledged to replace military forces engaged in public security
efforts with a gendarmerie (militarized police). Although President Pea
Nieto has said that his government will not abandon the fight against organ-
ized crime, the primary goal of his security strategy is to reduce violence in
Mexico. He insisted that its success will be measured in reductions in homi-
cides and other crimes, rather than in drugs seized or kingpins arrested.
In mid-2013 President Pea Nieto presented its National Development
Plan (2013-2018) in which these pillars are included under the Mexico in
Peace label. However, the project to create a gendarmerie is not even men-
tioned, despite the fact that it has been considered a key component of the
current administration security strategy.
Pea Nieto implemented some changes to the institutions in charge of
security. One of the most important decisions, for instance, is that the Federal
Police, that under the Felipe Caldern administration was a very powerful,
well-financed, and autonomous body, has been put under the authority of
the Ministry of the Interior. Also, new provisions to prevent money laun-
dering were enacted. Another visible change is the media coverage of vio-
lence in Mexico, which tends to be more discrete as opposed to the previous
administration.
Final Remarks and Concerns

Mexico is a developing country facing national security threats, risks, and
vulnerabilities. The nature of threats and risks has changed over time.
During the Felipe Caldern administration, the National Security Program
(2009-2012), the most comprehensive security policy coined at that time, iden-
tifies the following as threats:
Organized crime;
Drug trafficking;
Armed groups;
240
mara-cristina rosas
Terrorism; and
Border vulnerabilities.
The same document defines the following as risks to Mexican national

security:
Political and social conflicts;

Lack of social cohesion;
Migration;
Epidemics and pandemics;
Global warming and environmental degradation; and
Inequalities in national development.
The National Security Program (2009-2012), however, lacks an approach

on addressing vulnerabilities. As a developing country, Mexico faces de-
velopmental problems that would allow certain vulnerabilities to contribute
to an already unstable environment in which serious threats to national
security could potentially develop. Vulnerabilities relate directly to develop-
ment problems such as poverty and income distribution. Thus, a compre-
hensive national security policy may have to include vulnerabilities as a key
point due to the fact that security should go hand in hand with development.
As suggested before, Mexico needs a long-term approach to national
security. One of the reasons for the National Security Program (2009-2012)
was the flu outbreak (A H1N1) that badly hit Mexico starting in April 2009.
Before the flu outbreak, the Felipe Caldern administration focused mostly
on organized crime as a threat to national security by considering that the
survival of the Mexican State was being challenged by the actions carried
out by criminal offenders, particularly drug lords. Yet, a disease challenged
this view and forced the authorities to redefine threats to national security. 14
At that time, Mexico received international support in combatting the
flu outbreak. A H1N1 was a new version of the 1918 influenza virus. It de-
veloped when a previous triple assortment of bird, swine, and human flu
viruses combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus. This disease is contracted
via person-to-person transmission through respiratory droplets. It was first
considered an outbreak in Veracruz, a state located in the Gulf of Mexico. It
then spread throughout the country and the rest of the world. In Mexico City,
the authorities decided to close public and private places to prevent the dis-
ease from spreading further. By June, the World Health Organization (WHO)
had declared the otutbreak a pandemic because it was present in all regions.
241
In the case of Mexico, the flu epidemic demonstrates that threats to

