Overview
The Americas’ conflict landscape is characterised by grey zones between organised crime and political violence. Multiple criminal groups fight each other and the government, largely driven by competition over lucrative illicit economies, while increasingly challenging the state’s territorial control and monopoly on the use of force. They try, and often succeed, to infiltrate state institutions and influence politics, using intimidation and violence but also electoral votes they control as bargaining chips. In some cases, they also play a quasi-state role, providing goods and services and ensuring basic governance in their areas of control. This was in full display during the coronavirus pandemic, with gangs across the region enforcing (or imposing) lockdown measures, distributing essential goods and personal protective equipment, and fixing prices of critical goods. In sum, although the main motivations of conflict are not ideological (with the exception of Colombia and to a lesser extent Brazil), violence is often used for political purposes and to fundamentally undermine public security and ultimately the state’s authority.1
Conflict is particularly ripe along the transnational drugs routes that stretches from Colombia, South America’s coca cultivation and production powerhouse, to the main markets in the United States (through Central America and Mexico), Brazil and (through the latter) Europe. This means that policies in destination markets (especially in the US) directly influence the evolution of conflict. In particular, hardline drug policies promoted by the US and espoused by most Latin American countries have failed to curb illicit-drugs economies, thereby perpetuating violence.2 The nexus between violence, migration and regional instability also raises the global importance of Latin American conflicts despite their inherently internal nature, without any formal intervention by external powers.
Sources: IISS; Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), www.acleddata.com; El Salvador, Ministry of Justice and Public Security; Honduras, Office of Security of the Secretary of State; General Management of the National Police of Honduras; Mexico, Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection; United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; UN Office on Drugs and Crime; Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
Root causes of conflict include the many inequalities (of income, land ownership, access to basic services, race, geography to name a few) that permeate the region’s societies and development models, compounded by institutional fragilities and governance flaws. The coronavirus pandemic’s devastating health, human and economic toll on the region simultaneously exacerbated social tensions and socio-economic inequalities while reinforcing gangs’ legitimacy and further weakening government effectiveness.3 This is likely to aggravate violence and instability in the medium term.
Regional Trends
Continued violence
Conflict continued unabated in 2020 and early 2021, despite some initial coronavirus-related disruptions to the activities of criminal gangs.4 Homicide rates decreased notably in El Salvador, and to a lesser extent in Honduras, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, but this was likely linked to pandemic-related mobility restrictions and other factors – including data-collection flaws as well as arrangements/truces with gangs – and not indicative of an improvement in violence trends.5 Indeed, the decline in homicides was concomitant to spikes of violence in areas of contestation and increases in massacres and killings by security forces across the region.
Sources: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), www.acleddata.com; Thomas Hale et al., ‘A Global Panel Database of Pandemic Policies (Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker)’, Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 5, no. 4, April 2021, pp. 529–38
Economic and social upheaval
The pandemic, coupled with hurricanes Eta and Iota which brought havoc in Central America in November 2020, substantially aggravated underlying root causes of violence in the region.6 Despite most Latin American countries adopting emergency cash transfers to the most vulnerable segments of their populations, poverty rates are estimated to have increased from 30.5% of the regional population to 33.7% in 2019–20, with an additional 22 million people falling into poverty, the worst levels since 2008 (or since 2009 in the case of extreme poverty).7 This further undid progress to reduce inequalities, as shown by an estimated 3% increase of the regional Gini index.8 Employment indicators also worsened, both in terms of unemployment numbers and quality of jobs. Informal workers (including migrants) and youth were among the most affected, boosting the size of the recruitment pool for criminal organisations. Border closures between countries in the region (and with the US) temporarily halted migration, removing a traditional escape valve for countries (notably in Central America) in times of economic hardship.
State inefficiency and growing politicisation of criminal groups
Governments, whose resources and efficiency were significantly stretched by the multiple emergencies, proved increasingly incapable of performing their basic functions. Criminal groups skilfully leveraged the resulting governance gaps to expand and reinforce their territorial control while gaining legitimacy with local populations by providing basic services and essential goods during lockdowns. This reinforced pre-existing trends of politicisation of criminal groups, whose goals to infiltrate or even replace the state became more prominent.
Regional Drivers
Political and institutional
State fragility:
Widespread governance flaws and rampant corruption in the region have historically created a conducive environment for impunity, crime and violence to thrive. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2020 classified most countries in the region as either flawed democracies (including Brazil, Colombia and Mexico) or hybrid regimes (including El Salvador and Honduras).9 Institutional limitations have also allowed criminal groups to operate freely and impose their rule in large portions of national territories. In deprived neighbourhoods in Brazil, El Salvador and Honduras, where state governance is poor, criminal gangs impose their own social rules, security measures and illegal taxation schemes. In Mexico, cartels use bribery and violence against public officials to extract favours or impunity. Meanwhile, impenetrable territories in the forest of Colombia create safe havens for coca cultivation and insurgent groups far from the state’s reach.
Economic and social
Socio-economic divides:
Violence has marked the modern history of Latin America. Land disputes embedded in strong socioeconomic divides between rural and urban areas bolstered insurgency in the 1960s. Peace agreements were eventually reached in Nicaragua (1987), El Salvador (1992), Guatemala (1996) and Colombia (early 1990s and 2016) and guerrillas demobilised, but violence soon re-ignited amid continued economic stagnation. Similar pressing social and economic issues also triggered a surge in criminality in countries hitherto unaffected by armed conflict, including Brazil and Mexico, as many in need turned to illicit economies as a source of income. Despite improvement in the last two decades, poverty levels and inequality remain very high in Latin America. By the 2010s, rapid urbanisation,10 in a context of inequality and economic deprivation, further catalysed violence.11 Around 25% of the urban population in Latin America and the Caribbean is poor, and widespread informality and unemployment (especially for youth) provide the perfect terrain for criminal gangs and illicit activities to thrive.12
Drug-trafficking routes and territorial control:
In the late 1990s, drug production and trafficking established itself as a key root of conflict, with certain countries as well as national and transnational criminal groups playing specific roles in the drugs supply chain, further embedding violence in the region. In South America, most notably Colombia, coca cultivation rose dramatically as guerrillas and paramilitaries expanded their territorial control across the country. Honduras, and later El Salvador, increased their role in the transportation of cocaine between South and North America, progressively consolidating their position as transit countries.13 Mexican cartels assumed control of the final narcotics delivery into the US after the dismantling of the largest Colombian cartels. In Brazil, the second-largest market for cocaine after the US, urban gangs consolidated control over the domestic trade of imported cocaine, mostly from Colombia.14 As Brazilian gangs grew in strength and connections, they diversified their activities into cocaine trafficking to Europe, Africa and Asia.
Security
War on drugs:
The adoption of repressive drugs policies across the region, predominantly based on increased militarisation and eradication of illicit crops (including controversial aerial fumigation practices) has also fuelled conflict between state forces and criminal groups, while augmenting alienation among parts of the population (notably farmers and the rural poor). Repressive drugs policies also had the unintended consequence of reinforcing the territorial control and economic power of criminal groups by inducing higher retaliation capacity to confront state forces. The so-called war on gangs declared in El Salvador and Honduras in 2003 increased the defensive and offensive capacity of criminal groups, boosting their ability to hold territory and economic power. In Mexico, under the war on drugs declared by President Felipe Calderón in 2006, drug cartels morphed from a relatively contained business with limited geographical scope and low intensity of violence to a fragmented but organised network of criminal groups. This paved the way for increased violent confrontations and territorial disputes between cartels and against state forces. In Colombia, the implementation of the Plan Colombia in 2000 quickly escalated clashes between the army and guerrillas.15
Regional Outlook
Prospects for peace
The complex nature of conflict in the region, where the line between organised crime and political violence is blurred, will continue to weigh down prospects for durable peace.
Peace achieved through negotiation with nonstate armed groups will remain unlikely in 2021 given the difficulty of engaging myriad actors with different agendas and loyalties, often in conflict with one another, and the legal constraints of negotiating with criminal actors. In El Salvador, the Bukele administration’s continued erosion of checks and balances could enable further negotiations with the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang, after an alleged truce was brokered in 2020. Even under this scenario, however, an escalation of violence in the short term cannot be ruled out as the two sides try to boost their bargaining power.
A continuation of iron-fist approaches to tackling organised crime is likely in Brazil and Colombia amid increased popular concerns about security in the run-up to general elections in 2022 in both countries. Peace in Mexico will remain elusive amid shifting balances of power and areas of contestation among criminal groups.
Escalation potential and spillover risks
The social and economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic and hurricanes Eta and Iota in Central America, coupled with an unprecedented political and economic crisis in Venezuela and increasing political instability in the region, point to a worsening conflict landscape and highlight some additional areas of fragility to watch. Climate change, which is particularly impacting the Dry Corridor in Central America, will be another multiplier of conflict in the medium to long term.
Deteriorating socio-economic conditions and increasingly limited fiscal space to provide support for vulnerable populations will drive greater numbers towards criminal groups or migration, in turn creating new business opportunities for illicit actors and threatening domestic and regional stability across Central America, the US border with Mexico, and the border regions between Colombia and Venezuela.16 Venezuela and Haiti, both mired in deepening political crisis, spiralling crime and collapsing institutions, represent other potential sources of conflict, with important regional spill-overs in terms of migration and violence.
The delayed roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations in the region underscores the likelihood of additional lockdowns in the year ahead. This will add to existing socio-economic strains and further weaken state legitimacy to the benefit of criminal groups. Likely strong demand for drugs – especially for cocaine in the US and Europe – will continue to drive illegal economies in the region and competition among criminal organisations for territorial control, which will sustain violence.
Geopolitical changes
Developments in the US, Colombia and Venezuela will continue to determine conflict trends in the region. US policies on drugs, access to firearms and migration will remain the main geopolitical influencer. In early 2021, the administration of Joe Biden pledged a US$4 billion four-year aid package to address root causes of migration in the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), namely poverty, lack of economic opportunities, corruption and climate-related issues. While this could improve these countries’ outlook and governance in the medium to long term, it is unlikely to substantially curb migration flows in the short term; in fact, expectations of a more favourable migration policy will probably attract more migrants in the short term. Moreover, the Biden administration’s focus on corruption will complicate cooperation with Central American governments given the deterioration in the rule of law across the region in recent years. It is also unlikely that the US will deviate substantially from its traditional repressive drugs policies, as suggested by Biden’s support for Colombia’s decision to restart its aerial coca-eradication programme in early March 2021.
Colombia’s role as a global supplier of cocaine makes its security policy another key determinant of the regional violence outlook. While general elections in 2022 may herald some changes in this realm, the incumbent government is almost certain to continue its iron-fist security policy and discourse while it remains in office to retain the support of its core constituency. Lastly, the crisis in Venezuela, with its migrant outflows, its rampant illicit economies and the protection it affords to various Colombian non-state armed groups, will continue to affect dynamics of regional stability. Moreover, the country forms the main theatre for great-power competition in the region, featuring different forms of involvement from China, the European Union, Iran, Russia, Turkey and the US. Substantive progress towards breaking the political impasse and the organisation of free and fair elections seems doubtful in the short term amid irreconcilable negotiation positions from President Nicolás Maduro and acting president Juan Guaidó, a fragmented opposition and low appetite from Biden to use his domestic political capital to push for a negotiated solution. His Venezuela policy will likely resemble his predecessor’s, based on sanctions for the Maduro regime and full support for Guaidó.
Notes
- 1 Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, ‘Gang Violence: Concepts, Benchmarks and Coding Rules’.
- 2 Liberal policies on arms possession in the US have been another driver of violence, providing criminal organisations across the border in Mexico easy access to weapons. See Parker Asmann, ‘Lack of US Gun Control Provokes Record Bloodshed in Mexico’, InSight Crime, 31 August 2019.
- 3 Latin America has been the region worst affected by the pandemic, against a backdrop of high levels of urbanisation and informality (60%), underdeveloped social-security nets, and fragmented and underfunded healthcare systems. Although home to only around 8% of the global population, it accounted for almost 20% and 30% respectively of total active cases and deaths in the world as of the end of 2020, with Brazil and Mexico ranking second and fourth globally for fatalities. According to the IMF, Latin American GDP contracted by 7% in 2020, the worst performance across the world’s regions. See Antonio David, Samuel Pienknagura and Jorge Roldos, ‘Latin America’s Informal Economy Dilemma’, Diálogo a Fondo; Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ‘Social Panorama of Latin America 2020’, March 2021, p. 13; World Health Organization, ‘WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard’; International Monetary Fund, ‘World Economic Outlook Database’, April 2021.
- 4 When the strongest lockdown measures were in force in El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia (between April and August 2020) and Mexico (in December 2020 and January 2021), significant monthly spikes in conflict-related fatalities (namely battles, explosions/remote violence and violence against civilians, according to ACLED) were reported, signalling the rapid reactional and operational capacity of criminal groups to challenge state authority.
- 5 A truce was widely alleged to explain the substantial dip observed in El Salvador, where the murder rate halved year on year to 19.7 per 100,000. See Parker Asmann and Katie Jones, ‘InSight Crime’s 2020 Homicide Round-Up’, 29 January 2021.
- 6 Duncan Tucker and Encarni Pindado, ‘When it Rains it Pours: The Devastating Impact of Hurricanes Eta and Iota in Honduras’, Amnesty International, 13 December 2020.
- 7 Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ‘Social Panorama of Latin America 2020’, Graphic 1, p. 15.
- 8 Ibid, p. 28.
- 9 Only three countries in the region were considered ‘full democracies’, while a further three were classed as ‘authoritarian regimes’. See Economist Intelligence Unit, ‘Democracy Index 2020: In Sickness and in Health’.
- 10 With 81% of its population living in cities, Latin America is currently the most urbanised region in the world. See Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ‘Social Panorama of Latin America 2020’, p. 16.
- 11 In 2013, for example, 84% of the 50 most violent cities (including the top 16) in the world were in Latin America and the Caribbean. World Bank, ‘Stopping Crime and Violence in Latin America: A Look at Prevention from Cradle to Adulthood’, Results Briefs, 17 May 2018.
- 12 Natalie Alvarado and Robert Muggah, ‘Crime and Violence: Obstacles to Development in Latin America and Caribbean Cities’, Inter-American Development Bank, November 2018, p. 2.
- 13 In 2010, Honduras was classified as a major drug-transit country by the United States government, followed by El Salvador in 2011. According to the US Department of State, by 2015, 90% of cocaine on the US market had first transited through the Central America–Mexico corridor. See US Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, ‘International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume I: Drug and Chemical Control’, March 2016, p. 161.
- 14 Alongside cocaine and marijuana, more recently synthetic drugs have also been part of drug-trafficking operations.
- 15 Plan Colombia, adopted in 2000, primarily aimed to end the conflict in Colombia by supporting the Colombian armed forces (through funding and training) to eradicate drug trafficking.
- 16 All seven of Colombia’s departments bordering Venezuela have seen the presence of multiple criminal groups. Some of them move across extensive areas on both sides of the border, including Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissident units such as the Second Marquetalia. At least 70% of the National Liberation Army’s forces are located in the borderlands. While clashes between dissidents from the FARC, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Venezuelan army in Venezuela’s border regions and sporadic incursions of the latter into Colombian territory will continue in the year ahead, it is unlikely that political tensions between Colombia and Venezuela will result in a full-fledged military confrontation. See International Crisis Group, ‘Disorder on the Border: Keeping the Peace between Colombia and Venezuela’, Report No. 84, 14 December 2020.
MEXICO
Source: Mexico, Ministry of Finance and Public Credit
Overview
Mexican drug-trafficking organisations (DTOs) originated in the 1970s, serving as intermediaries trafficking cocaine from South America to the United States, in addition to producing drugs (primarily marijuana) locally. At the time, operations were largely controlled by the Guadalajara Cartel led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. After his arrest in 1989 – following the murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in Mexico – the territory it had controlled was split between four major DTOs run by Félix Gallardo’s closest associates, namely the Sinaloa, Juarez, Tijuana and Sonora cartels, an arrangement that largely persisted for the next 15 years. Drug-related violence began escalating following the 2000 electoral defeat of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), after seven decades of continuous rule, which undid many existing unofficial agreements between the DTOs and the government. Numerous high-profile acts of violence led President Felipe Calderón (2006–12) to launch the war on drugs in December 2006, triggering a full-scale (ongoing) confrontation between state security forces and the DTOs. Of the 19 DTOs identified by the government, 11 operate in more than one state and two – the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) – have a presence in every state of Mexico as well as strong international operations.
Despite restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, violence showed little respite, with 35,484 intentional homicides recorded (or a homicide rate of 22.6 per 100,000). This represented a modest decrease of 0.4% compared to 2019’s record number of absolute and relative homicides in Mexico.1 Although the decrease reversed the continuous annual increases witnessed since 2014, it cannot yet be established whether it represented the beginning of a structural downward trend akin to the 2011–14 period.
During 2020, the government reinforced its existing strategy of combatting DTOs through the National Guard (GN), a gendarmerie-style force created in 2019 specifically to deal with cartel violence and fulfil a campaign promise by current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to demilitarise the war against DTOs. The GN was involved in virtually every major operation against DTOs in 2020 and by the end of the year had become the second-largest security force in the country.
However, the lack of substantive security advances translated into relatively high public disapproval levels for López Obrador’s security policy, which throughout 2020 was among the most consistently poorly rated policy areas.
Conflict Parties
Secretariat of National Defence (SEDENA) – (Army and Air Force)
Strength: 165,500.
Areas of operation: Across the whole country but concentrates its forces in the north and the Pacific region: in Baja California, Chihuahua Coahuila, Jalisco, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sonora and Tamaulipas.
Leadership: General Luis Crecencio Sandoval (head of SEDENA); General Manuel de Jesús Hernández González (head of the air force).
Structure: SEDENA forms one branch of Mexico’s two defence ministries. The army is divided into 12 military regions and 46 military zones. The air force is divided into four air regions. The General Staff of National Defence is divided into eight sections, of which the second section (intelligence) and the seventh section (combatting drug trafficking) focus on DTOs.
History: The Ministry of War and the Navy was created in 1821 to supervise the army, navy and air force. In 1939 it was divided to create SEDENA and the Secretariat of the Navy (SEMAR).
