The rise of cartel era governance.
Por Olivier Meza.
PhD London School of Economics.
How late have we realized the real damage of drug-cartels in the world in general, but more precisely in Latin America? For many years the general debate had focus on the health effects of drug consumption; I here take this opportunity to address a different dimension to the problem which is normally neglected. Nowadays it is shocking to learn the ways of how the power of drug-cartels is present within government and political decision. This power is so great in many areas of the government’s structure which makes difficult to think that such structures could produce a coherent policy to combat drug-cartels. Therefore I propose a bit of reflection on the political muscle of drug-cartels before advancing the debate on adequate policies to be implemented.
Generally discussed the impact of drug related issues run through two basic channels. One is related to the health impact of consumption and the violence elicited in society by members under its effects. This approach focuses the attention on the demand-side of the problem. The supply-side of the problem accounts on the effects produced by cartels involved in an illegal market. This economic view has important implications as its suggests that violence for example, will continue to disturb society as long as there are incentives to keep “playing” in the market. Along with the economic perspective, common sense suggests that neglecting a market (keeping it illegal) does not prevent its existence.
This point of view has been criticised by many suggesting that under such approach other human activities, child pornography i.e., should be permitted as well. Despite the later sentence seems logic and coherent, the basic premises needs clarification. While participating in the market is a voluntary decision, the benefits and consequences are to some extent private or could be internalized through non-market mechanisms, child pornography on the other hand implies an instrumental approach of a human being despite his or her own will, and more important at a development phase where an individual is not yet capable of understanding future consequences or perhaps with no other alternatives . The coercion is either through physical or psychological means, or structured-induced.
Although I do not pretend to finish the debate here, the point to be raised is one were to accept that traditional views on drug-traffic combat are exhausted. Increasingly the debate has brought forward some other issues that needed to be account for if there is any effective policy to be implemented. I here would like to raise a breath-taking issue questioning how public administrations could possibly offer a proper solution where in fact drug-cartels have captured important parts of the governmental structure and second, important parts of society had increasingly accepted and welcomed cartel governance replacing the state. A general hypothesis is one where cartels have been able to exploit opportunities from failures in the political system. These political failures are widely observed in countries with great disparities on redistribution of economic gains and access to health, education and other economic and political opportunities. All the latter are common features of developing countries worldwide but more precisely within Latin America.
So how drug-cartels governance occurs? Two examples are useful to alight the case and its sophistication. The recent upscale of drug war related violence in Mexico had pushed the government to use the military structure of the country against cartel forces. The military then was assigned to keep “order” by patrolling the cities in replacement of other civil forces such as local and state police. Actions of these military forces were heavily criticised by the media on the violation of human rights in many places. Then what follows is that members of the cartels were able to exploit resentment from specific society’s niches that normally lived at the margin of the economic and political life. These niches where no political party is interested in were now exposed to the capture of drug-cartels. Imitating political parties, members of cartels were able to mobilize people to the streets demonstrating against military forces in their cities. A shift to drug-cartel era governance is seen while political projects, at least in the surface, are elicited by members of the cartels as the case described above.
The similarity with the second example may allow sketching a pattern. Narcotraffic networks goes beyond criminal actions. They have now captured many spaces in society which were normally controlled by unions and political parties such as the PRI (in the case of Mexico). The exit of the PRI from government was viewed as a democratic victory. The informal structure from which the strength of the PRI relayed was severely weakened after this political success. This political strength was based on corporatist relation the PRI had over syndicates and unions of many kinds in almost all industries and economic (formal and informal) life. The assumption was that those spaces will then have to democratize in order to survive and cope with the country’s “democratic wave”. Nothing farther from truth; cartel members have replace them by forcing members to pay tribute to them instead of their weakened syndicate leaders. In the case of informal vendors for example they pay cartels for protection against police forces against piracy and governmental taxes . Drug-cartel governance means the replacement of state in areas where government use to have monopoly. But more intriguing, governance means the acceptance of people on the way it is governed. And this acceptance is not passively kept by citizens but actively engage in this new relationship which they, to some extent, value.
So the question is how to face an organization with political capability? I do not claim to bring in a new issue to the debate but to bring forward an important one which will greatly impose constrains to any government policy in combating the effects of drug abuse and drug-cartels. The political force of these cartels has been seen in many countries in the world, more pronounced in the developing word. In my opinion the complexity of the problem call for a multi-factorial approach that departs from the assumption that the problem has a social, an economic and a political dimension. Changing drug abusers status from criminals to patients; removing economic incentives of an illegal market by possibly legalizing or controlling it; opening the debate about the political effects of ceding power to uncontrollable organizations are just the begging of a huge task where no government or country can deal with it alone.