national security are diverse and that a wider and more comprehensive
approach is needed. Since 1994, human security has been discussed in
international circles as such an approach. This human-centered concept
is endorsed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which
considers threats to security to be those that harm primarily people, since for
societies to be secure, people need to be free of fearsuch as human rights
violations and violenceand free of wantsuch as hunger, epidemics, un-
employment, and environmental degradation.15
In Mexico and Latin America in general, human security has been
endorsed with reservation, and only the governments of Chile and Costa
Rica have defined policies under that label. Due to the Special Conference
on Security sponsored by the Organization of American States in 2003 in
Mexico, the western hemisphere has adopted a multidimensional security
approach, a concept strongly influenced by, and similar to, human security.16
One of the risks of the concept of human security, according to academ-
ics and politicians, is the possibility that all issues become security issues.
Moreover, every country is different and has distinctive capabilities and
vulnerabilities. For instance, for the Caribbean countries, natural disasters,
such as hurricanes, are a threat to national security. For Panama, vessels
transiting through the Panama Chanel may pose risks to national security if
they are to capsize or incur severe damage, especially if carrying toxic waste
or weapons. For the United States, of course, terrorism is the most import-
ant threat to its security. Thus, multidimensional security carries different
meanings for countries and the 2003 conference in Mexico was successful
in including in the security agenda not only terrorism but also a wide range
of threats that are of concern to the western hemisphere. Yet, for many
countries both human security and multidimensional security should be
endorsed with caution so that problems are faced according to their nature,
such as specific vulnerabilities, risks or threats, so that human and material
resources are properly used.
In the National Development Plans endorsed by Mexican governments
since the times of Miguel de la Madrid (1980-1986) when the first plan was
implemented, security has become a broader concept, at least on paper, which
goes beyond police and military assumptions. Previously, national security
was intentionally linked to the government, so that threats, such as dissent
from social movements and students, demonstrations by trade unions, and
guerrillas were of concern to the authorities. The new concept of security was
the result of a democratization process that started from the mid-1980s until
242
mara-cristina rosas
today. The current Pea Nieto administration, and the previous Caldern
administration as well, however, do not use the concept of human security
in reference to national security and/or its threats. Yet, many developmental
issues are included in the National Development Plans, though not under the
security-development label, but rather as separate goals. Only in Mexico City
is there a special report on human security published in 2008, in which the
concept is introduced to provide a better understanding of threats, risks, and
vulnerabilities that the capital is facing.17
At the national level, however, there is the need for a comprehensive ap-
proach, including areas such as education, culture of law, health issues, crop
substitution, confidence in the police force, and the demilitarization of security
tasks and law enforcement. There is recognition in both Mexico and the United
States of the high human and financial costs that Mexican society is incurring
in dealing with the current approach to combatting organized crime.
Another issue of concern, of course, is the emphasis placed by the cur-
rent Obama administration on organized crime. The strategy, endorsed in
July 2011, suggests that criminal gangs are now a top priority in his national
security policy. For many academics and politicians on both sides of the bor-
der, this endorsement comes too late, given that Washington has kept terror-
ism and Osama Bin Laden at the top of its security concerns. Had the United
States placed more attention on organized crime and its spillover effect, it
is believed that criminal gangs in Mexico today would not be as prominent
as they have been since the beginning of the century.
There is another concern in this respect. The Strategy to Combat
Transnational Organized Crime clearly states that,
transnational organized crime (TOC) poses a significant and

growing threat to national and international security, with dire
implications for public safety, public health, democratic institu-
tions, and economic stability across the globe. Not only are crim-
inal networks expanding, but they also are diversifying their
activities, resulting in the convergence of threats that were once
distinct and today have explosive and destabilizing effects. This
Strategy organizes the United States to combat TOC networks
that pose a strategic threat to Americans and to U.S. interests in
key regions.18
This means that in many respects, after the decapitation of Al-Qaeda,

terrorism remains a threat but has been given a lower profile, and could be re-
243
placed by organized crime gangs as the top security concern. This raises con-
cerns about what the United States is willing to do to decapitate the leaders
of criminal organizations, especially those based in Mexico. On July 15, 2013,
Mexican marines captured one of the most wanted criminals, Miguel ngel
Trevio Morales (also known as Zeta 40), one of the leaders of the organiza-
tion the Zetas operating in Mexico. At first, this was seen as an achievement
of the Pea Nieto administration despite the fact that cooperation with
Washington on security issues had apparently changed in terms of the access
U.S. security institutions used to have to their Mexican counterparts under
Felipe Caldern. Later, it was revealed that it was thanks to the logistics and
information provided by American security institutions that the capture of
Trevio Morales was possible, which leads to questions about how much
cooperation on security matters really has changed between Mexico and
the United States under the current administration. Furthermore, President
Pea Nieto took the opportunity to explain that there are no longer rivalries
between Mexican security bodies in dealing with national security threats.19
In the end, there is the general feeling that the current Pea Nieto admin-
istration is pursuing a policy not so different from that of Felipe Caldern,
even though the general consensus is that there is a need for a change of
strategy so that the security-development binomial becomes the cornerstone
of a policy towards a more secure and prosperous country. To do that, a na-
tional security doctrine is needed so that human and material resources are
channeled properly. The ultimate goal is that Mexico finds its own formula to
deal with the security challenges posed by organized crime, whilst develop-
ment is conceived as a vacuum to deal with vulnerabilities and risks that
may, otherwise, turn into threats to national security.
References
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Network and Netwars. The Future of Ter- Security after Felipe Caldern. Washing-
ror, Crime and Military. Santa Monica: ton D. C.: Inter-American Dialogue,
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bloodiest conflicts. The Miami Herald, org) has proposed the following cri-
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The term is highly controversial since
Secretara de Seguridad Pblica. 2008.
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2008-2012. Mxico: SSP.
cal, and even military consequences.
Ribando Seelke, Clare and Kristin M.
4 At the beginning of 2006, relations
Finklea. 2013. U.S.-Mexican Security
were at a relatively high level. Canada
Cooperation: The Mrida Initiative and
had identified Mexico as a strategic
Beyond. Washington D. C.: Congres-
partner; the Canada-Mexico Partner-
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ship had just been founded; and the
The White House. 2011. Strategy to Com- language, at least, of trilateralism was
bat Transnational Organized Crime. still in fashion in Ottawa. Within the
Accessed July 5, 2013. http://www. Canadian business community, a
whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ gradual realization that North Amer-
Strategy_to_Combat_Transnational_ ica extended south of the Rio Grande
Organized_Crime_July_2011.pdf. had taken place, so that a progressive
discovery of Mexico by Canadian
UNDP. 1994. Human Development Report
firms was steadily underway. This
1994. New Dimensions of Human Securi-
was the result of a series of economic
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vious years, as well as the signing
Notes of the North American Free Trade

