Send page Print

Latin America & Caribbean / Comment

Latin American's new conflict zones

11/07/2008 By Ivan Briscoe

Marco Millán/AFP/Getty Images

The border regions of Latin America are home to the region’s most extreme violence and instability. Mexico’s attempts to combat drug trafficking on its frontier with the United States and the dispute between Ecuador and Colombia over the latter’s bombardment of a FARC camp epitomize the dilemmas of tackling illicit trafficking and the presence of armed groups along frontiers that lie largely outside the control of the state.

 

The new hemispheric security strategy of the United States promises an integrated and cooperative approach to these concerns and other “emerging threats”. But military solutions in contexts marked by institutional corrosion, powerful illicit networks and competing authorities have rarely proved effective over the long term, while the concentration of security threats along international frontiers is stirring distrust between neighbouring countries rather than increasing cooperation.

Download the full version of this publication, available in English (216 kB)
Spanish (82 kB)

Keywords

Colombia Conflict Crime Ecuador Globalization Guatemala Latin America & Caribbean Mexico Paraguay Political economy

Related publications

• Crime and drugs in fragile states
• Organized Crime, the State, and Democracy: the cases of Central America and the Caribbean
• The state of the negotiated political solution of the Colombian conflict

Bio author: Ivan Briscoe

Ivan Briscoe studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford, before receiving a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship to continue his studies for a year at Harvard University. He has also completed a master's degree in Development at Madrid's Complutense University. From 2004 he has worked as the editor of the English edition of El País (Madrid). He writes often on Latin America and developing world issues for Open Democracy (www.opendemocracy.net) and The New Internationalist, and has taken part in numerous radio programmes on the BBC, Radio Nederland and Radio France International.