Objectives: Provide internal security and fight drug trafficking.
Opponents: DTOs.
Affiliates/allies: SEMAR, GN and special-forces combat group GAIN (Drug Trafficking Information Analysis Group), which is in charge of capturing DTO leaders. Also supported by the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) and the Attorney General’s Office, as well as foreign governments through cooperation programmes (e.g. the Mérida Initiative with the US).
Resources/capabilities: Infantry, armoured vehicles and combat helicopters. 2020 budget: US$5.5 billion (approximately MXN 118bn).2
Secretariat of the Navy (SEMAR)
Strength: 50,500.
Areas of operation: The country’s coasts, divided into the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico–Caribbean zones.
Leadership: Admiral José Rafael Ojeda Durán.
Structure: Divided into General (70%) and Naval Infantry Corps (marines; 30%), which operate in eight naval regions and 18 naval zones (12 in the Pacific and six in the Gulf and Caribbean). The marines’ special forces also combat criminal groups in the country’s interior.
History: Created in 1821. SEMAR separated from SEDENA in 1939.
Objectives: Defend Mexico’s coasts, strategic infrastructure (mainly oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico) and the environment at sea, and fight piracy.
Opponents: DTOs, particularly those that traffic people through the coasts, from South and Central America, and those that transport drugs via sea from Colombia and Venezuela.
Affiliates/allies: SEDENA, GN and CNI. Cooperates with US Coast Guard at the border.
Resources/capabilities: Fast vessels for interception, exploration and intelligence; supported by naval aviation. 2020 budget: US$1.63bn (approximately MXN 35bn).
National Guard (GN)
Strength: 92,100.
Areas of operation: Across the whole country. The states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Mexico, Michoacán, Oaxaca and Sinaloa had the highest number of operational coordination regions at the end of 2020.
Leadership: Alfonso Durazo (secretary of public security and citizen protection (SSPC)); General (Retd) Luis Rodríguez Bucio (commander).
Structure: A total of 266 coordination regions expected to be operational by the end of 2021. 200 of these were operational as of 31 December 2020.
History: Began operating in May 2019, by presidential order. The law gave GN personnel the authority to stop suspected criminals on the streets.
Objectives: Reduce the level of violence in the country and combat DTOs.
Opponents: DTOs and medium-sized criminal organisations.
Affiliates/allies: SEDENA, SEMAR, and local and municipal police.
Resources/capabilities: Acquired resources from the defunct Federal Police, including their helicopter teams and equipment such as assault rifles. Relies on intelligence from SEDENA, SEMAR and the CNI.
Sinaloa Cartel (CPS)
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: Headquartered in Culiacán, Sinaloa, but with a presence in all 32 states of Mexico. Outside Mexico, active in Asia, Canada, Central America and Europe. In the US, it has an important presence in California, Colorado, Texas and New York.
Leadership: Historical leader since the mid-1990s, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán was captured in 2016 and imprisoned for life in the US in 2019. His number two, Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada García, is in a leadership struggle with El Chapo’s sons, Ovidio and Iván Archibaldo.
Structure: Hierarchical organisation, with three sub-divisions: finance/business, logistics for drug transportation and military structures.
History: Preceded by the Guadalajara Cartel, co-founded in the late 1970s by leader Rafael Caro Quintero. In the 1990s, following the peace processes in Central America, the large-scale ground transit of cocaine began. In the mid-1990s, El Chapo became leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, opened routes from Guatemala to Mexico and the Tijuana route, and forged alliances with the Medellín Cartel in Colombia. Focused for 20 years on cocaine, but now diversifying into heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Objectives: Control all drugs markets (for cocaine and methamphetamine in particular), including production networks in Colombia, distribution in Central America and Mexico and consumption in the United States.
Opponents: Other DTOs, including the Gulf Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel and the Juarez Cartel. SEMAR, SEDENA’s intelligence section and special forces. The US DEA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
Affiliates/allies: Many subordinate medium-sized and small DTOs, at the regional level, including cocaine-producing partners in Colombia. Partners with many corrupt Mexican government officials. A large number of Sinaloa governors are suspected of supporting the cartel.
Resources/capabilities: High-powered weapons, such as the Barrett M107 sniper rifle and anti-aircraft missiles, and a large fleet of drug-transport planes.
Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG)
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: Headquartered in the state of Jalisco, with a presence in most states, particularly Colima, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán and Nayarit. It also controls the Pacific ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, where chemicals from China enter Mexico. It has rapidly expanded in the US, where it is thought to have a presence in 35 states and in Puerto Rico.
Leadership: The main leader is Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, commonly known as ‘El Mencho’.
Structure: El Mencho successfully co-opted all regional leaders of the Michoacán Family and the Knights Templar to control the laboratories in the Michoacán mountains.
History: Formed in 2011 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, CJNG initially produced methamphetamine in rural laboratories in Jalisco and Michoacán. In 2012–13, it expanded to Veracruz. Since 2015–16 its influence has grown throughout the country, thanks in part to gaps left after the government successfully targeted other DTOs (such as the Michoacán Family, the Knights Templar, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel).
Objectives: Fully replace the Sinaloa Cartel at the helm of Mexico’s criminal networks.
Opponents: Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas, the special forces of SEMAR and SEDENA.
Affiliates/allies: Demobilised members of the Michoacán Family and the Knights Templar, as well as large numbers of collaborating peasants.
Resources/capabilities: Estimated capital of US$1bn from the sale of methamphetamine and fentanyl as well as the extortion of merchants and money-laundering activities in Guadalajara.
Los Zetas
Strength: Unknown. Hit hard by the government between 2012 and 2016.
Areas of operation: Tamaulipas State, mainly along the border with Texas, as well as Coahuila, Nuevo León, Veracruz, Tabasco and the area along the border with Guatemala.
Leadership: Founded by Heriberto Lazcano, former member of the Mexican army. Since 2013, 33 of its main leaders (including Lazcano) have been arrested or killed in combat by military forces.
Structure: Horizontal, decentralised structure that works as a large business with multiple criminal activities. Unsuccessful at drug trafficking, its cells carry out extortions and kidnappings, collect criminal taxes from merchants and traffic migrants from Central America to Texas.
History: Originally the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, drawing most of its members from the Mexican and Guatemalan armies. Notorious for perpetrating mass violence against the civilian population and migrants. Between 2010 and 2012, a major SEMAR offensive to dismantle the ‘Gulf Corridor’ weakened the group significantly. It is the DTO against which the Mexican government has been most successful.
Objectives: Control criminal activity in the Gulf of Mexico states.
Opponents: CJNG, Gulf Cartel and the special forces of SEMAR.
Affiliates/allies: Criminal networks in Tamaulipas State.
Resources/capabilities: Migrant smuggling and criminal taxes on merchants.
Gulf Cartel
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: Operates and controls territories in Tamaulipas State, particularly the border area with Texas, including strategic border cities, such as Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros.
Leadership: The current leader is Homero Cárdenas Guillén. Many former leaders have been killed in combat or detained and extradited to the US.
Structure: Unstable, with fragmented leadership.
History: The second-oldest DTO in the country, smuggling alcohol, weapons and drugs across the US border since the 1940s. After forging a partnership with the Colombian Cali Cartel in the 1990s, the group focused on introducing cocaine to the US market. Los Zetas violently separated from the group in 2010.
Objectives: Smuggle drugs on the Texas–Tamaulipas border and control drug trafficking in northeast US.
Opponents: Los Zetas, CJNG and the special forces of SEMAR and SEDENA.
Affiliates/allies: Closely linked to Tamaulipas State’s governors (three former governors have been charged in Texas) and criminal networks.
Resources/capabilities: Many Tamaulipas businessmen support the cartel in laundering money.
Beltrán Leyva Organisation
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: Mainly in the states of Guerrero and Morelos, and the Mexico City–Acapulco highway. The group controls poppy production and the export of heroin from Iguala (Guerrero) to Chicago, IL.
Leadership: Founded by brothers Arturo, Alfredo, Carlos and Héctor Leyva – Arturo was killed in 2009 and the other three were imprisoned, with Héctor dying in 2018.
Structure: Based around vertically organised cells. After the death or imprisonment of the four brothers, seven local criminal groups emerged in Guerrero State: the Ardillos, the Granados, the Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA), the Mazatecos, the Rojos, the Ruelas Torres and the United Warrios (GU).
History: A breakaway group of the Sinaloa Cartel formed in 2008 in Sinaloa before moving to the South Pacific–Acapulco (Guerrero State), Morelos and Mexico State.
Objectives: Control heroin trafficking in the South Pacific and from Mexico to Chicago.
Opponents: Sinaloa Cartel, CJNG and the special forces of SEDENA.
Affiliates/allies: An estimated 100,000 peasants who grow poppies in Guerrero.
Resources/capabilities: Profits from the sale of heroin in the US and from criminal activities such as extortion and kidnapping in Mexico.
Michoacán Family/Knights Templar
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: The surviving criminal cells moved to Guanajuato, Guerrero and Mexico State.
Leadership: Fragmented following the 2015 arrest of Servando Gómez Martínez.
Structure: Organised into independent cells.
History: Gained power by producing methamphetamines, importing chemical precursors from China. Founded by Nazario Moreno Gonzalez in 2005, the organisation’s initial recruitment was based on a religious discourse. Between 2006 and 2012, the group built a broad network of collaborators among the population, gained control of a large number of local politicians on the Pacific coast of Michoacán and ran methamphetamine labs in the mountains. However, it was practically dismantled by Mexican government forces between 2013 and 2016. Following the capture of its first leaders, the Michoacán Family became the Knights Templar in 2013–14, under the leadership of Servando Gomez.
Objectives: Control mining and agricultural production (of avocados for export to the US) in Michoacán State; control the port of Lazaro Cardenas (for smuggling the chemical base for producing methamphetamine); and steal fuel in Guanajuato State.
Opponents: Sinaloa Cartel, CJNG, Los Zetas and the special forces of SEDENA.
Affiliates/allies: A large number of collaborating peasants.
Resources/capabilities: The revenue from criminal taxes on many economic activities.
Tijuana Cartel (also known as Arellano Felix Family Organisation)
Strength: Exact numbers unknown, but thought to have regained some strength since 2018.
Areas of operation: A bi-national, cross-border organisation operating between Tijuana, Baja California and San Diego, CA; Los Angeles, CA.
Leadership: Fragmented as Benjamin Arellano Felix and his brothers Ramón, Eduardo, Luis Fernando, Francisco, Carlos and Javier are all imprisoned in California jails.
Structure: Groups of young people either become gunmen or cocaine exporters (middle-class youth who have visas to cross the border). Their leaders are family members.
History: During the 1980s and 1990s, the Arellano Felix brothers controlled the north of the country and transported drugs across the border through tunnels, migrants and people moving on foot or by car.
Objectives: Control drug trafficking from Baja California to California, US.
Opponents: Sinaloa Cartel, the special forces of SEDENA and US intelligence services cooperating with Mexican authorities at the border.
Affiliates/allies: Many people cross the border daily with small amounts of drugs.
Resources/capabilities: Revenue from the crossborder cocaine trade.
Juarez Cartel/La Línea
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: A bi-national, cross-border organisation active in North Chihuahua and North Sonora in Mexico and Southwest Texas; Las Cruces and Albuquerque, NM, and Tucson, AZ, in the US.
Leadership: Founded by Amado Carrillo Fuentes in the 1990s. His brother Vicente Carrillo Fuentes directs it from prison.
Structure: Three local cartels in Ciudad Juárez: La Línea, Los Artistas Asesinos and Los Aztecas, which clash over cocaine shipments to be exported to El Paso, TX.
History: Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the ‘Lord of the Skies’, orchestrated the smuggling of drugs in small planes at low altitude, which went undetected by radars. In 2009 it began to fight with the Sinaloa Cartel for control of the Central Mexican and the US-highway trafficking routes.
Objectives: Control drugs crossing from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, and into New Mexico and Arizona, and drug trafficking to northeast US.
Opponents: Los Zetas, CJNG, the special forces of SEDENA and the DEA.
Affiliates/allies: Groups of young people either become gunmen or drugs-exporters (middle-class youth who have visas to cross the border).
Resources/capabilities: The proceeds from drug trafficking.
Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel (CSRL)
Strength: Exact numbers unknown but experienced large-scale arrests in 2019–20.
Areas of operation: Guanajuato; minor operations in neighbouring states including Queretaro and Hidalgo.
Leadership: Founded by David Rogel Figueroa ‘El Güero’ in 2014 and from 2017 led by José Antonio Yépez Ortiz ‘El Marro’. Unclear leadership structure following El Marro’s arrest on 2 August 2020 though the organisation is highly family oriented.
Structure: Organised into numerous regional cells. One cell known as the Shadow Group was previously associated with the Gulf Cartel. Many high-level operatives (including financial operatives) are relatives of El Marro.
History: Formed in 2014 as a huachicolero (fuel theft) gang in the state of Guanajuato and grew to a fully fledged DTO after 2017 when El Marro assumed leadership, expanding its operations to include drug trafficking, retail drug trade, kidnapping and extortion. Significantly weakened since 2019 because of the government’s campaign against fuel theft as well as conflict with the CJNG, which has contested its dominance in the state.
Objectives: Control the fuel-theft market in the Bermuda Triangle area of Guanajuato as well as supplementary resources through drug trafficking (mainly cocaine) and other illegal activities in that area.
Opponents: CJNG, GN, other SEDENA and SEMAR forces.
Affiliates/allies: Local fuel-theft gangs.
Resources/capabilities: The proceeds from fuel theft and other drug-trafficking revenues. Fuel-theft income has fallen significantly since 2019 and it is believed the group is severely weakened, having possibly lost around 40% of its manpower.3
Conflict Drivers
Political
Institutional corruption and impunity:
Mexico has traditionally suffered from high levels of corruption and impunity, enabled by a permissive political culture as well as lax law enforcement. Mexico ranked 124th worldwide and second worst (only above Venezuela) among Latin America’s seven biggest economies in the 2020 Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.4 Against this backdrop, DTOs have found it easy to bribe or intimidate public officials, particularly targeting municipal-level officials given the lack of protection offered to them and the underfunding and underarming of municipal police forces. An estimated 264 mayors, mayoral candidates and former mayors were murdered by DTOs between 2002 and 2019.5 Higher-profile officials have also been targeted, including, for example, a district-court judge, Uriel Villegas Ortiz, in June 2020, the first killing of a federal judge since 2016, and the former governor of Jalisco, Aristóteles Sandovla, in December 2020, the highest-ranking public official killed since the drug war began.
Economic and social
Poverty and precarity:
Widespread poverty and precarious labour conditions among Mexico’s youth (around a quarter of the population) contributes a constant supply of manpower for DTOs. An estimated 48.8% of Mexico’s population (61.1m people) lived under the national poverty line in 2018,6 a figure that has not improved significantly since the 1990s and which highlights the poor future prospects for many young people as social mobility is also limited. This bleak economic picture increases the appeal of joining a DTO, as the potential income far outstrips that offered by most legal employment, despite the risk of death or imprisonment. Informal employment is high at 55.8% of the labour force,7 facilitating money laundering and other financial crimes driven by DTOs.
It is also estimated that around 35–45,000 Mexican children may be involved to some degree with DTOs, usually as lookouts but even as hitmen, while girls are frequently coerced into the sex trade.8
Geography:
Mexico’s location, situated between the main source of cocaine production (South America) and the main consumption market for all drugs (the US), triggered its emergence as a major drug-trafficking centre. Mexico is also a major drugs producer in its own right, being the largest producer of opium in the Western Hemisphere with an estimated 6% of the global supply (only behind Afghanistan and Myanmar) as well as the second-largest marijuana producer in the world (behind Afghanistan).9 Mexico is also a major producer of synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, and a transit route for fentanyl from China, where most of it is produced, into the US.
The so-called Golden Triangle region which encompasses the states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango is estimated to account for as much as three-quarters of Mexico’s cultivated drug production. Jalisco and Michoacán are in turn the primary centres of synthetic-drugs production, leveraging precursor chemicals illegally imported from Asia through the ports of Lázaro Cárdenas and Manzanillo.
International
US drug demand and policy:
The market conditions driving the prevalence of DTOs in Mexico stem from the US demand for illegal drugs (estimated by some sources to be nearly US$150bn annually). DTOs are also able to easily obtain assault rifles and other weapons in the US and smuggle them across the border to Mexico, usually in small but steady quantities which are difficult to detect, in so-called ‘ant trafficking’. US drug policy has largely supported the military strategies adopted by successive Mexican governments to combat DTOs. This, in turn, has precluded discussion of potential alternative approaches such as more widespread legalisation of drugs (including some hard drugs), or negotiations between government and the DTOs.
Political and Military Developments
The fight against financial crime
The López Obrador administration considerably strengthened the scope of operations of the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) of the secretariat of finance tasked with investigating money laundering and terrorist financing. During 2020, the UIF froze a total of 19,970 financial accounts related to organised crime, compared to 800 in 2018.10 These accounts amounted to a total of US$372.3m (MXN $8bn) in assets, compared to US$244.2m (MXN $4.7bn) frozen in 2019 and dwarfing the US$3.6m (MXN $69.7m) in 2018. This rise in overall asset seizures suggests a stronger commitment to attacking DTO finances than previous administrations.
Arrest and exoneration of General Cienfuegos
On 15 October 2020, Mexico’s former secretary of defence, General Salvador Cienfuegos, was arrested in the US on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges. The López Obrador government, which had not been informed of the investigations, reacted strongly and managed to negotiate Cienfuegos’s extradition to Mexico. In an unprecedented move, announced as a measure to strengthen bilateral security cooperation, all charges were dropped in November so that Cienfuegos could be transferred to Mexican custody. In January 2021, Cienfuegos was exonerated by Mexico’s attorney general’s office amid allegations of government interference in the investigation. However, the DEA’s evidence against Cienfuegos was found to be riddled with translation errors which undermined their case.
Source: Press conference by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 31 December 2020
New proposed regulation of foreign security officials
At the end of 2020, in what was widely seen as a response to Cienfuegos’s arrest, a reform was proposed to the National Security Law to regulate foreign law-enforcement officials operating in Mexico. The law would remove diplomatic immunity for foreign agents operating in Mexico and force them to share all information regarding ongoing investigations with their Mexican counterparts and would force Mexican officials to report all communications with foreign agents to the government. The reform was fast-tracked in the Senate on 9 December and in the Chamber of Deputies on 17 December, however López Obrador eventually had the law watered down before its final approval on 14 January 2021 to exclude the sharing of confidential information and to remove restrictions to electronic communications.
