A
woman places a picture of slain student Gabriela Pineda next to a
candle during a protest in Monterrey called out by poet Javier Sicilia
after the death of his son whose body was found along with six other
dead people inside a car a week ago in Cuernavaca, April 6, 2011. A
homicide is reported every 74 minutes in Honduras, which has a
population of eight million, and experts directly link the violence and
corruption plaguing both the country and the region to drug trafficking.
Photograph by: Tomas Bravo,REUTERS
By Isabel Sanchez, Agence France-Presse April 10, 2012
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Here in the most violent city in the world's deadliest country, gangs settle scores with grenades and AK-47s, hitmen strike in broad daylight and police demand extortion payments.
A homicide is reported every 74 minutes in Honduras, which has a population of eight million, and experts directly link the violence and corruption plaguing both the country and the region to drug trafficking.
Ninety per cent of the cocaine sold in the United States passes through Central America, either en route to the U.S.-Mexico border or destined to be smuggled by sea, according to U.S. figures.
U.S. General Douglas Fraser, head of the U.S. Southern Command, however has said that only a third of the drugs that reach Central America and Mexico are stopped before entering the United States.
Leaders from the Americas — who will head to Colombia for a regional summit this weekend — are well aware of the drug violence that has become endemic, and are searching for new ways to control the scourge.
Cocaine, the illegal narcotic extracted from coca — native to South America — leaves a trail of destruction across the region.
Honduras has a homicide rate of 86 per 100,000 people, according to a United Nations study, and San Pedro Sula — located near the Atlantic coast and close to the border with Guatemala — lies on a key drug trafficking route.
Security forces in Honduras, as in most of Latin America, are outmanned and outgunned by drug gangs, who move their shipments on private airplanes, speed boats, and even submersibles known as "narco-subs."
Honduras is not alone: in tiny El Salvador, there are 66 homicides per 100,000 residents, and in Guatemala, the rate is 41.4 per 100,000.
Some regional leaders are advocating the decriminalization of drugs to dampen the violence.
In February, Guatemalan President Otto Perez said that Central American leaders should forge a common policy on the issue.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a key regional U.S. ally, said he would consider decriminalization if there were a broad consensus.
The U.S. government however opposes such a move, and recently sent Vice President Joe Biden to Central America to talk leaders out of the idea.
Washington has long funded anti-narcotics operations in Latin America, most notably through the Plan Colombia — more than $6 billion since 2000 — and the $1.6 billion Merida Initiative, signed in 2008, which covers Mexico and Central America.
Washington points to successes in the war on drugs, including the destruction of Colombia's powerful Medellin and Cali cartels.
But those relative victories did not stop the flow of drugs.
Today in Cali, small and mid-sized drug gangs thrive, and in the nearby Cauca valley, leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary fighters and criminal gangs are all involved in the drugs trade.
Experts say the demise of the Colombian cartels only led to the growth of the Mexican syndicates.
"Now the Mexicans have the key to passage to the United States and set the price on cocaine," said Colombian Alfredo Rangel, who heads a think-tank focusing on democracy and security.
"The violence is over the division of fewer resources."
In Mexico, more than 50,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched a U.S.-supported crackdown on drug trafficking in 2006. Most of those people were killed in turf wars among the competing cartels.
There have been important victories in Mexico, including high-level arrests and the crippling of the once-powerful Tijuana drug cartel.
But Mexico's other cartels appear as strong as ever — so much so that the Zetas, founded by ex-anti-drug commandos, have formed alliances with Central American drug gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha, which extends its reach into Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities.
Even more worrying is the fact that regional drug cartels, who sometimes pay their workers with cocaine, have broadened their market beyond the United States and Europe and are creating a whole new generation of addicts in Latin America.
In Brazil, which recently passed Britain to become the world's sixth biggest economy, poor youths addicted to crack cocaine fight for their fix in squalid shanty towns across the country.
In the northeastern city of Maceio, where tourists enjoy the beaches largely undisturbed, drug addicts in the city's shanty towns — known here as favelas — are killing each other at an alarming rate.
While the homicide rate in Brazil is 26.2 per 100,000, in Maceio, it is 109.9 per 100,000.
"In seven years I lost five sons, killed by their own friends," said Severino Lopez, a 59-year-old candy vendor. "They bought drugs, did not pay their debts and died. The youngest was 18 and the oldest was 23."
"Cocaine consumption has generalized across nearly all of Latin America and the Caribbean," said Francisco Cumsille, who works in an Organization of American States office that monitors drug abuse.
"This is not a drug that is exported only to the north."