Agreement (NAFTA) that paved the
1 Secretara de Seguridad Pblica, Pro- way for closer economic, investment,
grama Nacional de Seguridad Pblica and trade relations between the three
2008-2012 (Mxico: SSP, 2008). amigos, and certainly between Mex-
ico and Canada. Then a series of nega-
2 Gobierno de los Estados Unidos
tive factors affected the relationship.
Mexicanos, Plan Nacional de Desarrollo
First, the election of Stephen Harper as
2007-2012 (Mxico: Presidencia de la
prime minister of Canada in February
Repblica, 2007).
2006 brought concerns that Canada
3 In general terms, the concept of failed would refocus its attention on bilateral
state is often used by political com- relations with the United States at the
mentators and the media to describe expense of Mexico. This was previous
a state perceived as having failed at to the presidential elections in Mexico
some of the basic conditions and re- (July 2006) when Felipe Caldern
sponsibilities of a sovereign entity. The Hinojosa was proclaimed the winner
Fund for Peace (www.fundforpeace. amongst accusations of fraud by the
245
other leading presidential candidate 10 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt,

Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador. Network and Netwars. The Future of Ter-
Second, Mexicos catastrophic drug ror, Crime and Military (Santa Monica:
violence severely damaged Mexicos RAND, 2001), 295.
image in Canada, and Canadians be-
11 Clare Ribando Seelke and Kristin M.
gan to fear that the situation in Mexico
Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Coop-
would expand to Canadian borders.
eration: The Mrida Initiative and Beyond
Third, the handling of visa applica-
(Washington D. C.: Congressional Re-
tions for Mexican citizens created a
search Service, 2013), 5.
negative reaction among Mexican
political and social elites, and strained 12 Ibid., 6-7.
relations at the diplomatic level. Lastly,
13 Ibid.
the Harper governments cancelling
of Canadian studies funding globally 14 The United States faced a similar
decimated what was one of the worlds scenario after the 9/11 terrorist at-
most active and enthusiastic Canadian tacks. As a result of the threat posed
studies communities in Mexico. Sub- by terrorism, the new Department of
sequently, it was difficult to reestablish Homeland Security considered terror-
strong and active relations between ism a major threat to national security.
Mexico and Canada. Yet in 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused
massive loss of human lives and in-
5 Hayes Brown Report: Mexicos
frastructure, and the Department of
Drug Cartels Increasing U.S. Pres-
Homeland Security included natural
ence. Think Progress, April 1. http://
disasters as a threat to national secu-
t h i n kprog ress.org/sec ur it y/2013/
rity.
04/01/1802711/mexico-cartel-united-
states/?mobile=nc. 2013) 15 UNDP, Human Development Report
1994. New Dimensions of Human Se-
6 The White House, Strategy to Combat
curity (New York: Oxford University
Transnational Organized Crime, 2011.
Press, 1994).
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/
default/files/Strategy _to_Combat_ 16 OAS, Final Declaration. Special Confer-
Transnational_Organized_Crime_ ence of Security (Washington D. C.: Or-
July_2011.pdf. Accessed July 5, 2013. ganization of American States, 2003).
7 Tim Johnson, Mexicos war on crime 17 (Comisin de Derechos Humanos del
now ranks among Latin Americas Distrito Federal, Informe especial sobre
bloodiest conflicts. The Miami Herald, seguridad humana en el Distrito Federal
February 21, 2013. (Mxico, D. F.: CDHDF, 2008).
8 This law was endorsed by the Vicente 18 The White House, 5.
Fox Administration (2000-2006).
19 El Universal Hoy no hay rivalidad
9 Alejandro Hope, Peace Now? Mexi- entre agencias de seguridad. July 17,
can Security after Felipe Caldern, 2013.
Working Paper 2013 (Washington D. C.:
Inter-American Dialogue, 2013), 4-5.
246
Contributors
Adam Blackwell is currently the Secretary of Multidimensional Security at
the Organization of American States (OAS). Prior to this, Mr. Blackwell held
a number of positions in the OAS as Secretary for External Relations and
as the Assistant Secretary of Finance and Administration (Treasurer). From
2002 to 2006, he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and plenipoten-
tiary to the Dominican Republic. In 2006, Ambassador Blackwell returned to
Ottawa to act as the Director General of Strategy and Services in the Bilateral
Relations Branch of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. He is
also an international Commissioner on the Committee to Reform Public
Security in Honduras.
abstract: Ambassador Blackwells paper focuses on the work of the
Secretariat of Multidimensional Security, which was created in 2005 by the
Organization of American States to coordinate political, technical, and prac-
tical cooperation among member states as well as other inter-American and
international organizations concerned with threats to national and citizen
security. Its work in the region has produced positive results; for instance
helping countries establish drug treatment ports as an alternative to incar-
ceration, countering money laundering, strengthening detection techniques
for identifying suspicious cargo and exposing human trafficking. Blackwell
argues that the solution to the problem of security is not more security and
that mano dura policies have not proven successful. He suggests that over
the next decade solutions will likely hinge on such concepts as shared sover-
eignty and resilient communities.
Thomas C. Bruneau is a Distinguished Professor of National Security

Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. In addition to his position as
Professor in the NSA Department, he was the Academic Associate for the
curriculum in International Security and Civil-Military Relations. Bruneau
has published extensively in English and Portuguese in numerous journals
and has published several books. Professor Bruneau was a Fulbright Scholar
to India (1962-63) and to Brazil (1985-86), and has been awarded fellowships
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the
International Development Research Centre, the Rockefeller Foundation, the
Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Luso-American Development Foundation.
abstract: This paper explores civil-military relations in Latin America
in an international comparative perspective, drawing particular comparison

contributors
with NATO-member countries. Bruneau deals with civil-military relations

in terms of both traditional war-fighting roles and peacekeeping as well as
internal security, including counter-terrorism, organized crime, and human
and natural disasters. He outlined a range of conditions which tend to be
preconditions for successful civil-military relations, including: the establish-
ment of professional norms for conduct; effective oversight mechanisms; rea-
sonable levels of resource allocation; a clear strategy or plan; the use of civil-
ian instructors in professional military training; and ministries of defense
controlled by civilians. The paper concludes that only Colombia and Chile
among Latin American countries have effective civil-military structures. He
notes as well that one of the factors that accounts for success is having a clear
incentive, such as the detection of an identifiable threat which results in the
mobilization of resources.
Jos Miguel Cruz is currently a visiting assistant professor at the Department

of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University. He
has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the IADB, the Pan-American
Health Organization, and the UNDP. As Director of the University Institute
of Public Opinion (IUDOP) at the University of Central America (UCA), he
supervised more than fifty national public opinion polls and conducted
several survey-based research projects on political behavior, criminal vio-
lence, and human rights. He has been working on Central American gangs
since 1996. He holds a Doctoral degree in Political Science from Vanderbilt
University and a Master degree in Public Policy in Latin America from
Oxford University, England.
abstract: This paper presents a review of the security initiatives during
the last decade in Central America. It provides an overview of the public
security crisis in the region and how that is intertwined with regional se-
curity, particularly regarding the penetration of organized crime groups
across borders. The paper highlights the disparate trajectories followed by
the governments in the region to tackle the rising levels of organized crime.
The paper also briefly examines the international efforts directed to security
cooperation. In doing this, the paper underlines the importance of creating
and enforcing accountability mechanisms in the criminal-justice institutions
of the Central American countries.
Luca Dammert was an Associate Researcher at the Center of Security and

Society at the National University of General San Martn and Academic
Coordinator of Universidad Empresarial Siglo XXI in Crdoba. In Chile,
she directed the Civil Society and Security area of the Center of Citizens
248
contributors
Security Studies at the University of Chile and the Program of Security

and Citizenship at FLACSO-Chile. Currently, she is an Associate Professor
at Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Dr. Dammert has been an advisor for
the governments of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, and the Department of
Public Security of the Organization of American States. She received aca-
demic fellowships and grants from the Tinker Foundation, the University of
Pittsburgh and the Government of Argentina.
abstract: Dammerts paper stresses the extent to which Latin American
countries, in spite of differences, have increasingly turned to the military to
address problems of criminal activity, especially narcotics trafficking. She
notes that high homicide rates are not in themselves an adequate measure of
the level of insecurity in the region since a high percentage of people report a
general sense of insecurity in their daily lives. Individual citizens have thus
pressed for mano dura policies in responding to general levels of violence.
She observes as well that one of the factors that has led to an increased use
of the military for what are normally considered police responsibilities has
been the high incidence of corruption and inefficiency among police forces.
Dammert notes that the increasing use of the military for policing operations
has contributed to some problems, one of which has been human rights
abuses, another of which has been less transparency.
Major-General D. Michael Day has been the Director General International

Security Policy since July 2012. Major-General Day has served in the Chief
of Defence Staffs Professional Development Section as the Chief of Staff and
Acting Director - Counter Terrorism Special Operations. Following the events
of 9/11 he deployed to Afghanistan as part of Canadas initial response. In
July 2005 Major-General Day returned to Ottawa as Commanding Officer
JTF 2 and in June 2007 assumed Command of Canadian Special Operations
Forces Command.Promoted to his present rank in April 2011, he deployed
again to Afghanistan serving as the Deputy Commanding General of the
NATO Training Mission where he was directly responsible for the develop-
ment of all Afghan Security Forces.
Gary Finley is currently the Director Corporate Security, Petrominerales

