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Latin American's new conflict zones
11/07/2008 By Ivan Briscoe
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| 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.
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Keywords
Colombia Conflict Crime Ecuador Globalization Guatemala Latin America & Caribbean Mexico Paraguay Political economyRelated 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
Former senior researcher in Peace, Security and Human Rights at FRIDE.