Continued militarisation of the fight against crime
A presidential decree signed in May 2020 allowed the armed forces to continue participating in public-security duties, as a complement to the GN, until 2024, in a further manifestation of the higher prominence of the military in public life under López Obrador compared to previous administrations. In July, the military was also tasked with administering Mexico’s ports and customs, many of which have been significantly infiltrated by organised crime.
Focus on Guanajuato
José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, the leader of the CSRL, was captured in August 2020 in a combined operation involving federal and state police forces and the GN. The most important arrest of a major DTO leader in 2020, it highlighted the growing importance of Guanajuato State in Mexico’s drugs war. Once one of Mexico’s safest states and a major manufacturing hub, since 2018 it had become one of the most violent: in 2020 its homicide rate was the second-highest nationwide (72.1 per 100,00).11 The biggest mass killing of 2020 occurred in Guanajuato in July when CSRL gunmen stormed a drug rehabilitation centre in Irapuato, killing 27 people.
Attack against Omar García Harfuch
In June 2020, CJNG gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying Mexico City’s secretary of public security, Omar García Harfuch, in broad daylight in one of the capital’s most upscale neighbourhoods. Despite being shot several times, García Harfuch survived the attack. A dozen CJNG members were arrested for participating in the attack. Notably, the attackers were carrying military-grade weaponry including a .50-calibre sniper rifle.
Key Events in 2020–21
POLITICAL EVENTS
9 March 2020
‘Day Without Women’ march takes place in response to López Obrador’s lack of attention towards feminicides and gender violence.
23 March
The government imposes social-distancing measures and closes non-essential activities to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
29 March
López Obrador visits Sinaloa and shakes hands with El Chapo’s mother.
April
Large DTOs are seen distributing food and other pandemic-related aid in the absence of government support.
11 May
López Obrador signs a decree enabling the armed forces to continue internal public-security duties until March 2024.
1 June
A new system of state-level pandemic alerts is introduced, allowing states with falling case levels to gradually begin reopening.
1–2 June
The UIF undertakes ‘Operation Agave Azul’, freezing the assets of nearly 2,000 people and companies related to the CJNG.
17 July
López Obrador announces a plan to hand over control of ports and customs to the military to reduce corruption.
15 October
Former secretary of defence Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos is arrested in the US on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges.
17 November
US drops charges against Cienfuegos ahead of his return to Mexico to face investigation.
19 November
Senate approves marijuana-legalisation bill (following approval in the lower house, Senate will need to vote again).
15 December
Chamber of Deputies approves controversial reform to National Security Law.
18 December
Mexico City and the neighbouring state of Mexico are placed on the highest coronavirus alert level due to rising cases of COVID-19 from a second wave.
14 January 2021
Cienfuegos is cleared of all charges in Mexico. Watered-down version of National Security Law is approved.
MILITARY/VIOLENT EVENTS
16 June 2020
A district-court judge, Uriel Villegas Ortiz, and his wife are murdered in Colima State.
26 June
Omar García Harfuch, Mexico City secretary of public security, is targeted in an assassination attempt by CJNG.
1 July
27 people in a drug rehabilitation centre in Irapuato, Guanajuato State, are murdered by hitmen of the CSRL.
2 August
‘El Marro’, leader of the CSRL, is arrested.
18 December
Aristóteles Sandoval, former governor of Jalisco, is murdered.
Impact
Human rights and humanitarian
Despite López Obrador pledging that it would not, one year after its creation, the GN appeared to have inherited many of the same complaints regarding human-rights abuses levelled at the armed forces and the now defunct Federal Police. Over the course of 2020, the National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) received 350 human-rights complaints relating to the GN, almost equalling the 359 it received about SEDENA.12 These complaints came from all but one state and involved arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force, intimidation, prevention of access to justice, cruel and degrading acts, torture and forced disappearances. Part of the problem lies in the fact that around half of the GN are former members of the Federal Police and armed forces, with low levels (20% of its members and just 0.3% of new recruits) of vetting on human-rights records and successful completion of police training.13
Many DTOs have branched out into migrant kidnapping, preying on Central Americans attempting to reach the Mexican border and cross over to the US. The 2019 US ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy kept asylum seekers in Mexico while their cases were reviewed by US authorities, which made them a target for DTOs: it was estimated that around 80% of migrants and asylum seekers sent to Mexico to wait for US court hearings were victims of violence in the first nine months of 2019.14
Political stability
The impact of drug-related violence on national domestic political stability was less severe than often perceived by the public or the media, however lower levels of government and certain regions were worse affected. Drug-related violence did not impede the functioning of government and state institutions at a federal level nor cause any interruption to democratic order. Likewise, DTOs rarely targeted high-level federal officials (with some exceptions, like a small number of federal judges). In contrast, state- and municipal-level institutions and officials suffered greatly from DTO threats, bribery and killings, especially in a small number of particularly violent states. Overall, however, the risk of severe political instability caused by DTO-related violence was low, with DTOs seemingly avoiding challenging the state directly.
Economic and social
The impact of DTO violence on economic stability was also relatively minor, given its limited negative effects on productive activity, public services and the functioning of markets. This is despite the considerable overall cost of violence in Mexico, with one estimate putting it as high as 21.3% of GDP, although this included indirect costs such as lost future income from homicides as well as opportunity costs from security spending (direct costs of violence accounted for only about one-fifth of the total).15
The López Obrador administration has recognised the economic factors driving the drug trade, arguing in favour of social development as a longterm solution to crime. In its two years in office, it has already implemented various youth-focused social-assistance schemes and raised the country’s minimum wage considerably more than its predecessors, yet the pandemic-related recession will offset many of these actions, with poverty and labour precarity expected to persist and continue to drive crime.
Conflict Outlook
Political scenarios
Mexico will hold midterm elections on 6 June 2021 which will see the entire Chamber of Deputies up for election, as well as numerous other state and local positions. According to most polls, the ruling party, Morena, remained on course to retain its legislative majority, although it could lose the supermajority that has allowed it to reform the constitution at will. Regardless, there appeared to be few prospects of a change in security policy and most changes that would have required constitutional amendments have already been undertaken. López Obrador did not signal any willingness to change security policy, which will continue to prioritise the GN as the main force to combat the DTOs, despite few major successes to date.
Despite the expansion of the military’s duties into civilian and economic life, it is unlikely that it will make inroads into Mexican politics, given the lack of modern historical precedence and the likelihood of strong public repudiation should the military step out of the bounds set by the executive.
Mexico’s efforts against the DTOs will continue to rely heavily on US assistance, particularly in terms of information sharing: US intelligence has contributed significantly to the capture of major DTO leaders in the last 20 years. However, the controversial reform of the National Security Law and strong US opposition to it will threaten prospects for continued close cooperation.
Escalation potential and conflict-related risks
The dynamics of the drug war in Mexico make it difficult to estimate whether the conflict will intensify during any given year, as much depends on the balance of power between different DTOs, as well as arrests or killings of major DTO leaders causing power vacuums or escalations in violence. One trend that could impact DTOs’ financial power (and therefore their capacity for violence) is the growing importance of the synthetic-drug trade, particularly fentanyl, which benefits from easy production and transportation, and high profit margins. The government has responded by intensifying seizures of these drugs. Fentanyl seizures in 2020 totalled 1,301 kg, which represented a 486% increase compared to the 222 kg seized in 2019. Additionally, a total of 175 clandestine laboratories producing synthetic drugs of all types were dismantled, nearly twice as many as in 2019. 16 Despite the increase in fentanyl seizures, the drug will continue to pose a challenge due to the ease of its illegal and legal importation into Mexico and the widespread use of its chemical precursors in the medical industry, ruling out the possibility of a total ban.
A more positive trend is the potential legalisation of marijuana, already decriminalised by a 2018 Supreme Court ruling. In November 2020, the Senate approved a bill which decriminalised the possession of up to 28 grams of marijuana, allowed individuals to grow as many as six plants and established a regulatory framework for the production and sale of cannabis products. Should the bill be signed into law in 2021, Mexico would become the fourth country in the world to legalise marijuana for recreational use. However, the drug’s importance as a source of financing to DTOs has been vastly curtailed in recent years due to the shift towards synthetic drugs and reduced demand from the US.
Prospects for peace
The persistence of widespread poverty and lack of economic opportunities for large segments of the Mexican population, combined with the inability of successive governments to establish a security policy that demonstrably reduces violence, suggests that the conflict against DTOs will not end any time soon. At best, the consolidation of a few large DTOs (namely the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG) could reduce competition between them and thereby reduce violence. The impact of government efforts at combatting financial crime and synthetic drugs on DTO finances could either reduce their capacity for violence, or alternatively lead them to expand their reach into other criminal, or even some non-criminal, activity.
Strategic implications and global influences
Cooperation with the US on security matters will remain an important pillar of the strategic relationship between the two countries. Despite the Biden administration’s focus on domestic issues in early 2021, migration was one aspect given immediate priority due to surging numbers of Central American migrants in the first months of the year. While Mexico largely cooperated with the Trump administration on migration, it will be tempted to assume a more assertive stance with Biden if it perceives that major disagreements can be avoided, such as occurred in mid-2019 and resulted in the threat of a trade war. This assertiveness could also further complicate cooperation on security matters, already strained by Cienfuegos’s arrest and Mexico’s reform of the National Security Law, which was ultimately watered down due to pressure. Mexico’s dependency on US intelligence and, to a lesser extent, resources, including for its weapons procurement, means that changes to existing cooperation arrangements are likely to be marginal, and little more than posturing.
Notes
- 1 Arturo Angel, ‘En México Asesinaron a Más de 35 Mil Personas en 2020, Solo un 0.4% Menos que un Año Antes’ [In Mexico, More than 35 Thousand People Were Murdered in 2020, Only 0.4% Less than a Year Before], Animal Politico, 21 January 2021; and Government of Mexico, Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection, ‘Cifras de Delitos y Víctimas por Cada 100 Mil Habitants 2015–2021’ [Crime and Victim Figures per 100 Thousand Inhabitants 2015–2021], 20 June 2021.
- 2 Government of Mexico, Ministry of Finance, ‘Informes sobre la Situación Económica, las Finanzas Públicas y la Deuda Pública’ [Report on the Economic Situation, Public Finance and Public Debt], Fourth Trimestre, 2020, p. 38.
- 3 Ilse Becerril, ‘El Cártel de Santa Rosa de Lima Tras la Captura del Marro: Pactó con el CJNG y Ahora Opera con Solo el 60% de Sus Sicarios’ [The Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel After the Capture of Marro: It Made a Pact with the CJNG and Now Operates with Only 60% of Its Hitmen], infobae, 9 September 2020.
- 4 Transparency International, ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’, 2020.
- 5 Justice in Mexico, ‘Organized Crime and Violence in Mexico 2020 Special Report’, 30 July 2020.
- 6 Coneval, ‘Medición de la Pobreza – Pobreza en México: Resultados de Pobreza en México 2018 a Nivel Nacional y Por Entidades Federativas’ [Measurement of Poverty – Poverty in Mexico: Results of Poverty in Mexico 2018 at the National Level and by Federal Entities], 2018.
- 7 Inegi, ‘Principales Resultados de la Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo (nueva edición) (ENOEN) de Diciembre de 2020’ [Main Results of the National Survey on Occupation and Employment (new edition) (ENOEN) December 2020], December 2020.
- 8 ‘Menores en la Delincuencia Organizada de México: a los 14 años Roban, Secuestran y Venden Droga’ [Minors in Organised Crime in Mexico: At Age 14 They Steal, Kidnap and Sell Drugs], Forbes, 24 September 2020.
- 9 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, ‘World Drug Report 2021, Chapter 3: Drug Market Trends: Cannabis, Opioids’, June 2021, p. 88.
- 10 Mexican Government, ‘Informe Anual de Seguridad 2020’ [Annual Security Report 2020].
- 11 Government of Mexico, Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection, ‘Cifras de Delitos y Víctimas por Cada 100 Mil Habitants 2015–2021’ [Crime and Victim Figures per 100 Thousand Inhabitants 2015–2021], 20 June 2021.
- 12 ‘Ejército y Guardia Nacional, a la par con quejas en CNDH’ [Army and National Guard, On Par with Complaints to CNDH], El Universal, 8 February 2021.
- 13 Duncan Tucker, ‘La Nueva Guardia Nacional de México Está Rompiendo Su Juramento de Respetar Los Derechos Humanos’ [Mexico’s New National Guard Is Breaking Its Oath to Respect Human Rights], Amnesty International, 8 November 2020.
- 14 ‘The Devastating Toll of “Remain in Mexico” One Year Later’, Doctors Without Borders, 29 January 2020.
- 15 Institute for Economics & Peace, ‘Mexico Peace Index 2020: Identifying and Measuring the Factors that Drive Peace’, April 2020, p. 48.
- 16 ‘Informe 2020 del Gabinete de Seguridad. Conferencia Presidente AMLO’ [2020 Security Cabinet Report. President AMLO Conference], Andrés Manuel López Obrador, YouTube, 31 December 2020.
COLOMBIA
Sources: IISS; Colombia, Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz); Verdad Abierta; El Espectador
Overview
Colombia has been ravaged by violence since it became a republic in 1810. A low-intensity civil war between political parties in the 1950s (La Violencia) evolved in the 1960s to include multiple Marxist guerrillas fighting the state. In response to these guerrillas, paramilitary groups emerged in the 1980s, supported by state authorities and private actors. Since the early 2000s, the conflict has moved away from political goals and increasingly towards economic incentives, especially as drug trafficking became the most important funding source for illicit groups, both fuelling violence and making it more protracted.
Illegal economies boosted insurgent and paramilitary capabilities amid a slow and weak state response, which resulted in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group controlling 40% of Colombia’s territory by 2000.1 A stronger reaction by successive governments – along with support from the United States under Plan Colombia2 – facilitated negotiation processes with FARC and the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group. By 2006, most paramilitary combatants had demobilised and in 2016 FARC signed a peace agreement with the government and began transitioning into a political party.3 Yet deficiencies in the implementation of the demobilisation and reintegration of combatants from both the AUC and FARC contributed to the emergence of bandas criminales or BACRIMs (criminal gangs) and FARC dissident divisions. These groups, along with the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), also known as the Pelusos, have reshaped the armed conflict in recent years.
In 2020, the ELN remained the non-state armed group (NSAG) with the strongest territorial presence and most significant military capabilities. However, FARC dissident groups grew and became better organised, with a single commander, Miguel Botache Santillana, also known as ‘Gentil Duarte’, bringing together six FARC dissident fronts in over half the country.
Competition over former FARC-controlled areas, coca cultivation, cocaine production and distribution corridors, illegal mining and extortion continued to underpin ongoing dynamics of violence. In 2020, 91 massacres were registered, a steep escalation from the eight registered in 2015.4 In 2020, the police registered a total of 368 terrorist attacks, representing a dramatic 98% and 204% increase compared to 2019 and 2018 levels respectively.5 Between October 2019 and September 2020, there were 193 direct confrontations between NSAGs and the Colombian armed forces, and 61 confrontations solely between NSAGs.6
Conflict Parties
Colombian armed forces
Strength: 293,200 across the army, air force and navy. The national police has 189,000 police officers.
Areas of operation: Across the country but limited presence in some rural areas such as the Catatumbo, Urabá and Pacific coast regions.
Leadership: President Iván Duque (commander-in-chief); Diego Molano (minister of defence); Luis Fernando Navarro Jiménez (general commander).
Structure: Army, navy and air force. The National Police (PONAL) is in charge of public and civil security. Though not formally part of the military forces, PONAL has been controlled and administered by the Ministry of National Defence and has had a militarised structure since 1953.
History: Originated in the late 18th century as the Liberating Army of the independence movement against the Spanish Empire. The military forces were formally created with the 1821 Cúcuta Constitution.
Objectives: Defend national sovereignty, consolidate the state against NSAGs and maintain rule and order.
Opponents: ELN, FARC dissidents, BACRIMs including the Gulf Clan, EPL and other criminal organisations.
Affiliates/allies: National Police.
Resources/capabilities: 2020 defence budget of US$9.69 billion and US$10.69bn for 2021. Overall capabilities have improved in recent decades. The army is planning to modernise its armoured fighting vehicles, while the navy has improved its offshore-patrol capacities in recent years. The ground-attack capabilities of the air force remain limited.
Gentil Duarte's FARC dissidents
Strength: Approximately 3,000 members.7
Areas of operation: Presence in at least 12 of Colombia’s 32 departments, mainly in Antioquia, Caquetá, Cauca, Guaviare, Meta, Nariño, Putumayo and Vaupes.8
Leadership: Miguel Botache Santillana, alias ‘Gentil Duarte’ (commander). 1st and 7th Fronts: Néstor Gregorio Vera Fernández, alias ‘Iván Mordisco’; 33rd Front: Jhon Milicias; Western Coordinating Command: Gerson Antonio Pérez Delgado, alias ‘Caín’, and Euclides España Caicedo, alias ‘Jonier’.
Structure: Replicates the former FARC operational structure with ‘fronts’ for each region. However, it did not retain FARC’s hierarchal system across regional groups. The fronts therefore enjoy greater freedom to make decisions and manage their finances at the local level.
History: The group brought together multiple FARC units that rejected the 2016 peace agreement. Most remained in hiding until 2018–19, before beginning to conduct activities while claiming to be the ‘true’ FARC.
Objectives: Overthrow the government and establish a socialist state.
Opponents: Colombian armed forces, the Gulf Clan, the Second Marquetalia and other smaller local criminal groups such the EPL.
Affiliates/allies: ELN Western War Front in the Chocó region. Mexican drug-trafficking organisations (DTOs), mainly the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG).
Resources/capabilities: Inherited FARC’s former economic structures and rent-seeking activities (including extortion, kidnapping, ransom and illegal mining). Drug trafficking or tax collection on drug distribution in its areas of influence. Possesses long- and short-range weapons, obtained from conflict zones in Central America, former Soviet bloc countries and illegal suppliers in the US.