Ltd. for Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. He is retired from the RCMP/CSIS and
previously worked in Security Management for Canadian oil and service
companies in Yemen, Africa, Ecuador, Mexico, and Argentina.
abstract: Gary Finley, Director of Corporate Security for Petrominerales,
a Calgary-based oil company which operates primarily in Colombia but also
has start-up operations in Peru and Brazil, focuses his analysis on the com-
249
contributors
panys security management programs. The paper outlines the challenges

that the company faces in dealing with both criminal organizations, which
are often tied to narcotics trafficking, and the two main guerrilla insurgen-
cies, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National
Liberation Army (ELN). The author indicates that the companys security
operations focus on the development of a structure and process that provide
protection for personnel and assets. He notes the role of security contractors
in the companys security structure and the ways in which the company
engages the Colombian armed forces.
Peter Hakim is president emeritus and senior fellow of the Inter-American

Dialogue. From 1993 to 2010, he served as the organizations president.Mr.
Hakim writes and speaks widely on hemispheric issues and has testified
more than a dozen times before the U.S. Congress. Prior to joining the
Dialogue, Mr. Hakim was a vice president of the Inter-American Foundation
and worked for the Ford Foundation in New York, Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
and Peru. He taught at MIT and Columbia, and served on boards and ad-
visory committees for the World Bank, Council on Competitiveness, Inter-
American Development Bank, Canadian Foundation for Latin America
(FOCAL), Partners for Democratic Change, and Human Rights Watch.
Hal Klepaks research covers a wide spectrum from Latin American security
and the regions diplomatic and military history to Canadian and Cuban for-
eign and defence policy. In addition to teaching at the Royal Military College
of Canada, he advises the Departments of National Defence and Foreign
Affairs and International Trade on hemisphere issues. Professor Klepak has
authored numerous books and articles and his most recent scholarship fo-
cuses on Cuba. Professor Klepak also is a retired infantry officer who served
with and commanded in the Black Watch Regiment.
abstract: This paper traces the evolution of inter-American security
cooperation from the early nineteenth century in the aftermath of independ-
ence from Spain through the end of the Cold War. Other than the failed at-
tempt to establish a regional organisation at the 1820s Panama conference,
the first formal effort to institutionalize cooperation came with the formation
of the Pan American Union at the end of the nineteenth century. The author
stresses that the presence of an external enemy, whether it was European
efforts to regain control of lost colonies, fascism and Nazism in the 1930s and
1940s, or Communism and Soviet-Cuban challenges in the region during the
Cold War, tended to be the single most important factor in encouraging inter-
250
contributors
American cooperation. In the absence of such an external threat and with

the evident decline in U.S. interest and influence in Latin America, major
countries in the region, in particular Brazil, have looked to other regional
groupings such as UNASUR (Unin de Naciones Suramericanas).
Ambassador Alfonso Lpez Caballero started his professional career in

the economic sector, first as Assistant Manager of CitiBank in Colombia, and
then as a consultant for Arthur Young & Co. He received a Master of Business
Administration from the European Institute for Business Administration
and a Master of Economics from Columbia University. He was ambassador
to France, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and served as minister of
agriculture and minister of the interior. Mr. Lpez was appointed one of the
governments negotiators during the peace process with the FARC guerrillas.
abstract: This paper focuses on the Colombian government peace
negotiations with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). As a
former peace commissioner, the author draws a comparison between the
earlier negotiations, which ended largely in frustration, and the current ne-
gotiations about which he is far more positive. He notes that the internal and
international pressures on FARC to reach a peace agreement are far more
difficult for the FARC leadership to resist now than they were a decade ago.
Some of the factors which have changed the context in which the negotia-
tions are taking place include the professionalization and modernization of
the Colombian armed forces and their more effective counter-insurgency
operations; the dwindling support for FARC from Cuban and Venezuelan
governments; and the effective decapitation of FARCs leadership. He notes
that there is still opposition in Colombian political circles to any agreement
with FARC which would appear to be lenient, and in some circles opposition
even to negotiation with terrorists.
Ambassador Tim Martin joined the Canadian International Development

Agency in 1983 as a project officer in the Leeward and Windward Islands
Program. After serving abroad in Bridgetown as second secretary (de-
velopment), and subsequently at Headquarters as a senior project manager
in the Central America Division, Mr. Martin moved to the Department of
External Affairs and International Trade in 1992. He has since served in
Buenos Aires, as ambassador to Argentina and Paraguay. At Headquarters,
he has served as political-economic officer for the Horn of Africa; deputy
coordinator, Middle East peace process; director, peacebuilding and hu-
man security; and senior director and deputy head of the Stabilization and
Reconstruction Task Force.
251
contributors
abstract: Ambassador Martins address outlines current trends in the

