La política de Washington en materia de drogas

But as Honduran President Juan Hernandez told Reuters last week, the drug lords would not be able to cause so much chaos if it were not for Washington’s stubborn commitment to drug prohibition. That strategy greatly inflates the street price of drugs and fattens the profits of trafficking organizations. Economists estimate that about 90 percent of the retail price of illicit drugs is due to this “black market premium.” Predictably, when drugs are outlawed, only outlaws will sell drugs. Washington’s policy enriches and empowers the most ruthless traffickers — those willing to use violence, intimidation, and exploitation of the vulnerable to gain market share.

The result has been catastrophic for both Mexico and Central America. Responding to U.S. prodding, Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s president from December 2006 to December 2012, launched a military-led offensive against his country’s drug cartels. That strategy backfired badly. During the Calderón years, an estimated 60,000 Mexicans perished in the drug wars that convulsed across the country. Another 20,000 people went missing during that period. Many, if not most, were likely victims of the ensuing turf wars. Grisly decapitations became routine news stories. Ciudad Juárez, on Mexico’s border with the United States and astride one of the main trafficking routes, descended into a horrifying cauldron of chaos. It became so bad in Juárez that at one point a group of prominent business leaders asked the United Nations to send peacekeeping troops.

Corruption also proliferated, although it has often been difficult to determine if public officials have been corrupted by greed or threats of violence against them and their families. Appointed and elected officials, as well as police officers and soldiers tasked with bringing down the cartels, often face an ultimatum from the crime syndicates: plata o plomo? (silver or lead?) In other words, take a bribe or risk assassination. Too many officials who refuse to comply have paid for that decision with their lives—and sometimes with the lives of their family members. Others have understandably decided that assisting the cartels, or at least looking the other way, is the more prudent course.

While the pace of Mexico’s drug-related corruption and violence has eased slightly over the past two years, the situation in Central America has grown steadily worse. The leading Mexican cartels began to move operations into Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in 2008 as the pressure in Mexico mounted. It’s a game of “squeeze the balloon.” Put pressure on the drug cartels in one area, and the drug trade just pops up somewhere else.

The corruption and violence followed them as well. In April 2013, Honduran authorities uncovered a plot by drug gangs to assassinate a congressman, a prominent journalist, and a police chief. A high-level Guatemalan official recently told the Associated Press that the Zetas (perhaps the most violent of all the Mexican cartels) had gained control of nearly half of Guatemala’s territory. The Zetas and competing cartels also control major chunks of Honduras, El Salvador, and Belize.

Highlighting the financial resources of the drug cartels, In a 2011 interview with Agence France Presse, former Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom noted that authorities had seized almost $12 billion in property, drugs, and cash during his four-year term in office. The comparable figure for the previous eight years was approximately $1.1 billion. Twelve billion dollars, he emphasized, was equal to almost two years of the Guatemalan government’s budget.

One particularly outstanding trouble spot has been Colombia. The government in Bogota has for decades fought a violent civil war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC rebels, who get most of their funding from the black market

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