Security in Central America

Security in Central America

Rounding up the governments

Central America’s leaders and their neighbours are at last starting to co-operate. But the mafias still lead the way in regional integration

Jun 23rd 2011 | GUATEMALA CITY | from the print edition

THE Central American isthmus is smaller than Texas. But the seven countries crammed onto the bridge between the Americas seize nearly 100 tonnes of cocaine a year, more than all of Europe does. Another 200 tonnes or so make it through undetected, supplying 90% of consumer demand in the United States. The drug trade, combined with mainly weak states, brings a grim human harvest. In 2009 the isthmus saw nearly 19,000 murders—or 45 per 100,000 people, making it the most violent place in the world.

Explore the drugs paradox north of the region with our interactive map of Mexico's traffic routes, "cartels" and violence

While the mafias are untroubled by national boundaries, Central America’s governments bicker over them. Last year Nicaragua and Costa Rica almost came to blows over a border incursion by a Nicaraguan river-dredging party. A coup in Honduras in 2009 caused a regional rift that was only patched up last month. Co-operation has been woolly. A first effort to produce a joint-security strategy last year came up with more than 200 “priorities”. In contrast, the drug mobs (who also traffic everything from people to historical artefacts) are experts at regional integration. Last month 27 farmworkers were beheaded in Guatemala’s northern Petén province by a Mexican gang.

Central America’s leaders and their foreign allies are now trying to catch up. Seven Central American presidents, plus those from Mexico and Colombia, as well as Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, and other foreign ministers gathered this week for a conference in Guatemala City, replete with promises of more co-operation and more cash. “We haven’t seen this level of interest in Central America since the cold war ended,” says Ennio Rodríguez of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

El Salvador and Honduras are said to be studying Guatemala’s UN-sponsored International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), a unit charged with investigating and prosecuting the criminal networks that have infiltrated the state. Equivalent missions in those countries are unlikely partly because of the cost ($20m per year), but also because some at the UN are said to be concerned that CICIG has overstepped its remit. One option being touted is a regional rapporteur who would monitor anti-crime strategies.

The conference agreed a blueprint to fight and prevent crime, improve prisons and strengthen institutions, partly through a wish-list of joint regional projects. The leaders also agreed a follow-up scheme to keep up pressure to integrate security policy. Barriers are slowly coming down. El Salvador already allows Guatemalan police to cross into its territory, albeit usually accompanied by Salvadorean officers. Army chiefs in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize now speak to their opposite numbers without having to go through their foreign ministries. Mexico shares access to its intelligence database, and trains police at its academy. (It has ruled out “hot pursuit” on Mexican soil, however.)

A lack of trust means that co-operation often only happens if the presidents themselves get involved. That is partly because civil services are purged with each new administration. “In Central America we’ve not yet learned to distinguish between the institutional scaffolding of the state, and its employees,” says Eduardo Stein, a former vice-president of Guatemala. “That lack of continuity is catastrophic for regional co-operation.” Agreement on policy is easier than action, he adds: “thousands of regional presidential directives have never been implemented.”

More money is needed too. So far this year the Guatemalan government has seized guns, drugs and cash worth 9% of its annual GDP. (In 2010 the figure was 5% for the whole year.) Narco-flights to jungle runways in Petén have diminished (most now land on Honduras’s Mosquito Coast), but sea traffic remains. “Even if you add all the navies of Central America, you don’t have enough to police the Caribbean and the Pacific,” says Álvaro Colom, Guatemala’s president.

Donor countries are not flush with cash. The United States, which spent up to $1.1 billion a year on “Plan Colombia” a decade ago, has disbursed to Central America little more than a tenth of that sum over each of the past three years. But Mrs Clinton promised “almost $300m” this year. All in, donors pledged almost $1 billion for security this year. On paper, at least, that is a big increase from the $160m that the UN Development Programme (UNDP) reckons was actually spent last year. Most foreign aid and loans for security still go to individual countries, rather than to regional efforts. That may now change a bit.

Much of the new money will come from development banks, which increasingly see security as part of their remit. The IDB offered $500m over the next two years to support the new security plan. Its loans already bankroll Costa Rican prisons and mobile phones for the Honduran police. The World Bank promises to step up lending to Central America too. A bank official says that funding police-training in Central America, as the IDB does, would be against the bank’s rules. But it may soon extend projects supporting civil justice to criminal justice, hitherto off-limits.

Central American governments have been doing more themselves. Their security spending totalled $4 billion last year, up 60% in nominal terms from 2006, says the UNDP. About a fifth of public spending on Guatemala now goes on security, but low taxes mean that this is not nearly enough.

Noting that “true security cannot be built on the backs of the poor”, Mrs Clinton urged that “businesses and the rich in every country must pay their fair share of taxes.” If only. Mr Colom admits he is unlikely to secure fiscal reform before he steps down in January. El Salvador’s government wants a security tax, similar to one in Colombia, but it too faces right-wing opposition. Costa Rica’s divided congress is stalling on new taxes. The conference will help presidents press the private sector and legislatures to get serious about public security, says an official from the Central American Integration System, the regional body which convened it. Until they do Central America’s biggest business by far will be an illegal one.

The Economist