Colombian security environment, the successes the country has had in the
past decade in meeting its challenges and the contributions the nation is
now able to make to multinational efforts to address similar problems on
security and violence in Central America. He notes that there is optimism
about the current negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), and that the Santos government is making progress in
such difficult areas as anti-personnel mine clearance, poverty reduction, and
land restitution, following several decades in which several million people
were displaced by conflict. The presentation outlines the range of Canadian
involvement in the country, from the extensive investment in the oil and gas
sector to Canadian foreign aid projects to promote peacebuilding, assist vic-
tims of violence, and alleviate poverty.
Zulma Y. Mndez received her PhD in Education from the University of

California-Riverside and her MA in Sociology from the University of Texas
in El Paso. She is currently the Coordinator for the Centre for Inter-American
Border Studies and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational
Leadership & Foundations at the University of Texas at El Paso. Research
interests include violence, activism, and resistance in the U.S.-Mexico border-
lands, particularly that of Jurez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.
abstract: In this paper Zulma Mndez examines the development and
impact of the movement in Ciudad Jurez which has sought to address the
high level of violence, including homicide, against women. She traces the
violence back to the early years of the maquiladora expansion when thou-
sands of young women moved to the region to provide a workforce for the
burgeoning new industries. She also places the violence in the context of the
militarization of the war against the narcotics cartels in the area, a militariza-
tion that intensified significantly during the presidency of Felipe Caldern.
Her paper demonstrates a clear correlation between the intensified military
campaign and female homicides. She notes that the anti-femicide movement
has had a longer history in the Jurez area than the anti-militarization move-
ment that arose in reaction against Calderns policies.
Frank O. Mora, Ph.D., is Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center
and Professor in the Department of Politics & International Relations in the
School of Public and International Affairs at Florida International University.
He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere
Affairs, under the first Obama Administration.From 2004 to 2009, Dr. Mora
252
contributors
was Professor of National Security Strategy and Latin American Studies at the
National War College, National Defense University and Associate Professor
and Chair in the Department of International Studies, Rhodes College (2000-
2004). Dr. Mora received his M.A. in Inter-American Studies (1989) and a
Ph.D. in International Affairs from the University of Miami (1993).
John W. G. Noyes has been the Director of Corporate Security at Goldcorp

since January 2011, following a 25-year career with the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (1978-2003). From 2008 to 2011 he was Regional Director of
Security and Risk for Central and South America. Prior to joining Goldcorp,
he was Regional Director of Risk for Guatemala with Glamis Gold. In 1997/98
he was seconded from the RCMP to the United Nations Verification Mission
in Guatemala. He is the recipient of the Canadian Peacekeeping Medal, the
RCMP Long Service Medal, and the United Nations Peacekeeping medal.
abstract: This presentation outlines the challenges faced by one pri-
vate sector mining company and the ways in which the company seeks to
respond constructively to those challenges. The author notes that the rise of
transnational criminal organizations particularly in Latin America has con-
siderably increased security threats to company personnel, property and the
communities in which the company operates. He observes that companies
such as Goldcorp recognize that they have to ensure that security operations
are conducted in conformity with international standards and the protection
of human rights. One of the specific issues which confront such companies
is the lack of enforced regulations for private security contractors in many
Latin American countries, with resulting low levels of training not only in
the technical aspects of security but also in human rights issues. Noyes also
notes that there are often disconnects between what national governments
contend will be the benefits of mining projects and the expectations of local
communities.
Bernardo Prez Salazar is a senior policy adviser on urban safety and secur-
ity issues. He regularly contributes to research projects with the Instituto
Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios and the recently established Fundacin
Paz & Reconciliacin in Bogot, Colombia, as well as with UN-HABITAT in
South and Central America.
abstract: In this article Bernardo Prez Salazar explores and explains the
issues associated with multinational security in the Americas. He suggests
that the principles and goals articulated in the Organization of American
States 2003 Mexico City Declaration on hemispheric security have not been
253
contributors
successful in making significant inroads in reducing hemispheric security.

He stresses that this ineffectiveness has been especially apparent in dealing
with organized crime operating in under-governed areas, a challenge that
has been especially persistent in the case of weak states where either or both
political and military/police presence and credibility have been lacking.
Brigadier General Anthony WJ Phillips-Spencer, Vice Chief of Defence