Second Marquetalia (FARC dissidents)
Strength: Between 300 and 800 members.9
Areas of operation: Border areas with Venezuela, mainly in the departments of Guainía, Norte de Santander and Vichada, and others such as Antioquia, Cauca and Casanare.
Leadership: The main commanders include Luciano Marín Arango, alias ‘Iván Márquez’; Hernán Darío Velásquez, alias ‘El Paisa’; Seuxis Pausias Hernández Solarte, alias ‘Jesús Santrich’ (killed in May 2021); Henry Castellanos Garzón, alias ‘Romaña’; and Olivio Iván Merchán Gómez, alias ‘Loco Iván’ (killed in combat in November 2020).
Structure: Sought to incorporate other groups under the unified coordination of its four main commanders. Its organisational structure remains unknown, but it likely replicates the old FARC structure.
History: Created in 2019 when a group of senior FARC commanders – who were signatories of the 2016 peace agreement – abandoned the reincorporation process and resumed fighting.
Objectives: Overthrow the government and create a socialist state. Recreate the original FARC.
Opponents: Colombian armed forces, Gentil Duarte’s dissidents and the Gulf Clan.
Affiliates/allies: Non-aggression pact in Casanare with the ELN Eastern War Front and alliances with ELN fronts in Antioquia and Cauca. Allied with Los Caparros in Bajo Cauca where the Gulf Clan is present.
Resources/capabilities: Its sources of financing include former undeclared assets of FARC, the illegal transport of migrants, drug trafficking and smuggling. Renewed weaponry with more modern rifles such as the IWI Tavor X95.
National Liberation Army (ELN)
Strength: Approximately 4,000 members.10
Areas of operation: Operates in at least 16 of Colombia’s 32 departments and capital cities, including Bogotá.11 Retains a particularly strong presence along the border with Venezuela, especially in the departments of Arauca, Norte de Santander and Vichada, but also in the departments of Cauca, Chocó, Nariño and Valle del Cauca – where it has inherited FARC territories. Has also expanded rapidly in Venezuela.
Leadership: Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista, alias ‘Gabino’ (commander).
Structure: The Central Command (COCE) directs strategy and is composed of five commanders and divisions that operate independently. The ELN has seven war fronts, including the Camilo Torres Restrepo National Urban War Front which has a presence in multiple capital cities. Maintains a horizontal military structure with a high level of independence given to each front. Many FARC dissidents have joined the ELN in recent years.
History: Founded in 1964 by a group of Catholic priests, leftwing intellectuals and students embracing liberation theology and trying to emulate the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Objectives: Overthrow the Colombian government and create a socialist state.
Opponents: Colombian armed forces, the EPL in the Catatumbo region and the Gulf Clan in Arauca, Antioquia and Chocó.
Affiliates/allies: The Second Marquetalia and other FARC dissidents in regions such as Chocó and Catatumbo; Los Caparros in Antioquia.
Resources/capabilities: Extortion, illegal mining and gasoline black market. Controls the illegal trafficking of timber and cocaine in various departments. Weapons come mainly from illegal foreign trade, including remnants of Soviet arms.
The Gulf Clan (also known as Gaitanistas Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AGC) or The Urabeños)
Strength: Approximately 3,000 members, though estimates vary.12
Areas of operation: Presence in at least 17 departments in Colombia, as well as abroad.13 Based in the Gulf of Urabá (on the Atlantic coast, close to Panama). Also has an extensive presence in the city of Medellín and departments such as Antioquia, La Guajira, Norte de Santander, Santander and Valle del Cauca.
Leadership: Dario Antonio Úsuga David, alias ‘Otoniel’.
Structure: About a third of the local cells are directly commanded by the leadership in Urabá, while the others are loosely affiliated with local criminal organisations, who use the name Gulf Clan and are expected to provide services or follow strategic orders when requested.
History: Emerged from the demobilisation of AUC paramilitaries in 2006. Some of its leaders and members are former EPL combatants and drug traffickers from groups that have since disbanded, such as the Popular Revolutionary Anti-Terrorist Army of Colombia (ERPAC).
Objectives: Drug trafficking. Using the name Gaitanistas Self-Defence Forces is a way of legitimising itself as a counterinsurgent group.
Opponents: Colombian armed forces, ELN, the Caparros, the EPL, Gentil Duarte’s dissidents and the Second Marquetalia (except in Córdoba and Antioquia).
Affiliates/allies: Works with the Second Marquetalia in Córdoba and Antioquia.
Resources/capabilities: Financing comes from transnational drug trafficking, providing services for independent drug traffickers. Multiple group members, including leaders, run their own international trafficking routes. Also involved in illegal prostitution, human trafficking to Panama and extortion.
Los Caparros
Strength: 400 members.14
Areas of operation: Lower Cauca area of Antioquia. After the peace agreement, they extended their influence in places such as Briceño, El Bagre, Nechí, Valdivia, Yarumales, Valdivia in Antioquia and Puerto Libertador and San José de Uré in Córdoba.
Leadership: Robinson Gil Tapias, alias ‘Flechas’.
Structure: Divided into three fronts: the Elmer Ordoñez Beltrán Front, the Carlos Mario Tabares Front and the Norberto Olivares Front.
History: Emerged from the demobilisation of the AUC in 2006 as one of the groups from the Gulf Clan. With the FARC demobilisation and the assassination of Danilo Chiquito, one of the main leaders decided to start his own group.
Objectives: Control drug trafficking in Córdoba, Antioquia, especially in the mountain range of the Paramillo Massif.
Opponents: The Gulf Clan and the Colombian armed forces.
Affiliates/allies: The Second Marquetalia and the ELN, in Córdoba, Sucre and the Urabá Gulf.
Resources/capabilities: Involved in all stages of drug trafficking (coca cultivation, cocaine production and international shipment) in the departments of Córdoba and Antioquia. Also engaged in illegal mining.
Conflict Drivers
Political
Slow implementation of the peace agreement:
President Iván Duque was elected in 2018 on a platform of scepticism around the 2016 peace agreement. While his government allocated around US$684 million for the Development Programmes with a Territorial Approach (PDETs), multiple voices have denounced the slow pace and low political will to produce tangible results.15 For example, the construction of public works stipulated as part of the agreement has slowed down dramatically: whereas 544 construction projects began in 2019, only 53 started in 2020. Moreover, 38% of the required legal adjustments for implementation were still pending.16 As a result, NSAGs have reoccupied many areas of the country, with their presence reported in 30 out of 32 departments.17 Meanwhile, demobilised FARC combatants faced increased insecurity, with homicides increasing sharply from 32 in 2017 to 73 in 2020.18
Economic and social
Socio-economic inequalities and institutional flaws:
Widespread inequalities, in land ownership and other areas, have historically fuelled the conflict. Colombia is Latin America’s second-most unequal country, with a 27%19 monetary poverty rate and a Gini index of 51.3.20 This inequality is exacerbated by the state’s inability to provide justice and resolve land disputes, as well as widespread corruption. Colombia also consistently ranks in the lower half of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.21
Illegal economies and coca eradication:
Coca crops and cocaine production remain important drivers of violence, as the most important revenue source for illicit criminal and terrorist groups, as well as an income source for marginalised rural communities. The latter’s relationship with national authorities is therefore strained by efforts to forcefully reduce cultivation. Legal restrictions on aerial fumigations enforced by the Constitutional Court since 2017 have undermined government eradication efforts, necessitating the use of manual methods instead, making the process longer and more labour-intensive.
International
Venezuela:
Venezuela continues to play a significant role in the Colombian armed conflict, acting as a safe haven for Colombian NSAGs such as the ELN and some FARC dissidents. As of May 2019, around 50% of ELN members were thought to have taken refuge in Venezuela.22 Ongoing socio-economic and political turmoil in Venezuela has also triggered a major regional migration crisis, causing approximately 5m people to flee, with most settling in neighbouring countries, including 1.8m in Colombia.23 Over 50% of these migrants were deemed to have an irregular status,24 and almost 30% settled in neighbouring departments such as Norte de Santander and La Guajira, areas with a strong military presence of diverse illegal armed groups.25 This migrant crisis has further stretched the Colombian government’s limited capacity to address diverse pressing economic and social problems in the country.
Political and Military Developments
JEP moves forward
Despite the controversy surrounding the Special Justice for the Peace (JEP) created by the peace agreement, the tribunal continued its investigations into the seven macro cases that have been opened. More than 300,000 victims have registered under the JEP and over 12,000 individuals have submitted themselves to its jurisdiction, including 9,806 former FARC combatants and 3,007 members of the military and police.26
The open cases cover accusations against both FARC members and state agents, for illegal retention – also known as kidnapping – and for illegitimate deaths presented by the military as casualties – also known as false positives. In January 2021, the tribunal formally charged eight former members of the FARC secretariat for the kidnapping of 21,396 victims, but no arrests or formal sanctions have yet been implemented.27 Investigations continued in the case on civilian deaths presented as legitimate casualties by military forces. While charges have not been officially presented for the 6,402 homicides committed between 2002 and 2008, a former army commander and multiple former generals agreed to submit themselves and testify before the JEP.28
Creation of Comunes
As part of a new electoral strategy for the upcoming 2022 elections, the FARC political party – established in 2017 using the same acronym but with the name Common Alternative Revolutionary Force – changed its name to Comunes, in order to distance the party from the group’s guerrilla history.
Social unrest and police violence
2020 saw a continuation of social unrest against the Duque government that had started in late 2019. Before the coronavirus outbreak in April 2020, protests centred on the murder of social leaders and human-rights defenders, and several wiretapping scandals surrounding the military forces. In November 2020, protests re-ignited around the issues of unemployment, education, pension grievances and in defence of the 2016 peace agreement. Some protests escalated into looting and vandalism, while others also featured serious brutality against peaceful protesters, particularly by the Mobile Anti-Disturbances Squadron (ESMAD) of the police. Despite public outcry and international condemnation, Duque failed to clearly condemn this disproportionate use of force in a timely way.
Consolidation of FARC dissidents
Violence by the two main FARC dissident groups (Gentil Duarte’s followers and the Second Marquetalia) increased following a military strategy to gain territorial control and national visibility, expanding their respective presence to the southwestern departments of Cauca, Caquetá and Nariño, among others, and to the border area with Venezuela. The Second Marquetalia was also affected by the killing of its commander, Olivio Iván Merchán Gómez or ‘Loco Iván’, by the Venezuelan army in November 2020. This event also confirmed the importance of the Venezuelan border as the group’s headquarters.
ELN ceasefire and curfew enforcement
As a national lockdown was imposed to curb COVID-19 infections in March 2020, the ELN announced a suspension of armed action to encourage compliance with public-health measures in its areas of influence. Although the national government rejected this proposal, the ELN imposed lockdown measures in the Catatumbo region and the Cauca department, including restrictions on the movement of vehicles and people.
Key Events in 2020–21
POLITICAL EVENTS
21 January 2020
Social protests flare up in multiple cities against the government’s socio-economic policies and voicing concern for increased violence against social leaders.
20 March
Duque announces the first Mandatory Preventive Isolation period in response to the pandemic. Colombian borders are officially closed.
7 July
An executive order is issued that offers legal benefits for individual members of organised armed groups who surrender. The president calls on the Gulf Clan, the EPL and Los Caparros to surrender immediately.
7 October
Carlos Antonio Lozada, former FARC commander and current senator, confirms the group’s involvement in the 1995 assassination of the presidential candidate Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, sparking controversy around the ongoing transitional-justice process.
18 October
Several indigenous groups arrive in Bogotá after crossing the country from the southwest region, demanding better protection against the assassination of their leaders and control of their territories by armed groups.
27 October
Following controversy around the alleged meddling of Colombian right-wing lawmakers in the US presidential race, the US Ambassador to Colombia publicly urges all Colombian politicians to remain uninvolved.
15 November
In an El Espectador interview, Euclides España Caicedo ‘Jonier’, a commander with Gentil Duarte’s dissidents, emphasises the group’s intention to pursue the original FARC project and recover its previous military strength.
21 November
New protests against the national government take place across the country.
26 November
A political-control debate is held in Congress against the Attorney General’s Office for an alleged incrimination plot against ‘Jesus Santrich’, commander of the Second Marquetalia who returned to arms after being arrested in that same case.
16 December
The Constitutional Court establishes the conditions to resume aerial spraying of illicit crops. The government indicates that this strategy will be resumed in 2021.
11 January 2021
US President Donald Trump adds Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism for hosting the ELN leaders in the country.
13 January
Iván Márquez, commander of the Second Marquetalia, appears in a video publicly supporting any political action that seeks to oust Duque.
MILITARY/VIOLENT EVENTS
12 February 2020
The ELN and EPL declare a month-long curfew in the Catatumbo region, prohibiting the movement of people and vehicles.
1 May
Pablo Beltrán, member of the ELN central command, declares a ceasefire to facilitate control of the coronavirus pandemic and enforces containment measures in its areas of influence.
16 June
The police kill Deimer Patiño Giraldo, also known as ‘80’, who had assumed the leadership of the criminal organisation the Pachencas, one of the fastest-growing BACRIMs in the Caribbean region.
15 August
In an area controlled by the ELN, eight young people are murdered in the so-called Samaniego massacre. This event generates alarm due to the repeated use of massacres as a consolidation mechanism by the BACRIMs.
9 September
Javier Ordoñez dies after being arrested by the police and taken to a station for supposed violation of coronavirus restrictions. Footage showing brutal treatment is revealed on social media and results in major protests in Bogotá.
24 September
Commander Andrés Felipe Vanegas Londoño, also known as ‘Uriel’, publicly confirms that the ELN had participated in protests earlier in September in which seven civilians were killed, 148 injured and 53 police stations destroyed. On 25 October 2020, the army kills ‘Uriel’ in the jungles of Chocó.
21 October
In a coordinated operation between the police, the army and the prosecutor’s office, Richar Arley Díaz Garay, alias ‘Cóndor’, former head of the EPL, is captured, leading the group to lose control over the Catatumbo region.
18 November
The Venezuelan army kills ‘Loco Iván’, commander of the Second Marquetalia.
4 January 2021
Jesús Ramos Machado ‘Aquiles’, the financial leader of the Gulf Clan tasked with expanding the group in the eastern part of the country and right-hand man to its overall leader, is captured.
Impact
Human rights and humanitarian
With 310 cases in 2020, the assassination of social leaders and human-rights defenders remained a pressing concern as authorities failed to regain control in previously guerrilla territory.29 During 2020 there were 171 victims of anti-personnel mines, further evidence of the insufficient implementation of the peace agreement which had stipulated the elimination of such weapons.30
The new power competition between the ELN, FARC dissidents and multiple BACRIMs increased displacement of and violence against civilians. In 2020 there were 90 forced-displacement events, an increase of 30 from 2019, while the number of victims of the armed conflict jumped from 25,100 to 28,509.31
Source: Colombia Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz)
Political stability
Threats to political figures by NSAGs re-emerged as a means of exerting control and intimidation. For example, in October 2020, Senator Feliciano Valencia was targeted by an assassination attempt in his electoral stronghold in the department of Cauca. The mayor of Medellín and several opposition congressmen also received threats from BACRIM gangs.
The murder of former FARC combatants has undermined the implementation of the peace agreement, causing the government to lose legitimacy with local and international audiences that demand action and FARC political leaders losing support from the group’s rank-and-file members, who demand protection.
Recurring social mobilisation in urban centres also added a new dimension to local and national governance, as citizens forcefully rejected government policies, drawing attention to ongoing violence and denouncing the disproportionate use of force by the police and military.
Economic and social
Colombia’s GDP contracted by 6.8% in 2020 as the result of the pandemic, with unemployment increasing significantly from 10.5% in 2019 to 16.1%.32 The worsening economic situation simultaneously fuelled social protests across the country while constraining the government’s fiscal ability to address social grievances.
Violence by NSAGs caused sustained economic losses as a result of disruptions to trade and cargo transporters, the burning of trucks and the imposition of tolls in regions under armed ELN curfews in the middle of the pandemic. Attacks against energy and oil infrastructure – a characteristic of the conflict – also persisted, with 52 attacks against pipelines registered during 2020.33
Relations with neighbouring and international partners and geopolitical implications
The growing transnational dynamics of the conflict continued to strain relations with Venezuela, especially given accusations against the government of President Nicolás Maduro of protecting multiple NSAGs and failing to contain the exodus of migrants. Recriminations escalated to the point of Duque accusing Maduro of committing crimes against humanity at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2020.
The election of Joe Biden as US president sparked hopes for an acceleration in the implementation of the peace agreement and for concrete violence-reduction measures, particularly in relation to the assassination of social leaders and former FARC combatants. Renewed US attention on the implementation of the 2016 agreement will add to existing international pressure, particularly from the European Union, to deliver results.
Conflict Outlook
Political scenarios
The government’s track record on security and the socio-economic agenda will likely take centre stage in 2021 ahead of the 2022 general elections. As security and criminality have re-emerged as the main concern for Colombians, the political discourse will shift to effective solutions to curb violence, prompting the government to resume aerial spraying of coca crops to curtail the economic power of BACRIMs, as well as possibly considering other alternative strategies, such as the reduction of penalties for voluntary surrenders.
Meanwhile, rising poverty and inequality postpandemic will continue to fuel public discontent and political polarisation, with candidates expected to promise higher levels of social spending and unorthodox solutions for economic recovery. The Venezuelan crisis will also remain at the centre of political discussions both nationally and regionally, especially in border regions.
For the first time, the 2022 parliamentary elections will include candidates of the Comunes party who will need to demonstrate that they represent the rank and file of the former FARC to remain politically active amidst internal power disputes.
Escalation potential and conflict-related risks
The Gentil Duarte dissidents, through the Western Coordinating Command and the old 30th Front, will continue their efforts to become the dominant armed group in southwestern Colombia. Thus, higher levels of violence can be expected in the coastal municipality of Tumaco and other rural areas in the department of Cauca, where the ELN, the Gulf Clan and other marginal armed groups are also present.
Near the Venezuelan border and in the Llanos Orientales region, the conflict will likely intensify between Gentil Duarte’s group and the Second Marquetalia, particularly its José Maria Córdova Front. In the Catatumbo area, fighting is likely to continue between the ELN’s Northeastern War Front and the remaining groups of the defunct EPL. The 33rd Front of Gentil Duarte’s dissidents and the Second Marquetalia’s Danilo Garcia Command will also probably attempt to establish a presence in this region.
