Narco-state
Narco-state is a political and economic term applied to countries where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade. The term was first used to describe Bolivia following the 1980 coup of Luis García Meza which was seen to be primarily financed with the help of narcotics traffickers. Examples of some narco-states are described below. Other well-known examples are Mexico, Colombia, and Guinea-Bissau, where drug cartels produce, ship and sell drugs such as cocaine and marijuana.
The term is often seen as ambiguous because of the differentiation between narco-states. The overall description would consist out of illegal organisations that either produce, ship or sell drugs and hold a grip on the legitimate institutions through force, bribe or blackmail. This situation can arise in different forms. For instance, Colombia, where drug lord Pablo Escobar ran the Medellín Cartel during most of the 1970’s and 1980’s, producing and trafficking cocaine to the United States of America. Escobar managed to take over control of most of the police forces in Medellín and surrounding areas due to bribery, allowing him to expand his drug trafficking business.
Nowadays scholars argue that the term “narco-state” is oversimplified because of the underlying networks running the drug trafficking organisations. For example, the Guadalajara cartel in Mexico, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, who managed to combine several small drug trafficking families into one overarching cartel controlling the Marijuana production in the rural areas of Mexico while trafficking Colombian cocaine to the U.S.A at the same time.
Over time the cocaine market expanded to Europe, leading to new routes being discovered from Colombia through Brazil or Venezuela and Western Africa. These new routes proved to be more profitable and successful than shipping from North-America and turned African states such as Nigeria, Ghana and Guinea-Bissau into actual narco-states. While cocaine was transported through Western Africa, the Taliban produced opium in the rural areas of Afghanistan using the revenues to fund their guerrilla war. Despite American and NATO efforts to impose laws on the Afghan opium production, the early 2000's incumbent Afghan governments shielded the opium trade from foreign policies as much as possible.
Ongoing discussions divide scholars into separate groups either claiming or disclaiming the resemblance between narco-states and failed states. Depending on which properties are assigned to the definition of a failed state, the definition is in accordance with the narco-state. While most narco-states show signs of high rates of corruption, violence and murder, properties that are also assigned to failed states, it is not always clear if violence can be traced back to drug trafficking. Obvious to say is that failed states are not consequently narco-states, but uncertain is whether all narco-states are also failed states.
Usage
It has been argued that narco-states can be divided into five categories depending on their level of dependence on the narcotics trade and the threat the narcotics trade in said country poses to domestic and international stability. These five categories are : incipient, developing, serious, critical, and advanced.However, recent use of the term narco-state has been questioned by some for being too widely and uncritically applied, particularly following the widespread media attention given to Guinea-Bissau as "the world's first narco-state" in 2008, and should instead refer only to those countries in which the narcotics trade is state-sponsored and constitutes the majority of a country's overall GDP.
Examples
Guinea-Bissau
, in West Africa, has been called a narco-state due to government officials often being bribed by traffickers to ignore the illegal trade. Colombian drug cartels used the West African coast as Jamaica and Panama increased policing. The Guardian noted Guinea-Bissau's lack of prisons, few police, and poverty attracted the traffickers. An article in Foreign Policy questioned the effectiveness of money from the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations designated to combat the illegal trade.Honduras
has been labeled as a narco-state due to drug trafficking involvement of president Juan Orlando Hernández and his brother Tony Hernández, who was a congressman. Tony Hernández was captured in 2018 in the United States and was accused of conspiracy of cocaine trafficking to the US in 2019. Also Fabio Lobo, who is the son of former president Porfirio Lobo was arrested by DEA agents in Haiti in 2015. All of them are members of the conservative right-wing National Party of Honduras.Mexico
Corruption within the Mexican government has been a problem within Mexico for decades. The Mexican cartels have been known to be quite influential within Mexican politics, going so far as to pump large sums of money into Mexican electoral campaigns, supporting candidates sensitive to bribery in order to keep their businesses safe. As far back as the early 20th century, drug trafficking had been tolerated by the Mexican government. Since 1929, the dominant party of Mexico, the Institutional Revolutionary Party forged ties with various groups in order to gain political influence. Among them were the drug traffickers. The ties between the PRI and the drug lords became so close that the PRI even went so far as to have an alliance with the drug traffickers and sanctioned their activities.During the 1980's and 1990's the drug scene in Mexico accelerated. Before the 1980's most of Mexico's drug production yielded marijuana and small bits of heroin. Cocaine mostly reached the U.S.A. through the Bahamas and the Caribbean. After the U.S.A. shut down the routes that entered the state from Florida, Colombian drug cartels established a partnership with Mexican traffickers and cartels, finding new routes smuggling cocaine over land into North-America. A few small Mexican cartels merged into the Guadalajara cartel, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, increasing the volumes of marijuana production and drug trafficking. The Guadalajara cartel trafficked the cocaine produced by the Colombian Calí cartel, while expanding the marijuana production in the rural areas of Mexico at the same time.
The U.S.A. established a special force, named the Drug Enforcement Administration, to fight the war on drugs within their own borders and beyond. The D.E.A. office situated in Mexico received extra resources to investigate the murder of one of their own; Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, who was abducted, tortured and murdered by a state police officer paid by members of the cartel. These insights confirmed the corruption rate that grasped Mexico during the 1980's and 1990's. Although, not only police officers on payroll obeyed to Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and his cartel. Investigations show transactions to high officers in federal government, such as the Federal Directorate of Security and the Mexican Federal Judicial Police.
The beginning of the Mexican Drug War in 2006 was the first time any significant government effort took place to fight the drug cartels in Mexico and was initiated by Mexico's newly elected president, Felipe Calderón. Calderón's predecessor, Vicente Fox, who was elected in 2000, marked the first time Mexico had a president who was not from the PRI. However, despite Calderón's efforts, the PRI was returned to power in 2012 with the election of Enrique Peña Nieto.
During the court hearing for the most wanted cartel leader, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, it was alleged that former president Enrique Peña Nieto had accepted a $100 million bribe from the drug kingpin.
On 1 December 2018, Mexico elected a new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Despite presenting himself as being non-established, AMLO was a member of the PRI from 1976 to 1989.