A new Odebrecht — powdered and white

Since the beginning of the 21st century, a series of global crises—terrorism, mass migration, systemic corruption, the pandemic, and organized crime—has shaped a political architecture of fear and incompetence that has reordered state priorities and social common sense. Presented as exceptional emergencies, these agendas enabled the curtailment of rights, legitimized external interventions, and eroded trust in democratic politics. Far from solving the problems they claimed to confront, these responses deepened violence, inequality, and social fragmentation. In Latin America, the advance of drug trafficking and organized crime fits within this same logic and serves as a new justification for reviving old strategies of geopolitical interference. However, this process cannot be explained solely by pressure from external actors. Progressive governments, which promised to expand rights and strengthen sovereignty, showed serious limitations in managing complex national and transnational conflicts.

La acusación de narcotráfico y la amenaza de invasión son una vieja herramienta geopolítica. (Imagen Diario ABC)

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the alleged anthrax attacks in the months that followed, and subsequent attacks over the following years on almost every continent — except Latin America — the agenda of terrorism and security came to dominate political management, public debate, and collective paranoia, both public and private, for the next twenty years.

This tsunami of terror that crossed the Greenwich meridian after 2001 facilitated the approval of international laws and regulations that favored military, economic, political, and/or judicial intervention by the attacked Western powers — and their allies — in countries governed by leaders accused of complicity and/or incapacity to contain terrorist organizations within their territories.

The so-called “war on terror” has sufficient consensus to be defined as a resounding failure. Its stated objectives were to dismantle terrorist organizations, overthrow complicit governments, and forcibly impose democracy; reality showed that none of these goals were achieved and that, ultimately, the opposite occurred. Over twenty years, this new crusade — as U.S. President George W. Bush called it — led to the collapse of several regimes (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya), the consolidation of others (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar), the dispersion and fragmentation of terrorist organizations, the widespread availability of hundreds of thousands of weapons among civilians and armed groups, and returned millions of people — in a kind of sadistic time machine — to living conditions reminiscent of the Middle Ages.

The permanent state of war forced millions of human beings to attempt to escape its consequences. Political and media sectors began publicly portraying the millions of desperate people trying to cross the Mediterranean almost by swimming as members of a dehumanized invasion seeking to undermine European values. Faced with these narratives and the growing physical violence suffered by migrants and refugees, the inability of leaders concerned with integration ultimately granted more space to the defenders of so-called European values. Rhetoric laden with solidarity and moralism failed to translate into practical and effective actions.

Migrants and refugees, mainly from Africa and the Middle East — and to a lesser extent from Latin America — are often accused, based on a few isolated cases, of participating in serious crimes (organized crime, sexual offenses, crimes against life and property) and minor offenses (public disorder, theft, and vandalism). The constant repetition of these accusations in the media generated a genuine and unconscious distrust among native European societies and long-integrated foreign communities toward newly arrived survivors.

CORRUPTION, PANDEMIC, AND THE MULTI “VERSE”

Odebrecht is a Brazilian construction company and one of the largest in Latin America. Beginning in 2009, amid the outbreak of influenza A, the war on terror in Syria and Afghanistan, and the subprime mortgage crisis, the company came under investigation for paying multimillion-dollar bribes in Brazil. From the investigation known worldwide as Lava Jato emerged media and political figures such as former judge Moro and then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

Within the framework of this investigation, numerous businesspeople, heads of state, ministers, deputies, senators, and officials at various levels were imprisoned across nearly every country south of the United States. Some of these officials and business leaders admitted to corruption before U.S. judicial authorities, which seemingly began investigating corruption throughout the continent under the pretext that Odebrecht had used the U.S. financial system to channel bribe payments.

As a result of this judicial process, several companies collapsed, thousands of workers lost their jobs, and billions of dollars were paid in fines to the Brazilian, U.S., and Swiss states; the latter also claimed jurisdiction, as its opaque financial system had been used to process bribe payments.

The cooperation of the accused with U.S. authorities led to the opening of local investigations in Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. Revelations coming from the United States — the jurisdiction where the greatest number of plea agreements were reached — began occupying the central spaces of newspapers, television news, and radio long before reaching the desks of courts and prosecutors in those countries.

The political and business classes were covered by a presumption of guilt. All politicians, all businesspeople, and anyone close to them were considered corrupt even before investigations began. Many were and still are, but the most significant outcome of this process was the popular consensus that emerged: everyone is corrupt.

Following this media and political exposure of generalized corruption came another unifying event for that consensus: Covid-19. The pandemic that began at the end of 2019, in addition to marking the world with the deaths of 15 million people, spread conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus and reinforced the perception that everyone around us is corrupt. There were no shortage of reasons to think so.

Medical equipment needed to mitigate the effects of the pandemic was purchased at inflated prices from historically privileged businesspeople and, in some cases, was never even used. Officials, relatives, and business elites were vaccinated long before those most at risk of death. To control the spread of the virus, repressive controls were deployed to limit citizens’ movement, while presidents, officials, and business leaders gathered regularly to celebrate parties in government buildings and official residences.