In rural areas of the country, such as Urabá, the armed conflict will likely continue between the Gulf Clan and the Caparros, and with the Second Marquetalia, which has already conducted exploratory actions in this region. Urban violence and criminality will also increase as an area of concern given Colombia’s deteriorating socio-economic indicators and rising unemployment, even if not directly related to the existing dynamics of armed conflict.
Prospects for peace
The shortcomings in implementing the 2016 peace agreement remain the most serious obstacles towards a sustainable peace. The agreement included multiple avenues to directly address the root causes of the violence, particularly for safeguarding political-opposition activities and bridging the urban/rural gap.
The government has committed to accelerating programmes allowing tax benefits for private companies to develop public works, to reinforcing government-provided security measures for former FARC combatants and to conducting the rural cadaster.
However, the Duque administration has sent mixed messages around resuming a dialogue with the ELN in Cuba. The group’s federal structure makes any potential negotiation challenging: the lack of hierarchy across regions means no single individual has the authority to negotiate on behalf of its diverse constituents. In the run-up to the 2022 elections, negotiating with the ELN could also be politically counterproductive for the government vis-à-vis its mostly right-wing electorate.
Strategic implications and global influences
In the absence of political relations with the Maduro government in Venezuela, the ELN and the Second Marquetalia could accelerate their expansion across the border, which could bring these guerrillas into violent confrontations with other BACRIMs such as the Rastrojos in the states of Zulia and Táchira. One of the most important impacts of this lack of cooperation and diplomatic channels between the two countries is that the Colombian government is unable to extradite Colombian citizens arrested in Venezuela for prosecution.34
The Biden administration’s plan for the region will be an important driver of Colombia’s local policies. US support for aerial spraying to reduce coca crops and thereby limit the inflow of cocaine to the US could provide the necessary impetus for Duque’s strategy to decimate BACRIM revenues. However, the environmental and health consequences of aerial spraying could increase public backlash and further erode the government’s already low popularity.
The two governments are likely to join together in efforts against Maduro, as solving the border crisis will be crucial for domestic and regional stability. Cooperation on other issues might be more complicated, as the Biden administration – as well as the UN and other international actors – might push for greater action to reduce violence against demobilised FARC combatants, social leaders and human-rights defenders.
Notes
- 1 Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, ‘Conflicto en Colombia: Antecedentes Históricos y Actores’ [Conflict in Colombia: Historical Background and Actors], 1 January 2014.
- 2 Plan Colombia, adopted in 2000, primarily aimed to support the Colombian armed forces (through funding and training) to reduce drug trafficking and terrorism. In 2016, it entered a new chapter of bilateral cooperation: Peace Colombia.
- 3 In November 2016, after four years of formal negotiations in Cuba and a failed attempt to obtain popular support through a referendum, the Colombian government signed a revised peace agreement with FARC (following an initial agreement in August 2016). The deal included chapters on rural reform, political participation of former combatants, conflict termination, illicit drugs, the creation a transitional truth and justice system and the implementation of the agreement.
- 4 Indepaz, ‘Informe de Masacres en Colombia Durante el 2020 y 2021’ [Report of Massacres in Colombia During 2020 and 2021], 28 June 2021; and Indepaz, ‘Posacuerdo Traumático: Coletazos en la Transición Desde el Acuerdo de Paz al Posconflicto’ [Postagreement Trauma: The Transition from the Peace Agreement to Post-Conflict], 2020. Other sources may provide different estimates.
- 5 Colombian National Police, ‘Estadística Delictiva – Terrorismo 2020/2019/2018’ [Crime Statistics – Terrorism 2020/2019/2018].
- 6 Juan Carlos Garzón Vergara, ‘13 Gráficos para Entender La Violencia Organizada en El Post-Acuerdo de Paz’ [13 Graphics to Understand Organized Violence Post-peace Agreement], Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP), 30 November 2020.
- 7 Eduardo Carrillo, ‘“Gentil Duarte”, Disidente de las FARC, Comanda 3.000 Hombres’ [‘Gentil Duarte’, Dissident of the FARC, Commands 3,000 men], El Nuevo Siglo, 11 October 2020.
- 8 ‘Mueren en un Bombardeo Militar Diez Disidentes de las FARC’ [Ten FARC Dissidents Are Killed in a Military Bombing], DW, 3 March 2021.
- 9 ‘Disidencias de las FARC Duplican Su Número de Hombres en Solo 12 Meses’ [FARC Dissidents Double Their Number of Men in Just 12 Months], El Tiempo, 31 May 2020; and Adriaan Alsema, ‘FARC dissident “Ivan Marquez” Reemerges After Failed Rearmament Attempt’, Colombia Reports, 29 September 2020.
- 10 InSight Crime, ‘Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN)’ [National Liberation Army (ELN)], 27 October 2020.
- 11 Ibid.
- 12 ‘Actúa en 124 municipios con más de 3 mil integrantes: así opera el “Clan del Golfo”, el grupo criminal más grande de Colombia’ [In 124 Municipalities with More Than 3,000 Members: This Is How the ‘Clan del Golfo’, the Largest Criminal Group in Colombia, Operates], infobae, 28 February 2021.
- 13 InSight Crime, ‘The Urabeños’, 14 March 2021.
- 14 ‘En Combate Con Ejército Murió “Caín”, Máximo Jefe de “Los Caparros”’ [In Combat with the Army, ‘Caín’, the Top Leader of ‘Los Caparros’, Died], El Tiempo, 17 November 2020.
- 15 PDETs are a rural planning instrument for subregional transformation born from the 2016 peace agreement. They seek to facilitate rural development in those territories most affected by armed conflict, poverty, illegal economies and institutional weakness. For criticism, see ‘Alerta en Municipios Más Pobres por Parálisis de Proyectos’, El Tiempo, 17 March 2021.
- 16 ‘Sexto Informe de Seguimiento a la Implementación del Acuerdo de Paz’ [Sixth Follow-up Report on the Implementation of the Peace Agreement], http://www.juanitaenelcongreso.com, 18 February 2021.
- 17 Indepaz, ‘Informe Sobre Presencia de Grupos Armados en Colombia’ [Report on the Presence of Armed Groups in Colombia], August 2020.
- 18 United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia, ‘Infographic Report of the Secretary General: 26 September to 28 December 2020’, S/2020/1301, 15 January2021.
- 19 Julián Alberto Gutiérrez, Nicolás Cortés Wilches and Carlos Javier Montaña Londoño, ‘Multidimensional Poverty and its Relationship with Space: Case Study for Colombia’, 25 April 2020.
- 20 World Bank, ‘Gini Index – Colombia’, 2019.
- 21 Transparency International, ‘Corruption Perceptions Index 2020’.
- 22 ‘El 45 % de Los Combatientes del ELN Estarían en Venezuela: Fuerzas Militares’ [45% of ELN Fighters Would Be in Venezuela: Military Forces], El Espectador, 8 May 2019; and Poly Martínez, ‘La Nueva Marquetalia, La Razón Detrás de La Lucha Entre Las Disidencias de las FARC en La Frontera Venezolana’ [The New Marquetalia: The Reason Behind FARC Dissident Disputes on the Venezuela Border], ABC España, 29 March 2021.
- 23 International Organization for Migration, ‘Venezuelan Refugee and Migrant Crisis’, March 2020.
- 24 Migración Colombia, ‘After 6 Months, the Number of Venezuelans Living in Colombia Increases Again’, 18 December 2020.
- 25 Government of Colombia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Distribución de Venezolanos en Colombia – Corte 31 de Enero de 2021’ [Distribution of Venezuelans in Colombia – January 31, 2021], 3 March 2021.
- 26 Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, ‘Principales estadísticas’ [Main Statistics], 25 June 2021.
- 27 ‘Colombia FARC: Former Rebels Charged with War Crimes’, BBC News, 29 January 2021.
- 28 Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, ‘La JEP Hace Pública la Estrategia de Priorización Dentro del Caso 03, Conocido como el de Falsos Positivos’ [The JEP Publishes its Prioritization Strategy within Case 03, Known as that of False Positives], Communication 019 of 2021.
- 29 José Ospina-Valencia, ‘Asesinatos de Líderes Sociales: Colombia Mata a quienes Practican la Democracia en las Regiones’ [Assassinations of Social Leaders: Colombia Kills Those Who Practice Democracy in the Regions], DW, 14 January 2021.
- 30 Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, ‘Estadísticas de Asistencia Integral a las Víctimas de MAP y MUSE’ [Statistics of Comprehensive Assistance to the Victims of Anti-personnel Mines and Unexploded Ordnance], 31 May 2021.
- 31 Didier Chica, ‘En 2020 Creció el Desplazamiento Forzado en Colombia’ [In 2020 Forced Displacement Increased in Colombia], Canal 1, 7 February 2021.
- 32 IMF, ‘World Economic Outlook Database’, April 2021.
- 33 Juan Carlos Echeverry, ‘ELN y Actores Ilegales Siguen Volando Oleoductos’ [ELN and Illegal Actors Continue to Blow Up Oil Pipelines], Caracol Radio, 28 January 2021.
- 34 See José González Bell, ‘Extradición de la excongresista Aída Merlano abre nueva discusión binacional’ [Extradition of Former Congresswoman Aída Merlano Opens New Binational Discussion], Asuntos Legales, 29 January 2020.
BRAZIL
Sources: Center for the Study of Violence of the University of São Paulo (NEV–USP); Study Group of New Illegalisms of the Fluminense Federal University (GENI/UFF); Fogo Cruzado; Disque Denúncia; Pista News
Overview
Brazil has suffered armed violence for many years and in many forms. Although far from a failed state, criminal gangs contest large swathes of territory, offering goods and services to those who live under their control and challenging the state’s presence.
One of Brazil’s oldest criminal groups, the Red Command (CV), began in 1979 in the Candido Mendes prison on Rio de Janeiro’s Ilha Grande. Its main rival, the São Paulo-based First Capital Command (PCC), began in the early 1990s in Taubaté prison. Both groups espouse a leftist political ideology that positions them against the Brazilian state and purports to fight for better prison conditions and the rights of the downtrodden and marginalised. Contesting the power of these two main gangs are militia groups, comprised of former police officers and other members of the security services, which control territory, extort local businesses and occasionally recruit members of defeated criminal organisations. Competition for territory and market share for drug trafficking has long driven the violence between these rival actors.
In 2020, violence among criminal groups continued in Rio de Janeiro with 3,536 homicides, a slight drop from the 4,004 in 2019.1 However, a major cause for concern was the continued rise of police-inflicted killings driven by the hardline security policies adopted by the governor of Rio de Janeiro State, Wilson Witzel, an ally of President Jair Bolsonaro. Corruption in the police and militia recruitment from its ranks has pushed this trend upward.
Three major trends stood out in Brazil’s armed conflict in 2020 and early 2021. Firstly, the coronavirus pandemic allowed gangs to showcase their capacity for criminal governance. By providing goods and social services, fixing prices of critical goods, distributing personal protective equipment and enforcing pandemic curfews, the gangs scored a major public-relations victory, demonstrating a more serious commitment to tackling the virus than Bolsonaro. On early evidence it also seemed as if gangs’ criminal enterprises were not unduly slowed by the pandemic.2
Secondly, in 2020, Amazonas State (and, to a lesser extent, Acre State) grew in strategic significance as a major point of criminal contestation in the country due to its vast river network and shared borders with major coca-producing countries, such as Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. The highly porous nature of these borders and the poor governance in these regions make them areas of heavy cross-border trafficking flows.
Thirdly, according to a much-discussed study, the territorial control of Rio de Janeiro’s militia groups surpassed that of the city’s drug-trafficking gangs. Armed groups control 96 of 163 neighbourhoods in Rio. Of these, militia groups were estimated to control about 33% of the city’s population, or 2.1 million people. By comparison, 18% of the city, or 1.1m people, lived in areas under the control of the CV.3
Conflict Parties
Military Police of Rio de Janeiro (PMERJ/PM)
Strength: 41,024 members.4
Areas of operation: Rio de Janeiro State.
Leadership: Colonel Rogério Figueiredo de Lacerda (commander-in-chief).
Structure: Accountable to the Rio state government. Its hierarchy resembles that of the army and its members are reserves for the armed forces.
History: Created in May 1809. Current structure introduced in July 1975.
Objectives: Fight organised criminal groups.
Opponents: Organised-crime groups and militias.
Affiliates/allies: Unofficially, some militias and gangs, such as the Pure Third Command (TCP).
Resources/capabilities: Weapons currently used include the IMBEL ParaFAL 7.62mm battle rifle and the IMBEL IA2 assault rifle.
Red Command (CV)
Strength: 5,000 members in Rio de Janeiro State, and an estimated 30,000 associates in Amazonas State (and some in Acre State).5
Areas of operation: Rio de Janeiro, Acre, Amapá, Alagoas, Ceará, Federal District, Pará, Rio Grande do Norte, Rondônia, Roraima, Mato Grosso and Tocantins. Traditionally headquartered in the Alemão favela complex in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro. Also present in Bolivia, Colombia and Paraguay.
Leadership: Márcio Santos Nepomuceno, alias ‘Marcinho VP’, and Elias Pereira da Silva, alias ‘Elias Maluco’, lead the group from jail. Gelson Lima Carnaúba, alias ‘Gê’, one of the founders of the Family of the North (FDN), switched sides in 2018 and now leads CV in Amazonas.
Structure: Decentralised structure with ‘area leaders’ in charge of neighbourhoods and favelas, ‘managers’ responsible for drug-dealing spots, which are secured by ‘soldiers’ who fend off threats by other dealers or the police. ‘Scouts’ keep watch for potential risks and warn ‘soldiers’.
History: The oldest and largest gang in Rio de Janeiro, which formed around 1979 in a maximum-security prison in Ilha Grande, off the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro. Involved in transnational drug trafficking since the 1980s, importing cocaine from Colombia and exporting it to Europe. Its activity declined after a police pacification programme in the Alemão favela complex in November 2010, but has since regained prominence and spread throughout Brazil and beyond.
Objectives: Maintain and enlarge its operating area to other neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian states to expand its drug-trafficking market and extortion practices.
Opponents: In Rio de Janeiro: PMERJ, TCP, Friends of Friends (ADA), militia groups, PCC. In Brazil: 13 Tram (B13), Guardians of the State (GDE), Crime Syndicate (SDC), Tocantins Mafia (MF), Class A Command (CCA), 30 Tram (B30), Northern Union (UDN), PCC.
Affiliates/allies: In Rio de Janeiro: None. In Brazil: First Group of Santa Catarina.
Resources/capabilities: Revenue sources include drug trafficking, extortion of small businesses, kidnapping for ransom and weapons smuggling. Members are equipped with large numbers of handguns, AK-47s, bazookas and grenades.
First Capital Command (PCC)
Strength: Approximately 30,000.6
Areas of operation: Based in São Paulo State but maintains operations throughout much of Brazil, except the states of Goiás, Maranhão and Paraná. Also in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, the Netherlands, Mozambique, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, South Africa and Venezuela.
Leadership: Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, alias ‘Marcola’, took over the leadership in 2002, although he has been imprisoned since 1999.
Structure: Highly organised, with a CEO and strategic Deliberative Council (13 members); Board of Directors (three members), Administrative Board; Legal Board; State Board; Economic Board; Institutional Relations Board; and HR. These groupings are referred to as ‘sintonias’. The structure on the street is comprised of ‘managers’, ‘soldiers’, ‘scouts’ and ‘killers’.
History: Created by eight inmates on 31 August 1993 in a prison in Taubaté. In May 2006, after Marcola and 760 other prisoners were transferred to another prison, inmates rebelled in 74 state prisons and there were coordinated attacks on police officers, vehicles, jails and public buildings. More than 500 people were killed within a week.
Objectives: Deepen and entrench its position of power in Brazil and beyond.
Opponents: In Rio de Janeiro: PMERJ, TCP, ADA, CV. In Amazonas State: CV, FDN.
Affiliates/allies: In Rio de Janeiro: TCP, ADA.
Resources/capabilities: Revenue sources include drug trafficking, bank and cargo robbery, money laundering, illegal gambling and kidnapping for ransom. The average revenue of the PCC is US$100m per year.7 The gang uses pistols, rifles, bazookas and grenades.
Pure Third Command (TCP)
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: Rio de Janeiro.
Leadership: Fernando Gomes de Freitas, Alvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa, alias ‘Peixão’.
Structure: Decentralised structure with ‘area leaders’ in charge of neighbourhoods and favelas, ‘managers’ responsible for drug-dealing spots, which are secured by ‘soldiers’ who fend off threats by other dealers or the police. ‘Scouts’ keep watch for potential risks and warn ‘soldiers’.
History: Created from the 2002 union of dissidents from ADA and the now-defunct Third Command (formed in the 1980s) after the death of Uê (who had been expelled from the CV for treason) and the arrest of Celsinho da Vila Vintém (head of ADA). Acquired partial control over several favelas since 2016, establishing itself as the second-most powerful criminal organisation in Rio after the CV (excluding the vigilante militias). During 2017 and 2018, the rapid decline of ADA led many of its members to switch their allegiance to the TCP. The TCP’s evangelical Christian members have been known to attack and expel followers of Afro-Brazilian religions from their areas.
Objectives: Maintain areas currently under its control and expand its operating area to other neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro and other states.
Opponents: CV, ADA, militias, PMERJ.
Affiliates/allies: PCC.
Resources/capabilities: Revenue sources include drug trafficking and extortion. Weapons include pistols, rifles, bazookas and grenades.
Friends of Friends (ADA)
Strength: Unknown, however, numbers have been waning for several years.
Areas of operation: Rio de Janeiro.
Leadership: Celso Luis Rodrigues, alias ‘Celsinho da Vila Vintém’, one of the gang’s founders.
Structure: Decentralised structure with ‘area leaders’ in charge of neighbourhoods and favelas, ‘managers’ responsible for drug-dealing spots, which are secured by ‘soldiers’ who fend off threats by other dealers or the police. ‘Scouts’ keep watch for potential risks and warn ‘soldiers’.
