On January 31st, 2012 James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence in the United States, told senators in his country “that drug cartels which operate in Mexico are contributing to the instability in Central America”.
On February 28th of this year, the International Narcotics Control Board, which reports to the United Nations, submitted a report which pointed out that the Mexico-based criminal organizations’ moving into the region has lead to an increase in kidnapping, bribery, torture, homicide and in general, extreme rates of violence that have no precedent.
For Washington, the Mexican-Central American corridor represents the number one threat when it comes to drug trafficking, because 90% of the cocaine which is sold to users in the United States comes from this area.
According to a Wikileaks report published in 2011, the most powerful firearms that end up in Mexico are originally from the arsenal of various Central American armed forces, which is a symptom of the high level of corruption between organized crime and the army.
These are just few reasons as to why President Elect, Enrique Peña Nieto, started his international tour in Guatemala. Mexico now finds between of the pressure that the United States is applying to stop the flow of drugs into their territory and the growing complaints coming from the Central American countries about the exportation of violence from Mexico and the implications of sharing a border with a country that has many of the same problems they do, if not worse.
Peña Nieto found a leader that wanted to cooperate in Otto Perez Molina, but more importantly, Mr. Perez wanted to help by being the link that binds Mexico and an upset Central America, upset because of a lack of cooperation and indifference that Mexico has shown to the region and to Latin America in general, for many decades.
In his travel dossier, Peña Nieto took reports given to him from his advisers and from Washington. Jorge Montaño, the Ex-Mexican Ambassador in Washington, had focused on this issue: “Central America is close to collapse” and Mexico, in some ways, is responsible for it.
The specific case of a geographic zone which has been labeled “the corridor of death” will have to be a top priority for the incoming government’s security agenda. At least that is how Mr. Perez Molina put it when he said that “Peña Nieto not only wanted to place special emphasis on Guatemala, but rather on all of Central America”.
Obviously, putting and end to the violence in the region cannot be done alone. Central American countries have suffered centuries of setbacks, poverty, dictatorship and authoritarian governments that have hindered the region’s development.
For some international organisms, the border between Mexico and Guatemala is a “death zone”, one of the most violent in the world and which is in a process of afghanization, due to the thousands of hungry and impoverished men, women, and children that pass through there seeking a better life, and because of the violent gangs that operate in the area, the criminal groups dedicated to the sex trade, the arms dealers, the human traffickers and or course, the drug dealers, that abound there.
The United Nations has highlighted, for example, that in Central America more than 900 Maras, or local gangs, are active and that more than 70 thousand people are members of these gangs.
During his speech at the “Las Banderas” room inside the Guatemala National Palace of Culture, Peña Nieto asked that their bilateral relationship not be centered on the issue of violence, but rather on a more-encompassing and complete strategy, and that this has to include the economic and commercial development of the region as a must.
If this strategy is worked out from a hemispheric point-of-view, where culture and society play a role in rebuilding human relationships and, if Peña Nieto manages to convince the United States that they have to be part of the solution to poverty, and therefore, violence, Mexico will recover an important part of its role as a leader in Latin America, without a doubt.