An explosion that destroyed the facade of two modest houses, killing at least five people. Two bodies left hanging from a bridge over a busy avenue. At least 187 inmates were murdered in two prison massacres, some of them beheaded.
Such a trail of blood would not be uncommon in Mexico or Colombia, countries scarred by drug violence for decades. But it happened in the last 12 months in Guayaquil, the biggest city in Ecuador, a country that used to be peaceful.
In Uruguay, often described as “the Switzerland of Latin America”, 14 corpses turned up in a ten-day period this year. Three had been burned and one had been dismembered.
Paraguay’s chief drug prosecutor’s Caribbean honeymoon came to an end in May with two bullets when a gunman executed him on the beach in front of his pregnant wife.
Behind this frightening spread of violent crime in Latin America’s smallest and once more peaceful countries is the ever-growing cocaine trade. Constantly hungry for expansion, cartel bosses are charting new routes to new markets.
“We are witnessing the culmination of the globalization of drug trafficking,” said Jimena Blanco, director of policy research on the Americas at Verisk Maplecorft. “It’s a trend that started five to ten years ago, but it’s been accelerating in recent years.”
Antwerp seized more cocaine than any other European port last year – nearly 90 tonnes. Belgian customs said the three main countries of origin were Ecuador, Paraguay and Panama, none of them a major producer of the drug.
Most cocaine arriving in Europe is smuggled in shipping containers. “When drug seizure rates reach 20% or 25%, traffickers tend to switch routes,” said Jeremy McDermott, executive director of InSight Crime. Along with Santos and Limón, in Costa Rica, Guayaquil is one of the ports that, according to McDermott, are part of a “second wave of ports” used in recent years to export cocaine. Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile are more recent additions.
The situation is so dire that today, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), all but 3 of the 21 Latin American continental countries are “main countries of origin or transit” for cocaine — the exceptions are Guyana, Belize and El Salvador.
Drug cartels have not only expanded their routes: they have also expanded the overall dimensions of the cocaine business and diversified their businesses to encompass adjacent criminal enterprises.
After five decades of the US-led war on drugs and billions of dollars spent interdicting and prosecuting cartel bosses, drug trafficking has never been greater. In 2020, total cocaine production reached a new record of 1,982 tonnes, according to UNODC – more than double the volume of 2014.
In Europe, cocaine has never been more plentiful or cheaper in real terms, and traffickers are investing in lucrative markets in Russia, China and parts of Asia where the drug fetches two or three times higher prices. In McDermott’s words, “Cocaine is popping up everywhere.”
The big cartels have already expanded their activities to much more than drug trafficking. Today they illegally transport refugees, extort companies, kidnap wealthy people and sell illegal Amazon timber and gold. Chilean organized crime is involved in illicit fishing, and the most recent business for Mexican gangs, according to Verisk’s Blanco, is smuggling abortion pills into the United States.
The litany of depressing statistics from the failed drug war and its dire human cost has led a growing number of Latin American politicians to propose legalizing cocaine.
But as Shannon O’Neil, vice president of the Council of Foreign Relations think tank in New York, points out: “These organizations are not really drug cartels anymore. They are organized crime groups. we would have extortion, robberies, human trafficking, gold smuggling.”
“The main question should be: how to enforce the rule of law?” In a region notorious for corruption, flawed law enforcement and high murder rates, this is a difficult — but crucial — task.