History: Created in 1998, in recent years ADA has suffered heavy losses in clashes with the CV and, to a lesser extent, the TCP.
Objectives: Maintain its few areas of control in Rio de Janeiro city and expand operations to other neighbourhoods, especially outside the Rio metropolitan area where there is less competition.
Opponents: CV, TCP, militias, PMERJ.
Affiliates/allies: PCC.
Resources/capabilities: Main revenue source is drug trafficking. Weapons include guns, pistols, rifles, bazookas and grenades.
Militias (various)
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: 96 of 163 neighbourhoods around Rio de Janeiro city, particularly in the western neighbourhoods of Campo Grande, Paciência and Santa Cruz, as well as areas to the north of the city, such as Seropédica and Nova Iguaçu in Baixada Fluminense.
Leadership: The Justice League, the largest and most organised of the Rio militias, is led by Wellington da Silva Braga, also known as ‘Ecko’. Brothers Jerominho and Natalino Guimarães, the League’s founders, remain influential. The leadership of other smaller militia groups is unclear.
Structure: Similar structure to gangs, with area leaders, managers and soldiers, although at a different scale. Leaders control more than one neighbourhood or region and managers are responsible for a region or neighbourhood. Unlike in drug groups, soldiers operate from privileged positions (such as police stations). ‘Killers’ are responsible for executions.
History: Expanded rapidly during the 2000s. Comprised of former or current police officers (mostly from the PMERJ), firefighters and prison guards. The militias claim to provide security, but also traffic drugs, and extort, abduct and kill locals.
Objectives: Expand control over licit and illicit business and gain political influence, including by directly holding public offices in municipalities.
Opponents: ADA, CV, occasionally the PMERJ.
Affiliates/allies: TCP.
Resources/capabilities: Revenue sources include both licit and illicit business, such as drug trafficking, extortion, murder-for-hire operations, oil theft and sale, money laundering, real-estate transactions, and internet and TV services. Since militia members are often law-enforcement agents, they have access to the same weapons as those agencies, especially .40-calibre pistols and various types of rifles.
Family of the North (FDN)
Strength: Possibly the second-largest criminal group in the country with as many as 13,000 members.8
Areas of operation: Amazonas, Acre and Ceará states.
Leadership: José Roberto Barbosa, alias ‘Zé Roberto da Compensa’, and his son Luciano da Silva Barbosa, alias ‘L7’.
Structure: Decentralised structure with ‘area leaders’ in charge of neighbourhoods and favelas, ‘managers’ responsible for drug-dealing spots, which are secured by ‘soldiers’ who fend off threats by other dealers or the police. ‘Scouts’ keep watch for potential risks and warn ‘soldiers’.
History: Created by Carnaúba and Barbosa between 2006 and 2007, it became widely known after prison massacres in Manaus in 2015. That year, the FDN, together with the CV, carried out murders of PCC leaders; efforts by the state to broker a truce failed. The FDN competes for the treasured ‘Solimões route’, used to transport cocaine produced in Colombia and Peru through rivers in the Amazon region.
Objectives: Expand and consolidate control of drug-trafficking routes in the Amazon region; survive the onslaught from the CV in Amazonas.
Opponents: PCC, ADA, GDE, Primeiro Grupo Catarinense, CV.
Affiliates/allies: Okaida.
Resources/capabilities: Revenue sources include drug trafficking and money laundering. Members use pistols, rifles, bazookas and grenades.
Family of the North–Pure (FDN–P)
Strength: Unknown.
Areas of operation: Amazonas State.
Leadership: João Pinto Carioca, alias ‘João Branco’.
Structure: Decentralised structure with ‘area leaders’ in charge of neighbourhoods and favelas, ‘managers’ responsible for drug-dealing spots, which are secured by ‘soldiers’ who fend off threats by other dealers or the police. ‘Scouts’ keep watch for potential risks and warn ‘soldiers’.
History: Created in 2019 by João Branco, a former senior member of FDN, dissatisfied with the group’s waning influence inside prisons, decreasing drug sales following the end of its alliance with CV. From a federal prison in Paraná, João Branco gathered FDN members loyal to him in Amazonas to eliminate FDN leadership inside the prisons. This command leaked, sparking a war between FDN and FDN–P that led to the deaths of over 55 prisoners.9
Objectives: Eliminate FDN.
Opponents: FDN.
Affiliates/allies: Unknown.
Resources/capabilities: Revenue sources include drug trafficking and money laundering. Members use uses pistols, rifles, bazookas and grenades.
Other conflict parties
Several other relevant criminal groups were also active in the state of Acre, which borders Amazonas, namely, the 13 Tram (B13) and Ifara. These groups have demonstrated a nascent capacity to project power into Amazonas State, and more importantly have replicated the rivalries of larger Brazilian groups in Acre State, by offering themselves as proxies to the PCC in its battle against the CV. While information on these groups was limited, B13 was founded in Acre’s prisons by PCC members dissatisfied with that group’s bureaucratic governance and rules. B13 itself splintered when some members formed the nascent group Ifara. To compete with the CV effectively, however, B13 still works closely with the PCC and with Ifara. Both groups thus likely share the PCC’s broader aim of rolling back the CV’s gains in Amazonas and Acre states.
Conflict Drivers
Political
Weakness of state institutions:
Neighbourhoods far from city centres and rural regions, such as in Amazonas State, receive reduced investment and public services, forcing residents to rely on criminal groups for the provision of internet and cable TV connections, trash collection and public transportation. Gangs therefore have an additional form of income to drug trafficking, as well as an opportunity to enhance their social legitimacy with the population.
Widespread corruption:
Brazil suffers from endemic corruption at all levels of government. The country ranked 94th in Transparency International’s 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index, placing it in the bottom half.10 Since 1998, every governor of Rio de Janeiro State has been arrested on corruption charges, with the trend continuing in 2020 with governor Witzel’s suspension. Other high-profile figures have also been incarcerated in recent years and a legal inquiry was launched in 2020 investigating alleged corruption by President Bolsonaro’s son.11
Economic and social
Intensifying competition in the illicit-drug trade:
One of the main drivers of armed conflict in Brazil is the desire to expand drug-trafficking routes and to consolidate territory in turf wars. Illicit drugs, such as cocaine, are trafficked to Brazil for domestic consumption as well as international export. In Rio de Janeiro, the large potential revenues and the proximity of favelas (slums) to wealthy enclaves in the city’s South Zone sparked the proliferation of criminal drug-trafficking organisations (DTOs). The need to take and control territory in an environment characterised by fickle and constantly shifting alliances has generated intense clashes between rival factions. For this reason, Brazilian DTOs have sought to expand their operations internationally for several years, which helps explain the growing competition over Amazonas State as a principal node through which drugs pass on their way to Africa and eventually to Europe.
Increasing returns in Europe's cocaine market:
Europe has become the top destination for drugs transiting through Brazil, as DTOs have increasingly realized that it offers a more lucrative (and less competitive) market than the United States.12 One kilogram of cocaine in the US is worth US$28,000 wholesale, as compared to between US$40,000 and US$80,000 in Europe.13
Social and racial inequality:
Socio-economic and racial inequality is another major structural driver of armed violence in Brazil. Poverty disproportionately affects northern and northeastern states in Brazil and those of the population identifying as Black or Brown, as confirmed by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). Brazil’s criminal groups deftly exploit social and racial inequality, espousing ideologies that purport to defend the downtrodden, uphold human rights in Brazil’s inhumane prisons and hold police accountable for acts of impunity.
Political and Military Developments
The end of Witzel and Rio's police raids
Wilson Witzel began his second year in office as governor of Rio de Janeiro in 2020 and signalled that he intended to continue an iron-fist approach to security. As such, police raids into the favelas in Rio continued in the first half of 2020 and policeinflicted deaths mounted. In June, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court prohibited police operations in Rio’s slums until the end of the pandemic except in ‘absolutely exceptional’ cases.14 As a result, the number of people killed by the police fell by 76% in June and July 2020 compared to the previous year.15 However, this suspension of raids was short-lived; by October 2020, the number of police operations classified as ‘exceptional cases’ increased, contributing to the deaths of 125 people in that month alone.16
On 28 August 2020, the Superior Court of Justice suspended Wilson pending the outcome of a trial into corruption related to coronavirus supplies.
Access to firearms
In 2020 and early 2021 Bolsonaro continued fulfilling his campaign promise of facilitating greater access to firearms. In February 2021, his administration increased the previous limit on the number of guns and ammunition individuals could acquire, liberalised civilian access to certain types of firearms formerly restricted to law-enforcement agents and suspended the requirement to demonstrate an ‘effective need’ for a weapon as a precondition for purchase.17
Drug interdiction
Increased domestic demands for drugs amid coronavirus restrictions resulted in greater drug interdiction in 2020. Vehicle inspections at the Brazilian border also increased, as a result of reduced vehicle traffic on the roads and the expansion of activities under the National Border and Border-Security Programme (VIGIA) in April 2020.18 In Amazonas State specifically, VIGIA inaugurated a floating base in August 2020 in the Solimões River to disrupt the major drug-trafficking route, supplemented by communications towers and water vehicles. However, the pandemic reduced the scope of joint Brazilian–Paraguayan marijuana-extermination operations, increasing the volume of the drug available in the regional marketplace.
Money laundering
Seized criminal-organisation assets in federal money-laundering operations nearly doubled in 2020. Property previously owned by Brazil’s gangs – totalling over R$1 billion (around US$200m) and including mansions, farms, vehicles, aircraft and jewels – was sold in auctions, a process that had been simplified by the Bolsonaro administration. The proceeds were invested back into the federal anti-drug organisation’s coffers.19
Source: Brazil, National Information System for Public Security, Prison and Drugs (Sinesp)
Increasing violence in Amazonas
In January 2020, there were 106 murders in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State, 54% more than in the same period the previous year according to official figures.20 The CV led a major wave of violence in Manaus, capturing 80% of the FDN’s territory and leaving the FDN – its erstwhile ally – reeling.21 Other groups, such as the B13, itself a splinter from the PCC, also moved into this region to contest territory and act as a PCC proxy.
Key Events in 2020–21
POLITICAL EVENTS
1 January 2020
President Jair Bolsonaro and then-governor of Rio de Janeiro Wilson Witzel both mark one year in office.
10 February
Amazonas State opens a ‘crisis office’ in Manaus to analyse a spate of killings and the wider battle between FDN and CV.
24 April
Sérgio Moro, the high-profile lead prosecutor of the Operation Car Wash corruption probe, resigns his post as Bolsonaro’s minister of justice and public security.
26 April
Brazil announces the release of around 30,000 prisoners on the grounds of personal health and safety as per coronavirus guidelines.
5 June
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court suspends police raids in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas during the coronavirus pandemic.
10 June
In Rio, an impeachment process is opened against governor Witzel on corruption charges related to the misappropriation of coronavirus funds.
28 August
Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice suspends Witzel from his duties due to the ongoing corruption investigation.
30 September
In one of the largest raids of the year, Operation King of Crime uncovers a money-laundering ring and seizes millions of dollars-worth of assets thought to belong to the PCC.
2 January 2021
Brazil’s main COVID-19 variant (so-called P.1) is discovered.
5 January
Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State, declares a state of emergency after a surge of COVID-19 cases.
15 February
Bolsonaro issues four new decrees making gun ownership easier, following a similar set of decrees in 2019.
Military/Violent Attacks
13 February 2020
FDN loses several key neighbourhoods in Manaus as a result of the CV’s campaign to take control of Amazonas State.
16 March
Hundreds of prisoners escape from four prisons in São Paulo State in protest over poor conditions related to the pandemic.
2 May
Inmates take seven prison guards hostage in a Manaus prison, rebelling over poor conditions related to the pandemic.
19 May
Police kill 13 people in an operation in the Alemão favela complex in Rio de Janeiro.
26 August
Heavily armed CV members engage in a shoot-out with police in Rio de Janeiro, taking hostages and killing an innocent passer-by.
12 September
In Rio Branco, Mailton da Silva Teixeira, leader of the B13, is found dead in his prison cell.
Impact
Human rights and humanitarian
The emphasis on ‘confrontation’ in Bolsonaro’s security approach has had severe consequences for human rights. Rio’s police killed nearly 800 people between June 2020 and the end of March 2021, despite the Supreme Federal Court ban on favela raids.22 In the last decade, Rio’s police force has killed nearly 9,000 people.23 This translates to approximately three people per day on average. Brazilian government policies continued to focus on short-term tactical operations while neglecting long-standing drivers of violence, which would be better solved by creating viable political and social institutions, ensuring better access to, and provision of, basic services, and offering stable governance in peripheral communities.
Economic and social
As of the end of February 2021 Brazil had suffered the second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths globally, behind only the US, exacerbated by a surge in cases at the end of 2020 following the discovery of the more transmissible and deadly P.1 variant of the virus.24 With much of the state’s effort directed at fighting the pandemic, criminal groups had ample space to expand with little meaningful pushback.
The pandemic particularly affected Brazil’s huge prison system, worsening the notoriously precarious conditions of mismanagement, violence, overcrowding and insufficient health services.25
Despite these alarming numbers, significant mitigation efforts were made to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Following voluntary guidelines set by the National Council of Justice as early as April 2020, judges throughout the country allowed tens of thousands of inmates, especially older and low-level offenders, to leave prisons under special conditions. Those who remained incarcerated, however, felt the government response to protect the prison population had been unsatisfactory.
Relations with neighbouring and international partners and geopolitical implications
Security shortcomings in Brazil have long been blamed on lax enforcement in neighbouring Bolivia and Paraguay. The conflict dynamics in 2020 ensured not only that the PCC in particular – the most internationalised criminal group in Brazil – could continue to operate internationally, but that it could do so without significant pushback, as demonstrated by its successful international recruitment in Bolivia and Paraguay. For example, in Paraguay, the PCC’s membership quintupled between the end of 2018 and June 2019, successfully recruiting Spanish- and Guaraní-speaking Paraguayans rather than Brazilians.26
Conflict Outlook
Political scenarios
The political outlook in Brazil remains filled with uncertainty. Witzel’s suspension from office raises serious questions about the future direction of Rio de Janeiro’s security policies. The uptick in police raids since October 2020, despite the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court ban, suggests that these could be fully reinstated after the coronavirus pandemic subsides, unless Rio can be persuaded by the preliminary evidence gathered during the policeraid moratorium to commit to a different long-term strategy.
Witzel may be at risk of losing an ally in Bolsonaro at the federal level. The overturning of Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva’s conviction for corruption in March 2021 makes him eligible to run for president in 2022, all but guaranteeing a divisive second-round run-off between himself and Bolsonaro. As in the 2018 presidential campaign, such a scenario could prompt polarising rhetoric on security issues.
Escalation potential and conflict-related risks
Despite the expansion of militia-controlled territory in 2020, these spaces appeared to be a major blind spot for police, with only 6.5% of police operations conducted in Rio’s militia-held territory, compared to 48% conducted in territory held by the CV, TCP and ADA.27 There could be major potential for an escalation in violence if Rio’s police prove unable to execute a strategic paradigm shift in thinking about criminal organisations, to include a stronger focus on deadly militia groups.
Violence in Amazonas State (and bordering Acre State) is also likely to intensify as ongoing conflicts continue between rival factions to retake territory, including the CV, FDN and FDN–P. To more effectively rebuff the 2020 territorial gains made by the CV in Manaus, in October 2020, Zé Roberto da Compensa, the leader of the FDN, proposed an alliance with the PCC. The historical rivalry between the two groups purportedly divided the PCC’s leadership, but any potential agreement would require the FDN to remove the leaders involved in the 2017 Compaj prison massacre of PCC members. If an alliance did come to fruition, it could presage a major uptick in violence in 2021.
Prospects for peace
Given the status of flux in which Witzel’s suspension has left Rio de Janeiro, there is little prospect of a shift away from the crime-fighting strategy based on ‘confrontation’, making peace unlikely. More generally, some of the biggest drivers of Brazil’s violence remain unaddressed. Persistent inequality not only remains but has potentially been exacerbated by the pandemic’s deep toll on the Brazilian economy. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s loosening of gun-ownership regulations ensures that a ready supply of arms will remain available on the black market.
Strategic implications and global influences
Brazilian criminal groups will continue their strong internationalisation campaign. With a footprint in just about every country in South America, groups such as the PCC are more globally minded than ever before. The CV also maintains strong international links and sees transnational expansion as crucial to its survival.
Notes
- 1 Ben Oakley, ‘Rio de Janeiro Has the Lowest Homicide Rate in 30 Years Due to the Pandemic’, Globe Live Media, 28 January 2021.
- 2 For instance, drug seizures in South American ports bound for Europe, the major export destination for Brazilian groups, were up 20% in 2020. See Francesco Guarascio, ‘Europe Flooded with Cocaine Despite Coronavirus Trade Disruptions’, Reuters, 30 April 2020.
- 3 Nicolás Satriano, ‘Rio Tem 3.7 Milhões de Habitantes em Areas Dominadas pelo Crime Organizado; Milícia Controla 57% da Area da Cidade, Diz Estudo’ [Rio Has 3.7 Million Inhabitants in Areas Dominated by Organised Crime; Militia Controls 57% of the City’s Area, Says Study], G1, 19 October 2020.
- 4 ‘Sem Concurso, PMERJ Tem 30 Mil Soldados a Menos que Previsto em Lei’ [Without Contest, PMERJ Has 30 Thousand Soldiers Less than Provided in Lei], Folha Dirigida, 7 October 2019.
- 5 Robson Bonin, ‘Comando Vermelho Vira Preocupação do Governo Bolsonaro – Entenda’ [Comando Vermelho Becomes the Concern of the Bolsonaro Government – Understand], Veja, 22 August 2020.
- 6 ‘PCC’, Americas Quarterly; and InSight Crime and American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies, ‘The Rise of the PCC: How South America’s Most Powerful Prison Gang Is Spreading in Brazil and Beyond’, CLALS Working Paper Series, No. 30, 6 December 2020, p. 23.
- 7 Angelika Albaladejo, ‘PCC Files Document Gang’s Explosive Growth in Brazil and Beyond’, InSight Crime, 5 June 2018.
- 8 ‘The Rise of the PCC’, p. 52.
