DRUG CARTELS, FROM POLITICAL TO CRIMINAL INTERMEDIATION:

2021 ◽  
pp. 165-189
Author(s):  
ROMAIN LE COUR GRANDMAISON
Keyword(s):  
Drug Cartels

Ecuador prison crisis threatens to escalate

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Prison Violence ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Us ◽  
International Coordination ◽  
Drug Cartels ◽  
International Human ◽  
International Investors

Significance The attack, which involved drones, illustrates the evolving tactics of crime groups, and follows a string of violent, sometimes coordinated, incidents at prisons this year. These have resulted in the deaths of over 120 inmates. Prison violence comes alongside rising crime and growing concerns over the strengthening of transnational drug cartels. Impacts Lasso will face increasing pressure from international human rights groups to protect prisoners and improve prison conditions. Rising violence and crime will increase concerns among international investors about the security of investments and risks of extortion. Lasso might seek to exploit improved relations with the US and Colombian governments to strengthen international coordination.

The Later Work of Gabriel García Márquez

2021 ◽  
pp. 557-573
Author(s):  
Nicholas Birns
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Magical Realism ◽  
Gabriel Garcia Marquez ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Moral Transformation ◽  
Drug Cartels ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Do So

If the Bolívar novel embodies the collective memory of a region in a manner spare yet ingenious, the novelist’s other major late work tends toward personal memory. In Of Love and Other Demons, García Márquez comes as close to magical realism as in any work since the short stories and One Hundred Years of Solitude and reaffirms the multiracial and Caribbean character of the author’s own definition of Spanish America. In News of a Kidnapping, García Márquez ventures onto the territory of drug cartels and violence, which became the preoccupation of the next generation of Colombian writers, relating this material from the deadpan, appalled stance that is as characteristic of his viewpoint as the mesmeric incantations so commonly associated with him. In Memories of My Melancholy Whores, a late in life moral transformation redeems a lifetime of iniquity and testifies to the strangeness of the new territory of extreme old age, in a sense as unexplored a country as Macondo once was. In Living to Tell the Tale, García Márquez reflects upon the first half of his own life. Unlike in the case of Bolívar, García Márquez did not get to tell the ending of the story, leaving later writers and readers to do so in their own minds, as the great master had done for the General.

All Societies Die

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Common Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Drug Cartels ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
The French Revolution

The author of this book asks us to prepare for the inevitable. Our society is going to die. What are you going to do about it? But the author also wants us to know that there's still reason for hope. In an immersive and mesmerizing discussion, this book considers what makes societies (throughout history) collapse. It points us to the historical examples of the Byzantine empire, the collapse of Somalia, the rise of Middle Eastern terrorism, the rise of drug cartels in Latin America, and the French Revolution, to explain how societal decline has common features and themes. While unveiling the past, the message to us about the present is searing. Through an assessment of past and current societies, the book offers us a new way of looking at societal growth and decline. With a broad panorama of bloody stories, unexpected historical riches, crime waves, corruption, and disasters, the reader is shown that although our society will, inevitably, die at some point, there's still a lot we can do to make it better and live a little longer. This inventive approach to an “end-of-the-world” scenario should be a warning. We're not there yet. The book concludes with a strategy of preserving and rebuilding so that we don't have to give a eulogy anytime soon.

Drug Cartels, from Political to Criminal Intermediation

2021 ◽  
pp. 165-189
Author(s):  
Romain Le Cour Grandmaison
Keyword(s):  
Drug Cartels

High-Profile Criminal Violence: Why Drug Cartels Murder Government Officials and Party Candidates in Mexico

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Guillermo Trejo ◽  
Sandra Ley
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Drug Cartels ◽  
Criminal Groups

AbstractThis article explains a surprising wave of lethal attacks by drug cartels against hundreds of local elected officials and party candidates in Mexico, 2007–2012. These attacks are puzzling because criminal organizations tend to prefer the secrecy of bribery over the publicity of political murder. Scholars suggest that war drives armed actors to attack state authorities in search of protection or rents. Using original data on high-profile attacks in Mexico, the authors show that war need arguments underexplain violence. Focusing on political opportunities, they suggest that cartels use attacks to establish criminal governance regimes and conquer local governments, populations and territories. The study presents quantitative and qualitative evidence showing that cartels took advantage of Mexico's political polarization and targeted subnational authorities who were unprotected by their federal partisan rivals. Cartels intensified attacks during subnational election cycles to capture incoming governments and targeted geographically adjacent municipalities to establish control over large territories. The findings reveal how cartels take cues from the political environment to develop their own de facto political domains through high-profile violence. These results question the widely shared assumption that organized criminal groups are apolitical actors.

scholarly journals Communal Responses to Structural Violence and Dispossession in Cherán, Mexico

2020 ◽  
pp. 0094582X2097500
Author(s):  
Giovanna Gasparello
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Formation Process ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Criminal Organization ◽  
The State ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Illegal Logging ◽  
Economic Control ◽  
Drug Cartels

Mexico is currently subject to generalized violence due to conflicts between drug cartels, the state, and resource-extraction companies jostling for territorial and economic control. In 2011 and in this context, the inhabitants of the indigenous municipality of Cherán confronted the criminal organization responsible for kidnappings, extortion, and illegal logging in their communal territory. Study of this conflict and the communal responses generated in the peace process reveals that the violence was founded on social inequality and was both cause and effect of the indigenous population’s material and cultural dispossession. The peace formation process involved the valorization of a collective and territorially rooted identity, the strengthening of security and justice practices based on the authority of assemblies, and an incipient interest in the construction of economic alternatives for the local population. Actualmente, México vive una situación de violencia generalizada debido a los conflictos entre los cárteles de droga, el Estado y las empresas de extracción de recursos que luchan por el control territorial y económico. En 2011 y en este contexto, los habitantes del municipio indígena de Cherán se enfrentaron a una organización criminal responsable de secuestros, extorsiones y tala ilegal en su territorio comunal. El estudio de este conflicto y las respuestas comunitarias generadas en el proceso de paz revela que la violencia se fundó sobre la desigualdad social y fue tanto causa como efecto del despojo material y cultural de la población indígena. El proceso de paz implicó la valorización de una identidad colectiva y territorialmente arraigada, el fortalecimiento de las prácticas de seguridad y justicia basadas en la autoridad de las asambleas, y un interés incipiente en la construcción de alternativas económicas para la población local.

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