San jOse. – The three enormous letters in white or yellow in a black or blue bottom excel the agents to them to the back of their bulletproof vests or jackets and in the front part of their caps: to give.
Pistol in hand, in armored vans and with communication equipment, the officers of the U.S. Drug Control Administration (DEA) are sometimes discreet in giving orders and coordinating raids against the drug trafficking… off American soil and challenging the sovereignty of the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Once the missions are completed, they appear to retreat to leave the stage at the disposal of the national authorities, but the presence of American or national troops recruited by the DEA, with command and control, also sometimes bothers and inconveniences the police forces and judicial of the countries.
The arrest in the United States, on October 15, of the former Mexican Secretary of Defense, Salvador Cienfuegos, for drug-related charges, it caused great unrest in Mexico, for not being informed that there was a DEA search against the general.
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Although Cienfuegos was returned to Mexico on November 18, the Mexican government’s response came in the form of a reform to the Security Act to restrict the operations of DEA agents in the country, to withdraw their immunity, and to compel them to share the information they request in the performance of their duties in Mexico with the government of that nation, is prohibited. make arrests, require permission to carry weapons and may be expelled if they violate the law and alert that they have no immunity.
The DEA has a history of controversy in Latin America.
On July 21, 2009, the Guatemalan media published on their covers: “Great DEA operation in Gualemala fails.” Dozens of heavily armed DEA agents commanded that day in police forces, Guatemalan military and judiciary, launched an air and ground hunt in La Reforma, a village in eastern Guatemala, to capture and extradite the US to six hierarchies of the Lorenzana cartel, one of the most powerful in the area and allied to Mexican cartels like the of Sinaloa. The operation failed due to a leak of information and the hooded bloc escaped (it was taken prisoner several years later), at the same time as a wave of criticism was unleashed for violation of sovereignty.
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“Sovereignty in Guatemala is just a pretext,” said the Guatemalan Iduvina Hernández, Executive Director of the [no estatal] Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in Democracy, of this country, in explaining that it is a factor which, according to the convenience of the moment, the authorities use or discard.
The presence of armed foreign agents must be authorized by the Guatemalan Congress because, otherwise, “sovereignty is violated,” Hernández told EL UNIVERSAL, after warning: “It is difficult for the DEA to operate in Guatemala without there is a paper signed “by both governments, though never subject to legislative process.
war
Heiress of the Office of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs)BNDD) -, the DEA was born on July 1, 1973 to reinforce the war on drugs that the then President of the United States, Richard Nixon, Launched in the early 1970s.
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The market of that time was based on marijuana, produced in most of the area, and cocaine, production was concentrated in Colombia and Peru with raw materials from both countries and Bolivia. He also fought heroin and its production networks in Mexico and Colombia or sourcing raw materials in Guatemala.
The business changed after 47 years. The crisis expanded strongly in the 21st century synthetic drugs with suppliers from Latin America and the Caribbean, China and Europe and with the US as the main market. Honduras and Guatemala now produce cocaine.
In almost half a century, the DEA was marked by extreme cases: receiving freeway or green light in Guatemala. Instead, in Venezuela the then president Hugo Chávez he ordered his expulsion in 2005, alleging that the agents supported the narco, instead of fighting him and doing “intelligence tasks against the government”. The DEA accused Chávez of not wanting to cooperate in the fight the narcotics. Three years later, Bolivia would follow in Venezuelan footsteps. Under the argument that they were conspiring against his government, the then president Evo Morales gave three months to DEA agents to leave Bolivian soil. In Cuba its operation was never allowed.
Haiti is an exceptional case in matters of narcotics smuggling. With a strategic position in the Caribbean Sea, the island became an operational square to deceitfully attract this country to Latin American drug traffickers and Caribbean people who, after being caught by the DEA and without lengthy extradition procedures, in less than 24 hours travel to some federal court in Florida or New York.
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In Colombia, the role of the DEA was key in the fight against cartels of Medellín O of CaliBut then came the Colombia Plan, costly, controversial, and to which experts attribute the displacement of thousands of people and very few results. “Despite its stated goals, the DEA has not achieved any in the most global sense,” he said at the time. Bruce Bagley, Director and Professor of International Studies at the University of Miami.
Speaking to the BBC, Adam Isacson, the Washington Office’s regional security analyst on Latin American affairs (WOLA), said the anti-narcotics agency had not actually succeeded in making trade in Latin American trade. drugs and both experts and NGOs spoke of a “failure” in the fight the narcotics.
The DEA has four zones in America – North and Central America, Andean, Caribbean and South Cone – with 40 offices of which four have regional command: Mexico City which includes Central America; San Juan, Puerto Rico, for the Caribbean, Bogota for Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela; and Lima for Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay.
The agency has 15 offices resident in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and the Bahamas and 21 “country offices”: Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, Chile, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana, Bahamas, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, and Curaçao.
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Without getting an answer, THE UNIVERSAL asked the DEA headquarters in Washington about the legal limitations facing its work in Latin America and the Caribbean by rules on carrying weapons, prohibition of arrests and immunity. In its statement of principles, the agency has explained that it cooperates with foreign governments to reduce the availability of illicit drugs in the US market and resorting to powerless methods to eradicate and replace illegal crops. But the reform of the Security Law in Mexico is just the latest example of the change of approach that, from various countries and institutions, is called for in the anti-arc struggle.