Staff, is a military officer with thirty years of professional experience since
his enlistment in the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force in 1981. In addition
to his professional training, Brigadier General Phillips-Spencer has success-
fully completed undergraduate study in Economics and post-graduate study
in International Relations, both at the University of the West Indies. He was
awarded the degree of Master of Science in International Relations from the
University of the West Indies, and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts,
Security and Defence Management and Policy at the Royal Military College
of Canada.
abstract: The paper outlines the security challenges faced by the countries
of the Caribbean, many of which suffer from a culture of dependence and the
legacy of colonial rule. Phillips-Spencer stresses that many of the small island
nations of the Caribbean do not have the resources to address such problems
as narcotics, arms and human trafficking, and the high levels of violence
that plague some of the countries in the region. The paper identifies prob-
lems of weak leadership and poor planning along with inadequate capacity
to meet security challenges, and concludes that the CARICOM (Caribbean
Community) region, due to its structural security challenges and insufficient
capacity to meet security threats, is likely to remain inextricably trapped in
its dilemma. The author suggests that the opportunity for reform will require
the assistance of outside nations like Canada and the United States, but he also
calls for more engagement of civil society and the private sector.
Elizabeth Pando-Burciaga is currently a doctoral student in the Department

of Political Science at the University of Calgary. Her studies are in the fields
of Comparative Politics and International Relations. Elizabeth obtained an
M.A. (Interdisciplinary Studies) and a B.A. (Philosophy) at the University of
Texas at El Paso. Her research interests include policies on violence against
women in Latin America, Mexicos war on drugs and its gendered dimen-
sions, as well as policies of transnational domestic and care work. Elizabeth
is originally from Chihuahua, northern Mexico.
abstract: In this paper the authors explore the complex relationship
between the state and criminal gangs, with particular focus on Central
254
contributors
America, Mexico, and Colombia. They note that the main policies pursued
by governments in the region, the mano dura and the mano super dura ap-
proaches, have proven less than effective in reducing either criminal activity
or levels of violence, and have been subject to considerable critique for the
violations of human rights, which have been associated with their implemen-
tation. They suggest that given the complexity of the state-gang relationship,
governments and the gangs need to engage in dialogue, and governments
need to adopt flexible, adaptive policies in which governments are not neces-
sarily the final deciders.
Pablo Policzer, a Chilean by birth, specializes in comparative politics, with

a focus on Latin America. His research focuses on how democratic and
authoritarian regimes regulate armed actorsincluding militaries, police
forces, and non-state armed groups. He holds a Canada Research Chair in
Latin American Politics, and is a Fellow at the University of Calgarys Latin
American Research Centre, and the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies.
He obtained his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and his BA (Honours, First Class) in political science from the
University of British Columbia.
abstract: See Pando-Burciaga.
Greg Purdy joined CKR Global as their International Risk Advisor after
approximately thirty-three years with the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Security
Service. He worked in the Services foreign liaison, counter-terrorism, and
counter-intelligence departments, and was previously Deputy Chief of
CSIS Headquarters Foreign Liaison Department in Ottawa as well as First
Secretary at the Canadian Embassies in Mexico and Colombia. He is a mem-
ber of the Canadian International Council (CIC), Canadian Council for the
Americas (CCA) and currently holds a Fellowship with the Latin America
Research Center (LARC) at the University of Calgary.
abstract: This paper focuses on the transnational nature and impact
of organized criminal groups in Latin America with a particular focus on
the narcotics cartels in Mexico and their expansion into other countries
in Central America. The paper notes particular concern that such organ-
ized criminal groups as the Mexican-based narcotics cartel, the Zetas, are
composed of former military and have been able to infiltrate or gain the
cooperation of the militaries in other countries. The author notes that the
narcotics industry in Mexico alone generates revenues of some $40 billion
per annum, as well as generating high levels of corruption among govern-
255
contributors
ment and law enforcement officials. The paper suggests that the Mexican
situation continues to deteriorate, that the militarization strategy pursued by
former President Felipe Caldern was not effective in containing the cartels
and resulted in increased violence. He observes that although Colombia has
made considerable progress in the past decade in containing narcotics and
guerrilla insurgency, problems remain.
Stephen J. Randall, FRSC, PhD (Toronto), is Professor of History and

Director of the Latin American Research Centre at the University of Calgary.
He served as Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences (1994-2006) at the University
of Calgary. He served as director of the Institute for United States Policy
Research in the School of Public Policy (2006-2009). In Calgary he was the
founding director of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (West) and a
founding member of the Canadian Council of the Americas. He is an elected
member of the Royal Society of Canada as well as a fellow with the Canadian
Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, and he holds the Grand Cross, Order
of Merit from the Presidency of Colombia.
Mara-Cristina Rosas is a full-time professor and researcher in the