- 9 ‘FDN x FDN Pura: Conflito Entre João Branco e Zé Roberto Motivou mortes’ [Family of the North vs Family of the North-Pure: Conflict Between João Branco and Zé Roberto Motivated Deaths], acrítica.com, 28 May 2019; and Chris Dalby, ‘Brazil Prisons Become Battlegrounds for Familia do Norte Civil War’, InSight Crime, 29 May 2019.
- 10 Transparency International, ‘2020 Corruption Perceptions Index’.
- 11 The architect of Rio’s pacification and security strategy, former governor Sérgio Cabral, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2017. At the national level, in 2018 former president Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva was convicted of money laundering and corruption and sentenced to nearly ten years in prison. In 2019, former president Michel Temer was arrested on charges of corruption too.
- 12 Ryan C. Berg and Andrea Varsori, ‘COVID-19 Is Increasing the Power of Brazil’s Criminal Groups’, London School of Economics Latin America and the Caribbean blog, 28 May 2020.
- 13 Jeremy McDermott et al., ‘The Cocaine Pipeline to Europe’, Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, February 2021, p. 1.
- 14 Gabriel Barreira, ‘Ministro do STF Proíbe Operações em Favelas do Rio Durante a Pandemia’ [STF Minister Prohibits Operations in Rio’s Favelas During the Pandemic], G1, 5 June 2020.
- 15 Felipe Grandin and Matheus Rodrigues, ‘RJ Tem Queda de 76% nas Mortes Cometidas por Policiais Após STF Restringir Operações nas Favelas’ [RJ Has 76% Drop in Police Deaths after STF Restricts Operations in Favelas], G1, 25 August 2020.
- 16 Terrence McCoy, ‘Rio Police Were Ordered to Limit Favela Raids During the Pandemic. They’re Still Killing Hundreds of People’, Washington Post, 20 May 2021.
- 17 The first two years of Bolsonaro’s administration have seen a 183% increase in gun registrations. See Mariana Schreiber, ‘Com Acesso Facilitado, Brasil Fecha 2020 com Recorde de 180 Mil Novas Armas de Fogo Registradas na PF, um Aumento de 91%’ [With Easier Access, Brazil Closes 2020 with a Record 180,000 New Firearms Registered with the Federal Police, an Increase of 91%], BBC News Brasil, 8 January 2021.
- 18 The VIGIA programme is an initiative launched by the Ministry of Justice and Public Security in 2019 to tackle illicit business activities on Brazil’s borders by increasing collaboration between federal and state law-enforcement agencies. In its initial capacity, the government implemented VIGIA as a pilot programme in seven states bordering other South American countries and at the state border between Goiás and Tocantins. In its first year, VIGIA interdicted more than 125 tonnes of drugs, as well as other illicit products, totalling over R$750 million (over US$140m). Based on this initial success, the Brazilian government started to extend the programme to all 11 border states in April 2020.
- 19 Mariana Schreiber, ‘Por Que a Apreensão de Drogas é Recorde em 2020 – e o que Isso Significa’ [Why Record Drug Seizures Happened in 2020 – and What It Means], BBC News Brasil, 22 December 2020.
- 20 Fabiano Maisonnave, ‘Comando Vermelho Toma Manaus em Meio a Onda de Assassinatos’ [Red Command Takes Manaus in the Midst of a Wave of Murders], GZH Geral, 13 February 2020.
- 21 Chris Dalby, ‘Family of the North Likely Close to Its End in Manaus, Brazil’, InSight Crime, 25 February 2020.
- 22 Flávia Milhorance, ‘Police Kill Hundreds in Rio de Janeiro Despite Court Ban on Favela Raids’, Guardian, 18 April 2021.
- 23 Institute of Public Safety, ‘Dados: Visualização’ [Data Visualization].
- 24 World Health Organization, ‘WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard’, 28 February 2021.
- 25 Brazil has the third-highest prison population in the world, with over 750,000 prisoners. See Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, ‘World Prison Brief Database: Highest to Lowest – Prison Population Total’, accessed 18 March 2021.
- 26 Renan Nucci, ‘Número de Membros de Facções Brasileiras Quintuplica na Fronteira, Diz Polícia’ [Number of Brazilian Faction Members Quintuples on the Border, Says Police], Midiamax, 24 January 2020.
- 27 Leandro Resende, ‘Apenas 6.5% das Operações Policiais no Rio Foram em Area de Milícia, Diz Estudo’ [Only 6.5% of Police Operations in Rio Were in the Militia Area, Says Study’], CNN Brazil, 30 October 2020.
Sources: IISS; El Salvador, Ministry of Justice and Public Security
Overview
The conflict involving the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang has been a multi-phased battle for territorial control, political legitimacy and economic resources. Established in the mid-1990s by members deported from California, mainly Los Angeles, by the early 2000s the MS-13 had evolved into a military force that challenged the state, thriving in the weak economic and legal structures of postcivil-war El Salvador. Over time it consolidated territorial control across the country and developed revenue streams from extortion, kidnapping, assassinations and the sale of marijuana, crack cocaine and cocaine. As it became entrenched in local communities, the MS-13 attracted new members with combat experience from El Salvador’s civil war (1979–92). Despite attempts by successive administrations, repressive strategies failed to stem the gang’s expansion. By 2012, the MS-13 counted over 12,000 members and its main rival, the Barrio 18 gang, had over 8,000 members.1 El Salvador’s homicide rate was also among the highest in the world. This situation prompted the government to engage the gangs in the first formal negotiations, resulting in the ‘truce’, where gangs reduced visible homicides in exchange for government concessions and payments. However, the pact collapsed in 2014 and meanwhile the gangs had learned the true scope of their political leverage. Since then, the MS-13 has consolidated its territorial control and grown its military capabilities, using spikes in violence as negotiating leverage with the government, while the Barrio 18 has suffered from internal divides and lost territory.
2020 saw a reduction in armed confrontation as the conflict shifted towards more sophisticated forms of political dialogue between the gang and the government. Numerous published accounts suggested that the MS-13 may have engaged in secret negotiations with the administration of President Nayib Bukele – something the latter denies – as it sought legal protection and limited incorporation into the country’s formal political structure, in exchange for reducing the homicide rate and for delivering hundreds of thousands of votes in its areas of broad territorial control for the president’s party in the February 2021 mid-term elections.2
Bukele’s New Ideas party ultimately secured an absolute majority in the elections and won control of over two-thirds of the nation’s municipal governments, enabling it to name new Supreme Court justices, choose the attorney general, and further criminalise the opposition and media. This absolute majority also gave the government the power to enact legislative changes and constitutional reforms independently, including its strategy for managing the gangs.
The ongoing relationship between the MS-13 and the Bukele administration, described variously as a ‘fragile informal understanding’ or ‘negotiation’, fundamentally shifted the nature of the conflict away from its historic characterisation of fighting between the two main gangs and both gangs fighting against the state.3 2020 positioned the MS-13 and the government as protagonists, with violence spiking during communication breakdowns or shows of strength. Against this backdrop, the homicide rate dropped substantially from 2,398 in 2019 to 1,322 in 2020, a historic low of 19.7 per 100,000.4 Disputing the truce narrative, the government attributed this decline to the success of its Territorial Control Plan, which had involved the deployment of over 5,000 police and soldiers to gang strongholds in 2019. Moreover, the official homicide statistics should be considered incomplete, since they do not include the high number (1,225, as of November 2020) of ‘disappeared’, or certain types of violent deaths.5
The coronavirus pandemic drastically reduced migration from El Salvador to the Mexico–United States border, cutting the gang’s revenue from human-smuggling routes. However, the MS-13 seized the opportunity to reinforce its territorial control by playing a quasi-state role, imposing curfews to curb the spread of COVID-19 – and beating violators with baseball bats – and providing rudimentary but effective neighbourhood food and water assistance and neighbourhood security. In March 2020, when Bukele decreed strict nationwide quarantine measures and punishments for their violation, the MS-13 took on the role of enforcing them in many neighbourhoods where the state was absent, enhancing its legitimacy as a semi-political actor.
The MS-13 continued to employ several tactics to assert its dominance – including executions, public beatings, extortion and forced displacement – which prevented economic growth and disrupted community cohesion. Although the pandemic limited some of their activities, the group pursued a multi-pronged strategy to expand its power while transporting cocaine, upgrading its weapons and diversifying its financial holdings.
Conflict Parties
El Salvador armed forces
Strength: 24,500 active military (20,500 army, 2,000 air force, 2,000 navy).
Areas of operation: Throughout El Salvador.
Leadership and structure: René Francis Merino Monroy (minister of defence). Six brigades across the country; three infantry battalions; one special military-security brigade with two military-police and two border-security battalions; one artillery brigade; one mechanised cavalry regiment; special-forces command with one special-operations group and an anti-terrorist command.
Objectives: Responsible for defence against external threats. Works with the police for internal-security purposes, including fighting the MS-13. Plays a primary role in counter-narcotics operations and continues to play a law-enforcement role (despite this being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court).
Opponents and affiliates/allies:
Opponents: The MS-13, Barrio 18, cocaine-transport groups and other smaller criminal groups in El Salvador. Allies: The National Civil Police (PNC) and some civilian paramilitary groups.
Resources/capabilities: Special-operations command, high-mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs), light armoured vehicles, M113 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and multiple other armoured vehicles, eight UH-1H helicopters, two UH-1M helicopters and assorted other helicopters.
The National Civil Police (PNC)
Strength: Approximately 23,000 members.6 Proposed increase was prevented by the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing budget crisis.
Areas of operation: Throughout El Salvador.
Leadership and structure: Mauricio Antonio Arriaza Chicas (director general). The security force tasked with countering the MS-13 is comprised of three anti-gang units of approximately 600 special-forces troops and 400 PNC officers.7 This is separate from the counter-narcotics and organised-crime units.
Objectives: Primarily responsible for internal threats, including combatting gangs, organised crime and drug trafficking. Anti-gang units are tasked with targeting the non-incarcerated MS-13 leadership and restricting the communications capabilities of the prison leadership.
Opponents and affiliates/allies:
Opponents: The MS-13, Barrio 18, cocaine-transport groups and other smaller criminal groups in El Salvador. Allies: El Salvador’s armed forces, especially since June 2019.
Resources/capabilities: Specialised units combine the use of helicopters, armoured vehicles and assault rifles, partially offsetting the PNC’s lack of heavy weapons.
Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13)
Strength: Estimates range from 17,000 to 60,000.8
Areas of operation: Estimated to operate in around 93% of the country’s municipalities (247 of 262), where each member is part of a network of at least six people.9
Leadership and structure: Run by la ranfla histórica (national leadership), which sets the overall policies and strategies from prisons throughout El Salvador. Faced with internal fissures, the ranfla histórica has devolved some decisionmaking power to the ranfla libre (the gang leadership not in prison).
Below them are the palabreros (those who delegate orders), programas (groups of clicas (highly compartmentalised street-level units)), with semi-autonomous leadership across multiple neighbourhoods and the clicas.
Objectives: The MS-13’s primary objectives are twofold: control territory in which the gang is free to exercise its own laws and authority autonomously (without overthrowing the government on a national level), while displacing traditional, entrenched cocaine-transport groups (such as the Cartel de Texis, Los Perrones and others) for financial gain. However, as the gang has achieved more official political legitimacy, this strategy may be shifting to embedding members within the state structure while learning how to extort the system rather than individuals.
Opponents and affiliates/allies:
Opponents: The Barrio 18 gang.
Allies: MS-13 structures in Honduras and Guatemala, parts of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) in Mexico.
Perception of state-security forces fluctuates between being considered the enemy and occasionally a tactical partner.
Resources/capabilities: Financial resources derived from extortion, protecting cocaine loads, kidnapping, murder-for-hire and money laundering. These are not evenly distributed among the gang’s clicas. Those groups that control key cocaine-trafficking routes or beach areas for sea-transported loads are better off than those not involved with cocaine routes. Some centralised redistribution exists but inequality among groups on the ground is a constant source of tension. Armoury features a growing number of new weapons, including Dragunov sniper rifles, Uzis, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and a small number of light anti-tank weapons.
Conflict Drivers
Political |
State illegitimacy and entrenched governance flaws: The state’s perceived illegitimacy has been a primary driver of the conflict, due to widespread corruption, institutional weakness and its lack of a monopoly on the use of force. In the most recent comprehensive poll, only 12% of respondents felt the government ran the country, with 42% instead believing power rested with the gangs.10 Frustration with traditional political parties gave Bukele, who ran as an anti-corruption candidate, a handsome victory in the 2019 elections, albeit with the second-highest abstention rate since the end of the civil war (around 50%).11 However, while Bukele’s increasingly authoritarian tactics (including egregious episodes such as sending armed soldiers to occupy the Legislative Assembly to pressure members to approve a loan in February 2020) have prompted widespread international criticism and concern, they have not tarnished the president’s enduring popularity. |
Economic and social |
Socio-economic challenges: Despite significant economic reforms that were part of the 1992 peace agreement, deep economic inequality and high unemployment persist, especially among young people (15 to 24 years old). With 12% of young people unemployed, 50% underemployed and 24.8% neither studying nor working, there are limited viable alternatives to MS-13 recruitment, which continues to fuel the conflict.12 In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic and two major tropical storms (which caused billions of dollars of damage) exacerbated an already dire socio-economic situation, which resulted in an 8.6% GDP contraction.13 Concurrently, the Trump administration worked to stem migration – a traditional safety valve in times of economic hardship – while increasing deportations to El Salvador. The Trump administration also asked that El Salvador spend scarce resources to act as a ‘safe third country’ where would-be immigrants could theoretically wait for asylum petitions to be processed. |
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Security  |
Increasing militarisation: The MS-13 continued to present itself as having a legitimacy equal to that of the state, driving a conflict where the gang ‘extort[s] residents throughout the country … Gangs kill, disappear, rape those who resist.’14 In response, state-security forces, publicly encouraged by Bukele, were deployed in public-security operations – despite the 1992 peace accord stipulation against this tactic – resulting in a sharp rise in human-rights abuses committed by the state. |
Key Events in 2020–21
POLITICAL EVENTS
12 March 2020
President Bukele announces national quarantine due to coronavirus pandemic, including stringent lockdownenforcement measures that continue despite being declared illegal by the Supreme Court.
3 September
The El Faro news portal publishes first extensive report on negotiations between the Bukele administration and the MS-13 gang, including alleged illegal, clandestine meetings between senior cabinet officials and gang leaders.
24 September
Bukele counters the El Faro news portal with public (unsubstantiated) allegations of money laundering and initiates multiple audits of their accounts, drawing widespread criticism from human-rights groups and freedom-of-information organisations.
9 December
Héctor Gustavo Villatoro, head of El Salvador’s Financial System Superintendence, releases a memo stating banks cannot terminate commercial relations with alleged financial criminals, drawing sharp international condemnation and allegations of Bukele’s ties to transnational criminal organisations.
11 December
The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a prestigious US assistance programme that generates employment, is not renewed, on the basis of El Salvador’s insufficient progress to curb corruption.
15 December
Attorney General Raúl Melara charges municipal mayor Roel Werner Martínez Romero and two other public officials with the homicide of two councillors in 2018 and 2019. All three are arrested as part of a massive operation against MS-13 members and collaborators in the country’s eastern departments.
15 December
The Office of the Attorney General opens a criminal investigation against Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, the director general of the PNC, for failing to comply with his duties in the investigations against Health Minister Francisco Alabí and Minister of Finance Alejandro Zelaya.
28 February 2021
Bukele’s New Ideas party sweeps legislative and municipal elections, winning an absolute majority in the unicameral Legislative Assembly.
MILITARY/VIOLENT EVENTS
9 February 2020
Armed soldiers and law-enforcement officials occupy El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly to force lawmakers to sign a US$109 million loan proposed by Bukele to fight violent gangs.
April
A killing spree attributed to the MS-13 takes place over five days, leaving 85 dead despite a sharp decline in the national homicide rate.
25 April
Bukele imposes a 24-hour prison lockdown after 22 homicides are reported in one day, the highest since he took office in June 2019.
31 January 2021
Two militants of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party are killed by security forces assigned to the finance ministry in an armed attack at the campaign launch of Rogelio Canales, a mayoral candidate for San Salvador.
Conflict Outlook
Political scenarios
Four likely political scenarios between the MS-13 and the government existed as of February 2021. The most extreme would involve talks between the two sides to produce a more formal understanding, whereby the MS-13 would gain access to government resources and formalise political control in municipalities under its de facto control, in exchange for de-escalating the armed conflict with state actors such as the PNC and continuing to reduce civilian killings. The second scenario would involve the two sides following historic precedent and breaking off communications, leading to an escalation of violence that would ultimately drive them back to informal or formal discussions around the homicide rate. A third scenario would maintain the status quo of informal discussions while the MS-13 moves more aggressively into cocaine trafficking and migrant smuggling with little resistance from the government. This would keep violence levels low, while economically empowering the MS-13 and allowing the state to crack down if politically expedient. The fourth scenario would involve the government’s continued concentration of institutional power, undermining the country’s checks and balances, including the use of force. The government would then adopt an iron-fist approach to fight criminal gangs, exacerbating violence. All four scenarios would likely increase the ongoing exodus of migrants from El Salvador to the US and strain the already tense relationship between the two countries. If the Biden administration were to follow through on its threat to revoke US visas and impose financial sanctions on senior Bukele administration officials for corruption charges, the Bukele administration may be more likely to enter formal negotiations and accept greater concessions.
Strategic implications and global influences
The Biden administration has vocalised its intent to enact comprehensive anti-corruption measures to address the root causes of instability, violence and migration in Central America and has already revoked the visa of the former minister of agriculture.
However, the administration’s desire to work primarily through non-governmental organisations rather than the Salvadoran state will complicate such anti-corruption measures. Although it has pledged funds to tackle the drivers of migration (including poverty, unemployment and inequality), its anti-government stance, and the public allegations of corruption made against senior government officials, has infuriated the Bukele administration, which in turn has threatened to suspend all measures to reduce migration and joint counter-narcotics efforts. This stand-off could lead to further waves of emigration – potentially destabilising Guatemala and Mexico as well as the Mexico–US border – and could stall fundamental reforms in El Salvador while further reducing cocaine-interdiction efforts.
Notes
- 1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, ‘Transnational Organized Crime in Central America and the Caribbean’, September 2012, p. 27.
