Latin America Drug Trade Increasingly Complex

It is estimated that "between 60 and 65 percent of all South American cocaine is trafficked to the United States." Most of this smuggling is through the eastern Pacific/Central American corridor...

By Jerry Brewer
Counteracting and reducing drug trafficking throughout Latin America continues to meet ever-increasing complexities. While Mexico and Central America have experienced an insidious and pervasive violent nemesis, South Americans, with primary source countries, have witnessed narcotrafficking syndicates scrambling methodically to engineer new methods and routes to facilitate delivery for increasing demand.

The demand for drugs has significantly affected an immense spectrum of international, national, and regional enforcement and continued security concerns.

Counteracting and reducing drug trafficking throughout Latin America continues to meet ever-increasing complexities. While Mexico and Central America have experienced an insidious and pervasive violent nemesis, South Americans, with primary source countries, have witnessed narcotrafficking syndicates scrambling methodically to engineer new methods and routes to facilitate delivery for increasing demand. The demand for drugs has significantly affected an immense spectrum of international, national, and regional enforcement and continued security concerns.

Northern cone nations and Mexico remain in the line of fire, with barbaric acts of homeland terror and violence that continue as they set record murder rates. Most of these nations are essentially powerless to combat the drug insurgents effectively, either financially or with adequate and capable manpower. Much of their recourse is, and must be, via military and associated munitions.

As valiant counter-fighting military units and some federal police elements battle to control the killing machine spree alone, the rule of law, restoring order, and stability take backseats to any form of strategically undermining the war-like powers of the drug insurgents.

It is estimated that "between 60 and 65 percent of all South American cocaine is trafficked to the United States." Most of this smuggling is through the eastern Pacific/Central American corridor, with the "remainder sent through the Caribbean islands chain, with the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Haiti acting as the main transshipment hubs."

Mexico serves as the main point of entry into the US, and accounts for the vast majority of all illicit drug imports. The majority of Colombian cocaine "that is trafficked to Europe, either directly or via West Africa, is exported from Venezuela."

More than 80 percent of the Latin American cocaine that is trafficked to the United States, either directly or via Mexico, arrives by means of noncommercial maritime conveyances. As interdiction strategies and human and signal intelligence intensified, Colombian organized narcotraffickers began to utilize "semisubmersibles." These vessels are principally used for large drug shipments in the eastern Pacific, and they can carry loads of between 6,000 to 10,000 metric tons. The standard range for a semi-sub is between 500 and 1,000 nautical miles.

Although US demand reportedly consumes at least 44 percent of the global cocaine supply as the main market for Latin American cartels, there are two additional and important actors in the trafficking of Andean cocaine.

These are West African syndicates, particularly those based in Ghana and Guinea-Bissau, where Peruvian, Colombian, and Bolivian cocaine are regularly transshipped to Western Europe.

And FARC guerrillas (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) are reported to be the principal narcotraffickers in Colombia.The FARC has morphed into virtually all aspects of the drug trade, "from production through refining and to trafficking." In recent years, elements within FARC have turned to narcotics as an exclusive economic endeavor, with "greed and profit rather than politics and ideology being the main motivational drivers."

The drug trade in Peru and Bolivia mainly consists of inordinate groups of loosely organized indigenous entities that primarily confine their focus to the cultivation of local fields, with actual processing and refining taking place in Brazil, as well as Argentina.

Argentina sits in a vulnerable corridor of South American drug trafficking and is fighting its own war against the drug trade, as traffickers innovate to find new ways to move drugs. The tri-border region of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil remains a plethora of organized crime, with many nationalities in participation -- including an ever-increasing Middle Eastern element.

Furthermore, there are popular drug routes through Argentina to port cities like Iquique, Chile, and across Argentina to Bolivia and on to the city of Pedro Juan Caballero in Paraguay. Even Uruguay is not immune from the drug scourge in cities such as Chuy.

Since 2005, when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez terminated all cooperation with the US DEA, Venezuela became a primary and expanding drug transshipment hub. Reports have linked officials in the Venezuelan military and intelligence cadre to materially assisting the FARC to traffic cocaine on their soil. Washington subsequently named two serving and one former Venezuelan official as complicit in FARC's actions.

The measure of narcotics passing through Venezuela is reported to be extensive. The US State Department has reported multi tons of cocaine seized in West Africa having originated from Venezuela, and that Venezuela is the "premier transit zone in Latin America for cocaine bound for Europe."

The actions of these drug trafficking insurgents and those that facilitate movement must be of paramount concern to national security agendas. It is truly a humanitarian crisis, "with over 1.5 million hard-core cocaine addicts in the United States" alone. (1/20/12)

Note: This article was reprinted with permission of the author. It was originally published at MexiData.info. Jerry Brewer is the Chief Executive Officer of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global threat mitigation firm headquartered in northern Virginia. His website is located at www.cjiausa.org.