The need to reflect on insecurity in Latin America

Addressing Latin American insecurity requires great and careful attention. What appears to be a regional contagion is in fact a complex network of local structures, interactions and articulations, with different results in each country. The creation of illegal markets, the intensity of violence linked to crime, and the expansion and widening of illicit trafficking—especially illegal gold mining and human trafficking—leave many questions unanswered. Many of these questions have to do with the State’s inability to contain crime and with the acceptance of illegality within the social system.

Crime creates criminal markets, not only abroad, but also within countries. This in turn calls for a closer look at drug trafficking, the most obvious cause of insecurity in the region. Drug trafficking has become an obsession of the popular “war on drugs,” which has become outdated, both because of its obviously failed methods of control and its understanding of the evolution of the phenomenon. In turn, drug trafficking has restricted the debate on security policies to the issue of the international drug regime, leaving aside its social causes and the collateral impacts of prohibition.

Therefore, in the face of the regional insecurity crisis, a profound reflection is needed that firstly raises the question of the dimensions of insecurity and its local expressions. It also questions how corruption, the weakness of the judicial systems, legal insecurity and institutional weakness fuel the criminal phenomenon.

It is necessary to look at the social dimensions, trying to elucidate why crime is so violent in certain contexts, and to examine in particular why cycles of intergenerational violence occur that seem impossible to break. Before building more mega-prisons, it is necessary to analyse how the penitentiary system became an incentive for the strengthening of criminal structures and, above all, it is necessary to channel judicial processes in a way that respects the guarantees of the rule of law, with the aim of reducing crime, not of massively criminalising certain social sectors.

In short, it is important to understand that a large part of organized crime — and the social structures that have been created around it — are authentic systems of parallel government, with a high capacity to prey on local economies. The problem is not only in international illicit trafficking; Latin Americans continually suffer from extortion, petty crime and coercion.

Secondly, all these issues require the establishment of a deep dialogue between academia, the public sector, security forces, the media and, of course, the private sector and the third sector. A problem of such magnitude and impact requires coordinated efforts and common objectives, in which companies have to be part of long-term, sustainable solutions that benefit their own interests.

Thirdly, it must be understood that the problem of security must be addressed through multi-level governance, with an emphasis on urban environments and their governments. In addition, long-term solutions will not be achieved if regional challenges are not addressed. How much we miss an integrated Latin America, capable of debating and acting together in the face of its common challenges, and that can raise shared demands to the global North, such as those relating to strengthening money laundering control systems.

In this sense, Europe is not a mere spectator in an issue that is increasingly knocking on its door, and about which it must, in fact, learn from the successes and failures of Latin America. It should be remembered that both regions are currently experiencing an increase in extremist political tendencies that take advantage of the phenomenon of insecurity to justify their authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies.

Finally, we must not lose sight of the fact that the desperation of Latin Americans requires responses that cannot wait for the long term of major social reforms. This forces decision-makers to face a particularly complex scenario, combining effective short-term measures with sustainable formulas for the long term in a framework of fiscal weakness.

The good news, amid the tragedy, is that a coalition of interests and actors is finally emerging. The security policy of authoritarian models has given way to alternative regional reflections on the way forward. As a result, the various multilateral development actors have incorporated security as a cross-cutting issue in their agendas; in addition, the voice of academia is beginning to find an echo in the media space, and the focus has once again been put on the violence suffered by defenders of human, environmental and social rights.

Perhaps one of the most important avenues to explore is the “Human Security” approach, which has come a long way since its birth in 1994 within the United Nations Development Programme, and which speaks to us not only about the protection of people, but also about their empowerment, providing them with the means to develop themselves.

The fundamental objective raised back then is today the most popular demand in Latin America: “Freedom from fear.”

In order to address this complex situation and propose alternatives from the Spanish Cooperation, the Carolina Foundation, the Toledo International Center for Peace and the Prisa Group (publisher of EL PAÍS) —with the support of CAF-Development Bank, the Organization of Ibero-American States and the Inter-American Development Bank—, are launching this week, at the Casa de América in Madrid, a series of debates and reflections on “Security in Latin America.” Specialists, academics, journalists, companies and multilateral institutions will participate in it, with the aim of contributing to building an alliance of international actors for human and sustainable security.

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