According to the group, half of the world's cocaine consumers live in the Western Hemisphere.
Surprisingly, drugs play only a small role in Venezuela, another Latin American country with a soaring homicide rate (67 per 100,000 residents). Most of those murders are linked to common crime and revenge attacks.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Here in the most violent city in the world's deadliest country, gangs settle scores with grenades and AK-47s, hitmen strike in broad daylight and police demand extortion payments.
A homicide is reported every 74 minutes in Honduras, which has a population of eight million, and experts directly link the violence and corruption plaguing both the country and the region to drug trafficking.
Ninety per cent of the cocaine sold in the United States passes through Central America, either en route to the U.S.-Mexico border or destined to be smuggled by sea, according to U.S. figures.
U.S. General Douglas Fraser, head of the U.S. Southern Command, however has said that only a third of the drugs that reach Central America and Mexico are stopped before entering the United States.
Leaders from the Americas — who will head to Colombia for a regional summit this weekend — are well aware of the drug violence that has become endemic, and are searching for new ways to control the scourge.
Cocaine, the illegal narcotic extracted from coca — native to South America — leaves a trail of destruction across the region.
Honduras has a homicide rate of 86 per 100,000 people, according to a United Nations study, and San Pedro Sula — located near the Atlantic coast and close to the border with Guatemala — lies on a key drug trafficking route.
Security forces in Honduras, as in most of Latin America, are outmanned and outgunned by drug gangs, who move their shipments on private airplanes, speed boats, and even submersibles known as "narco-subs."
Honduras is not alone: in tiny El Salvador, there are 66 homicides per 100,000 residents, and in Guatemala, the rate is 41.4 per 100,000.
Some regional leaders are advocating the decriminalization of drugs to dampen the violence.
In February, Guatemalan President Otto Perez said that Central American leaders should forge a common policy on the issue.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a key regional U.S. ally, said he would consider decriminalization if there were a broad consensus.
The U.S. government however opposes such a move, and recently sent Vice President Joe Biden to Central America to talk leaders out of the idea.
Washington has long funded anti-narcotics operations in Latin America, most notably through the Plan Colombia — more than $6 billion since 2000 — and the $1.6 billion Merida Initiative, signed in 2008, which covers Mexico and Central America.
Washington points to successes in the war on drugs, including the destruction of Colombia's powerful Medellin and Cali cartels.
But those relative victories did not stop the flow of drugs.
Today in Cali, small and mid-sized drug gangs thrive, and in the nearby Cauca valley, leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary fighters and criminal gangs are all involved in the drugs trade.
Experts say the demise of the Colombian cartels only led to the growth of the Mexican syndicates.
"Now the Mexicans have the key to passage to the United States and set the price on cocaine," said Colombian Alfredo Rangel, who heads a think-tank focusing on democracy and security.
"The violence is over the division of fewer resources."
In Mexico, more than 50,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched a U.S.-supported crackdown on drug trafficking in 2006. Most of those people were killed in turf wars among the competing cartels.
There have been important victories in Mexico, including high-level arrests and the crippling of the once-powerful Tijuana drug cartel.
But Mexico's other cartels appear as strong as ever — so much so that the Zetas, founded by ex-anti-drug commandos, have formed alliances with Central American drug gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha, which extends its reach into Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities.
Even more worrying is the fact that regional drug cartels, who sometimes pay their workers with cocaine, have broadened their market beyond the United States and Europe and are creating a whole new generation of addicts in Latin America.
In Brazil, which recently passed Britain to become the world's sixth biggest economy, poor youths addicted to crack cocaine fight for their fix in squalid shanty towns across the country.
In the northeastern city of Maceio, where tourists enjoy the beaches largely undisturbed, drug addicts in the city's shanty towns — known here as favelas — are killing each other at an alarming rate.
While the homicide rate in Brazil is 26.2 per 100,000, in Maceio, it is 109.9 per 100,000.
"In seven years I lost five sons, killed by their own friends," said Severino Lopez, a 59-year-old candy vendor. "They bought drugs, did not pay their debts and died. The youngest was 18 and the oldest was 23."
"Cocaine consumption has generalized across nearly all of Latin America and the Caribbean," said Francisco Cumsille, who works in an Organization of American States office that monitors drug abuse.
"This is not a drug that is exported only to the north."
According to the group, half of the world's cocaine consumers live in the Western Hemisphere.
Surprisingly, drugs play only a small role in Venezuela, another Latin American country with a soaring homicide rate (67 per 100,000 residents). Most of those murders are linked to common crime and revenge attacks.
© Copyright (c) AFP
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