International Relations Center at the National Autonomous University
of Mexico (UNAM), where she obtained her doctorates in International
Relations and Latin American Studies. Dr. Rosas has worked as a consultant
for Mexican and foreign governments, the private sector and international
organizations in topics related to economics and international relations. In
1993, 1995, and 1998, she received the Maestro Jess Silvia Herzog prize
for her economics research from the Institute for Economic Research at
UNAM. Currently she chairs the Olof Palme Center for Peace, Security and
Development based in Mexico City.
abstract: This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the Mexican govern-
ment of President Felipe Caldern in attempting to curb the influence and
impact of organized crime in the country, in particular the major narcotics
cartels. The author suggests that the administration approached the chal-
lenge without a clearly developed national security strategy, and the decision
to use the army to confront the cartels was not only controversial but also
resulted in a significant escalation of violence. She argues that the strategy
nonetheless did weaken the power of the main cartels: Sinaloa, Gulf, Tijuana,
Jurez, and Michoacn, even if it resulted in the diffusion of smaller criminal
organizations. The paper notes the relationship with the United States on
narcotics and border security and Canadian concerns with the high levels
256
contributors
of violence in the country and its impact on trade, investment, and tourism.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the national security strategy
pursued by Calderns successor, Enrique Pea Nieto from the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), with his administrations stronger commitment to
human rights and socio-economic development.
Hector Luis Saint-Pierre holds a PhD in Political Philosophy from the

State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. He is currently Adjunct
Professor of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in History and
International Relations at the Paulista State University (UNESP) in So
Paulo, Brazil, and Adjunct Professor of International Relations at the Inter-
institutional San Tiago Dantas. He is a researcher of the National Research
Council in Brazil and acts as advisor to several national and international
scientific organizations. He founded and coordinates the Study Group
for Defence and International Security and directs the Center for Latin
American Studies at UNESP. He is a member of the Academic Board of the
Inter-American Defense College (OAS).
abstract: Saint-Pierre in his paper draws an important distinction
between concepts of security and defence and how those differences have
impacted policy in Latin American countries. He notes that non-traditional
security threats, rather than traditional threats to the state from outside
forces, have moved to the fore, with the result that the military has increas-
ingly found its role shifted from defence of the state against external enemies
to domestic issues normally considered the responsibility of police. The com-
plexity of the security challenges, he suggests, led governments to introduce
the concept of multidimensionality of threat to security and to argue that
the challenges had to be met by a range of state institutions. Saint-Pierre
argues that the military and the police should have more clearly delineated
and separate roles in addressing security challenges.
257

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CENTRE FOR MILITARY AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

Latin American Security:

The Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the

CENTRE FOR MILITARY AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

Managing Editor: Nancy Pearson Mackie

Cover: Chilean Navy AS332 Super Puma helicopter. IStock.

Latin American Security: Canadian and International Perspectives

Centre for Military and Strategic Studies

Copyright Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, 2013

Occasional Paper Number #9, 2013

Latin American Security: Canadian and

Edited by Monique Greenwood Santos

Centre for Military and Strategic Studieshttp://cmss.ucalgary.ca/ 1

without borders. For Mora there is a need to develop a new framework or

ural disasters, illegal migration flows, border security, transnational crime

Building Security, Peace, and

a strong and professional military and police;

Our relationship with Colombia is vital and dynamic because Canada

to increase mutual economic opportunity;

Centre for Military and Strategic Studieshttp://cmss.ucalgary.ca/ 13

Why It Matters to Canada

it is very important to recognize progress and momentum, as well as the

Canadas Contributions to Peace and Security in Colombia

lishment of institutions for assistance and reparation of victims of the armed

1. Rural development and agrarian reform;

negotiations prove to result in an agreement, and the greater percentage of

Canadian Contributions to Prosperity

Canada views increased engagement through trade and commercial-

Mining and Energy Committee and it is chaired by President Santos national

The Canadian Military and Latin

Centre for Military and Strategic Studieshttp://cmss.ucalgary.ca/ 23

operations of CP Hamlet where partnerships, education, and training were

Introduction: Canadian Private Sector

Centre for Military and Strategic Studieshttp://cmss.ucalgary.ca/ 27

Among the speakers in the closing session, John Noyes, Director of

Figure 1. Jess Malverde: protector and patron saint of drug traffickers.

Challenges of Security Management

The Challenge of Security Management

Centre for Military and Strategic Studieshttp://cmss.ucalgary.ca/ 31

In many Latin American countries there are few enforced regulations

Cost of Community Conflict

allegations of insufficient community consultation, environmental damage,

Companies operating in areas of conflict or weak governance must take

Petrominerales: Security Management

1. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of ColombiaPeoples

Centre for Military and Strategic Studieshttp://cmss.ucalgary.ca/ 35

1. Security Department: At the outset of operations in Colombia,

under mandated jurisdiction of the military. Private security

Indirect Impacts of Risks on Private Sector

The oil industry consists of several segments, some of which an oil

1. Seismic operations are the initial stages of any oil operation,

At the end of the day if something happens to these companies, it hap-

Those Elusive Common Interests

The Western Hemisphere: Ideal and Reality

Centre for Military and Strategic Studieshttp://cmss.ucalgary.ca/ 43

Inter-American Security Before the Eve of the Second World War

tered the new international division of labour so rapidly developing in the

mented by emergency meetings if such were felt worthwhile.5 Thus was

The Coming of Fascism