- 2 While the negotiations were well known in Salvadoran political and law-enforcement circles, the September 2020 publication by the investigative website El Faro of the details of the negotiations infuriated the government. See Carlos Martínez et al., ‘Gobierno de Bukele Lleva Un Año Negociando con la MS-13 Reducción de Homicidios y Apoyo Electoral’ [Bukele Government Negotiating with MS-13 for a Year on Reducing Homicides and Electoral Support], El Faro, 3 September 2020. See also Bryan Avelar, ‘El Salvador’s MS13: “We Trust in God and in Bukele”’, InSight Crime, 7 June 2019; and Héctor Silva Ávalos, ‘MS13 Prison Releases Reinforce Potential Pact in El Salvador’, InSight Crime, 20 January 2021.
- 3 International Crisis Group, ‘Miracle or Mirage? Gangs and Plunging Violence in El Salvador’, Report No. 81, 8 July 2020; and Martínez et al., ‘Gobierno de Bukele Lleva Un Año Negociando con la MS-13 Reducción de Homicidios y Apoyo Electoral’ [Bukele Government Negotiating with MS-13 for a Year on Reducing Homicides and Electoral Support].
- 4 Government of El Salvador, ‘Gobierno Redujo los Delitos de Alto Impacto en 2020 con el Plan Control Territorial’ [Government Reduced High Impact Crimes in 2020 under the Territorial Control Plan], 2 February 2021; and United Nations Development Programme, ‘La Seguridad Ciudadana en El Salvador’ [ Citizen Security in El Salvador].
- 5 ‘El Salvador Registra Más de 1,200 Desaparecidos en 2020’ [El Salvador Registers More than 1,200 Disappeared in 2020], DW, 20 November 2020.
- 6 National Civil Police, ‘La Nueva Promoción Está Formada con Enfasis en Policía Comunitaria’ [The New Promotion Is Formed with an Emphasis on Community Police].
- 7 Jeannette Aguilar, ‘Las Políticas de Seguridad Pública en El Salvador 2003–2018’ [Public Security Policies in El Salvador 2003–2018], p. 61.
- 8 Interviews conducted by IBI Consultants with National Police anti-gang-unit members and MS-13 members, January to October 2018. The lower estimates include only hommies (full-fledged members), who are less than one-third of the overall gang affiliates. Higher estimates include members who served as paid lookouts, messengers and retail crack and cocaine vendors.
- 9 Human Rights Watch, ‘World Report 2020’, 2020, p. 187.
- 10 Parker Asmann, ‘El Salvador Citizens Say Gangs, not Government “Rule” the Country’, InSight Crime, 8 November 2017.
- 11 Karla Arévalo, ‘Cuál ha sido la elección presidencial con menos participación de votantes?’ [What was the Presidential Election with the Lowest Voter Turnout?], http://elsalvador.com, 7 February 2019.
- 12 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ‘Key Issues Affecting Youth in El Salvador’.
- 13 International Monetary Fund, ‘World Economic Outlook Database’, April 2021.
- 14 Human Rights Watch, ‘World Report 2021: El Salvador’, 2021.
Sources: IISS; Honduras, Office of Security of the Secretary of State; General Management of the National Police of Honduras; InSight Crime; Proceso Digital
Overview
The conflict in Honduras centres on the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang as it seeks to expand its robust drug-trafficking structure, pitting it against parts of the state and other criminal elements that it seeks to displace. As in El Salvador and Guatemala, the MS-13 grew largely from gang members deported from the United States in the late 1990s. In Honduras the gang established itself as a major player in the cocaine-transportation and production business, and expanded into other drugs, while continuing to hold a near-monopoly on the internal drug market of cocaine, crack, marijuana and krispy.1 More recently, lucrative drug income, particularly from krispy, allowed the gang to stop extorting local businesses in its areas of control, gaining significant political goodwill with the exhausted population. This community support allowed the MS-13 to operate freely in the drug trade and deal directly with Mexican drug-trafficking organisations as an independent partner, rather than limiting it to the protection of cocaine loads owned by other groups.2
In 2020 and early 2021, the MS-13 continued to expand its cocaine-trafficking activities, its ties to Mexican drug cartels, its territorial control and its political influence. Notably, it gained control of large cocaine laboratories, experimented with cultivating coca in the hills around San Pedro Sula and expanded its territorial control in the areas of Puerto Cortés-Omoa beach on the Atlantic coast and the Copán sector of the informal land crossings to Guatemala. These expanded operations led to tension and violence among different drugtrafficking groups, corrupt government security forces and smaller gangs.
However, the lockdown restrictions and border closures implemented to tackle the coronavirus pandemic curtailed the gang’s expansion into migrant smuggling (through Mexico to the southern US border). At the same time, the pandemic did provide the MS-13 with an opportunity to further enhance its legitimacy among the population, by assuming a quasi-state role in imposing curfews to curb the spread of COVID-19 and punishing violators, as well as in providing rudimentary neighbourhood food and water assistance in impoverished areas and neighbourhood security.
The MS-13 continued its complex relationship with the current administration of President Juan Orlando Hernández and the security forces he controls, alternating between fighting against and occasionally allying with the latter. Despite the expulsion of 5,775 police members – including senior commanders – for corruption and human-rights abuses between 2016 and 2019, many in the police corps remained connected to drug trafficking, aligning themselves with the MS-13 when mutually beneficial.3
Following the November 2019 conviction of President Hernández’s brother, and close adviser, Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández for large-scale cocaine trafficking, in December 2020 US prosecutors also alleged in court that the president himself had taken bribes from Mexican drug cartels and had used the armed forces to protect laboratories and cocaine shipments to the US.4 The president denied these charges (and his brother’s guilt), but these legal cases clouded his relationship with key allies, including the US administration of Joe Biden, Central American governments and the European Union. Another example of the country’s institutional weakness came as police assisted in violently freeing the MS-13’s national leader Alexander Mendoza (also known as El Porky) from custody in February 2020. Footage of the escape caused upheaval on Honduran socialmedia networks.
The MS-13 also expanded the geographical scope of its criminal, political and economic operations in 2020, with increased collaboration with Mexican transnational criminal organisations such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) to ship cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela to Mexico and by conducting processing steps in Honduran laboratories. The group also increased its digital and technological skilfulness, using encrypted apps for communications, the dark web and cyber currency for financial transactions, and drones for reconnaissance.
In 2020, COVID-19, hurricanes Eta and Iota and a slowdown in migration caused compounded crises of violence, food insecurity and massive unemployment. The government and the country’s economic and political elites seemed unable or unwilling to adopt comprehensive recovery strategies, as the economy contracted by 8% in 2020, with a 2021 forecast of 4.5%, with GDP per capita at purchasing power parity not expected to go back to the prepandemic level until 2022.5
Although the reported homicide rate dropped from 44.5 to 37.6 homicides per 100,000 habitants year on year, it remained the third highest in the hemisphere.6 Moreover, this drop may have reflected MS-13’s military victory in its areas of control rather than an actual improvement in the security situation across the country. Violence remained high in prisons with targeted killings, massacres and riots. 55 homicides were reported between November 2019 and August 2020, including six MS-13 members killed in May in the country’s largest women’s prison.7
Conflict Parties
Military Police of Public Order (PMOP) and National Anti-Gang Force (FNAMP)
Strength: The PMOP has around 4,300 members.8 The FNAMP has 500 members.9
Areas of operation: Throughout Honduras, with a focus on areas with high gang and drug-trafficking presences, usually major urban centres or locations with formal or informal border crossings such as Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Palmerola and the Guatemala–Honduras border centered in Copán.
Leadership and structure: Colonel Willy Oseguera Rodas (PMOP leader). Lieutenant-Colonel Amílcar Hernández (FNAMP leader).
PMOP has eight combat battalions and one canine battalion and reports to the Ministry of Defence. The FNAMP reports to the police but has not publicly defined its operational structure.
Objectives: Retake territory from the MS-13 and decapitate its operational structures while combatting transnational organised crime and drug trafficking.
Opponents and affiliates/allies:
Opponents include the MS-13 transnational gang, other smaller gangs and local drug-trafficking organisations. Allies include the national police, the TIGRES special-forces unit of the police, the military and US military/police trainers.
Resources/capabilities: Total military budget: US$344 million.10 Line items of budgets have not been published publicly.
Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13)
Strength: The gang has 9,000–15,000 full members and around 40,000 recruits in training, lookouts and messengers waiting to be formally initiated into the gang. These figures do not include long waiting lists of would-be recruits.
Areas of operation: Throughout Honduras, with concentrated territorial control in the cities of San Pedro Sula, Puerto Cortes and Omoa and in the department of Copán along the border with Guatemala.
Leadership and structure: Senior MS-13 leadership in Honduras remain largely in prison, though few are identified. The group’s national leader Alexander Mendoza escaped in February 2020 and remains at large. Carlos Alberto Álvarez (also known as Cholo Houston) and Dimas Aguilar (also known as Taca el Oso) are considered key leaders. Compartmentalised leadership structure with numerous clicas (highly compartmentalised units at the street level), forming programas (groups of clicas), which in turn report to the ranfla (prison-based senior leadership).
Objectives: Diversify its criminal portfolio by controlling key cocaine-trafficking nodes and migrant-smuggling routes.
Opponents and affiliates/allies:
Opponents: Sectors of the state security forces not involved in corruption practices, smaller gangs (such as Barrio or Calle 18, the Chirizos and Ponce) and extra-judicial paramilitary groups, rival cocaine groups.
Allies: The MS-13 structures in El Salvador and Guatemala; the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) in Mexico; Venezuelan and Colombian cocaine suppliers.
Resources/capabilities: Proceeds from cocaine transshipment, migrant smuggling and controlling local drug markets provide the group with a yearly income of tens of millions of US dollars. Other localised revenue sources include investments in motels, car lots, private security firms, buses and public transportation. Advanced tunnelling techniques, cocaine-laboratory operation and expanding territorial control have allowed the gang to protect its operations, store product and increase revenues.
Conflict Drivers
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Political |
Corruption and impunity: High levels of corruption and impunity – Honduras was ranked a dismal (joint) 157th in 2020 by Transparency International – allow criminal organisations to expand and grow stronger, ultimately fuelling conflict.11 In January 2020, the Honduran government failed to renew the contract for the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH) backed by the Organization of American States (OAS), clearly indicating the lack of political will to address corruption, in addition to the criminal allegations made by the US against President Hernández. |
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Economic and social |
Poverty and inequality: Prevalent poverty and inequality in Honduras have been caused by unequitable wealth distribution, low income and education and high unemployment. Although poverty levels have decreased in the past two decades, 48% of the population continued to live below the poverty line, including 60% of rural communities.12 Despite the country’s growing industrial base and the government’s efforts to diversify exports, unemployment remained high in Honduras and investment low amid widespread violence and corruption. The MS-13 and smaller groups – often acting with the Honduran state’s complicity – reinforce structural poverty and weak institutions by extorting business, recruiting from schools, bribing public officials and executing enemies, including civilians. Natural disasters and the coronavirus pandemic: The pandemic compounded the country’s pre-existing environmental, social and political drivers of conflict. Widespread governance flaws undermined the response to the crisis: for instance, a Honduran agency charged with procuring emergency medical supplies wasted tens of millions of dollars in overpriced contracts.13 Meanwhile, in November 2020, hurricanes Eta and Iota affected more than 4m Hondurans and damaged 85,000 homes.14 As of February 2021, at least 2.9m people were expected to face severe hunger, with numbers expected to rise to more than a third of the population as the situation seemed set to worsen.15 |
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Security |
Criminal infighting: Constant armed fighting for territorial control between multiple groups, exacerbated by shifting alliances and battle lines in contested areas for drug production and transport, reinforces the conflict, driving mass migration to the Mexico–US border and internal displacement and undermining state legitimacy. As of December 2020, an estimated 247,000 Hondurans were internally displaced due to violence, and at least one migrant caravan left the country in January 2021 with over 4,000 migrants.16 |
Key Events in 2020–21
POLITICAL EVENTS
16 March 2020
A COVID-19 state of emergency is declared in Honduras, and all borders are shut for a week.
6 May
A published report links Mauricio Olivia Herrera, the president of the National Congress, to the acquisition of properties in Tegucigalpa from Inversiones Acrópolis, a company connected to the Honduran drug-trafficking cartel Los Cachiros.
8 June
The state of emergency is lifted in most of the country and the economy begins to reopen.
29 June
After a year-long stalemate, the National Congress passes a new criminal code that lowers the sentences for corruption and drug-trafficking cases, allowing many of those convicted to avoid jail time.
26 October
A government investigation accuses the mayor of Tegucigalpa, Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura, of embezzling more than one million dollars in city funds, after he had announced in September that he would run for president in the 2021 elections.
14 January 2021
First migrant caravan of 2021 departs from San Pedro Sula with up to 4,000 migrants en route for Mexico and the US. Most are returned to their home countries before reaching their intended destination.
5 February
US prosecutors name Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández as a target in a major cocaine-trafficking investigation. Hernández denies the charges.
MILITARY/VIOLENT EVENTS
16 May 2020
Former congressman Hugo Pinto Aguilar, who was allegedly part of the Los Pinto clan, is killed in the border town of El Paraiso near Copán.
23 May
A group of Barrio 18 members stab and kill six other inmates at the National Women’s Penitentiary for Social Adaptation (PNFAS), suspected to be members of the rival MS-13.
11 June
An alleged member of MS-13’s rival, Barrio 18, is strangled by her cellmates at PNFAS.
6 August
Three suspected Barrio 18 members are found strangled in La Tolva prison, east of the capital Tegucigalpa.
13 February 2021
MS-13 leader Alexander Mendoza is freed from police custody after 20 gunmen storm a court building in El Progreso and kill three police officers.
Conflict Outlook
Political scenarios
With elections scheduled for November 2021, the MS-13 will likely increase its attempts to influence the outcome, especially as multiple unconfirmed reports suggest that Hernández will seek an additional term.
Food insecurity and critical-infrastructure damage will remain a high risk for a country very much exposed to climate change and regularly affected by tropical storms, floods, droughts and landslides. Ongoing and future disasters will increasingly strain the government’s effectiveness in supporting populations at risk and in need.
Violence, economic hardship and sub-par posthurricane humanitarian assistance will continue to push Hondurans to flee the country, which may empower the MS-13 to take control of migrant routes and further delegitimise the Honduran state.
Escalation potential and conflict-related risks
Additional risks are posed by the MS-13’s diversified revenue streams in 2020, its expanded transnational operations with Colombian producers and its position as direct wholesale supplier for Mexican transnational criminal organisations. The suggested shift in the gang’s operations from transit to cultivation and production (with vertically integrated capabilities) will also expand the gang’s political power, enhance its military strength and further undermine anti-corruption efforts.
Strategic implications and global influences
The less draconian approach to deterring Central American migration taken by the US administration under Biden may increase migration flows and create instability in Guatemala, Mexico and along the Mexico–US border. While the Biden administration intends to combat the root causes of migration, a reluctance to fund a government led by a president publicly accused of cocaine trafficking and corruption will likely reduce collaboration between the two countries.
The US must also consider its strategic forward-basing position operated by the Joint Task Force–Bravo on the Palmerola base, which is important to the US Southern Command. Hernández has signalled an intent to play the US against China, stating that any lost US aid could be replaced by recognising Beijing. This web of interests likely means that Honduras will continue to drive regional instability.
Notes
- 1 Krispy is a marijuana derivative sold in blocks and laced with chemicals. In interviews the drug was described as much more powerful than marijuana and is favoured by criminal groups because of its addictiveness and the fact it can be sold at much higher prices.
- 2 For a broader look at this evolution, see Douglas Farah and Kathryn Babineau, ‘The Rapid Evolution of the MS13 in El Salvador and Honduras from Gang to Tier-One Threat to Central America and US Security Interests’, Perry Center Occasional Paper, William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, March 2018.
- 3 Cat Rainsford, ‘Honduras Police Purge May Be Derailed by Alternative Agenda’, InSight Crime, 26 July 2019.
- 4 ‘Honduras President Took Bribes from Drug Traffickers, US Prosecutors Say’, Guardian, 9 January 2021.
- 5 International Monetary Fund, ‘World Economic Outlook Database’, April 2021.
- 6 United Nations Development Programme, ‘La Seguridad Ciudadana en Honduras’ [Citizen Security in Honduras]; and Parker Asmann and Katie Jones, ‘InSight Crime’s 2020 Homicide Round-up’, InSight Crime, 29 January 2021.
- 7 Victoria Dittmar, ‘Honduras Unable to Curb Rising Violence Inside Prisons’, InSight Crime, 20 August 2020; and Victoria Dittmar, ‘Gang Violence Increasingly Spreading to Women’s Prisons in Honduras’, InSight Crime, 17 June 2020.
- 8 Government of Honduras, ‘Se Integran Nuevos Policias Militares del Orden Publico al Servicio de la Poblacion’ [New Military Police Troops Join to Serve the Community], 26 November 2020.
- 9 Washington Office on Latin America, ‘El Papel de las Fuerzas Armadas en la Seguridad Pública en Honduras’ [The Role of the Armed Forces in Public Security in Honduras], August 2020; and Iris Amador, ‘Honduras Transforms Unit to Counter Maras and Gangs’, Diálogo, 20 September 2018.
- 10 ‘Honduras Aumenta en Casi 40% la Inversión Para Equipos Militares en 2020’ [Honduras Increases Investment for Military Equipment by Almost 40% in 2020], Infodefensa, 20 December 2019.
- 11 Transparency International, ‘Corruption Perceptions Index 2020’.
- 12 The World Bank, ‘The World Bank in Honduras: Overview – Context’.
- 13 Zachary Goodwin, ‘Massively Overpriced Contracts Hamper Honduras’ Pandemic Response’, InSight Crime, 17 July 2020.
- 14 ‘Honduras: After the Storms …’, United Nations Sustainable Development Group, 16 December 2020.
- 15 ‘Honduras: Nearly One Third of the Population Faces Hunger’, CARE, 22 February 2021.
- 16 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, ‘Honduras Country Information’; and ‘IOM Responds to Humanitarian Needs of Migrant Caravan in Guatemala’, International Organization for Migration, 24 January 2021.