As anticipated, the measures adopted to contain the virus destroyed millions of jobs, increased the cost of living, and plunged vast segments of the global population into poverty, while political leaders and business elites experienced little change in their living conditions.

THE RESURGENCE OF AN OLD GEOPOLITICAL TOOL

Fortunately, Latin America has not been a victim of global phenomena such as terrorism, with the exception of the two attacks that occurred in Argentina during the 1990s. Nor has it experienced sudden migration crises like the one that has affected Europe since 2011 as a result of armed conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. To a large extent, the hardships faced by Latin American populations stem from the failure to guarantee access to Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR): health, education, housing, food, water, sanitation, work, and social security. However, for several years now — and increasingly — this structural violation has been compounded by the exposure of private and community life, especially among the working class, to the economic and violent power of criminal organizations.

Currently, Latin America holds the world’s highest rate of violent deaths per capita. Neglect, incompetence, and excessive ideologization regarding how to intervene in common crime and organized crime have generated high levels of distrust in the State’s capacity and willingness to respond. A report by the OECD released this year shows low public trust in governments (48%) and greater confidence in the armed forces to manage critical situations (55%). Most respondents identified crime as one of the most significant threats, alongside corruption and economic problems.

Negligence and tragic or sugar-coated narratives have increased the real sense of insecurity among large segments of the population, who have ultimately chosen to arm themselves, vote for opportunistic politicians who propose suspending constitutional guarantees for the entire population, or tacitly support criminal groups that impose a certain order in neighborhoods where access to rights is not guaranteed.

As occurred previously with terrorism and cases of widespread systemic corruption, drug trafficking has become an inexhaustible source of resources allowing key actors to deploy old geopolitical tactics in pursuit of a consolidated strategy: guaranteeing geopolitical interference for their own benefit. The renewed opportunity currently available to governments such as that of the United States — which has monopolized this agenda since the 1980s — is grounded in deficient public management of organized crime, particularly drug trafficking and violence, which continue to grow and diversify worldwide.

The causes and consequences of drug production and trafficking as a geopolitical tool date back to the 19th century, when Great Britain and France forced the Chinese Empire to import opium in order to balance the trade deficit Western powers had with the East. Almost a century later, states and empires involved in the world wars authorized the production and commercialization of various drugs — morphine, heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines — so their armies could use them as sedatives in some cases and stimulants in others.

After World War II, with the establishment of the United Nations, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961) was adopted, creating an international control system aimed at regulating the production, trafficking, and consumption of drugs. This convention was born under the auspices and aspirations of the United States and laid the foundations for the future political strategy of the war on drugs and its leadership role in directing that war.

During the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. intelligence services — the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — assisted Colombian and Mexican drug traffickers in commercializing cocaine toward the United States and Europe, in exchange for financing the purchase of weapons for the Iranian regime, which was under a U.S. arms embargo, and for paramilitary groups created by the CIA to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. The case became widely known as the Iran-Contra affair, and the few convictions handed down against military officers and officials were later nullified, as most were pardoned by President George H. W. Bush.

A similar situation occurred in Panama around the same time. The CIA supported Panamanian General Manuel Noriega’s rise to power when he positioned himself as an opponent of the Soviet Union. When he later shifted his stance and showed a degree of independence from the United States, Washington decided to remove him. By then, Noriega had already become one of the region’s most significant drug traffickers, allied with Colombian cartels. His escalating defiance of U.S. interests led President George H. W. Bush to order the invasion of Panama and Noriega’s arrest on charges of complicity in drug trafficking.

The fight against drug trafficking was used as a tool by the United States and several Latin American countries that requested or accepted U.S. assistance to confront the phenomenon. The two emblematic cases are Colombia and Mexico, whose governments signed agreements for economic, military, and judicial assistance with the United States to deter or disrupt cocaine production and distribution.

Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative were packages of measures proposed by the United States that ultimately allowed U.S. capital to be installed at the core of the Colombian and Mexican economies under special legal conditions, along with the deployment of joint armed forces to pursue traffickers, destroy laboratories, and eradicate coca crops.

NARCOTERRORISM, CORRUPTION, OPPORTUNISM, AND DISORIENTATION

Geopolitical actions over the past year regarding drug trafficking — alongside those related to terrorism and corruption — have once again made this tool effective, routine, and dangerous. Today, drug trafficking is no longer what it was in the 1990s. Since then, criminal organizations involved in the drug trade have increasingly allocated economic and financial resources to purchasing political and business loyalties that protect and expand their interests.

As in the Odebrecht case, based on repeated incidents, the conviction that all politicians are complicit with or associated with drug traffickers has crystallized in Latin American public opinion. This situation has enabled political sectors — generally opportunistic and linked to major media conglomerates — to use the visible consequences of drug trafficking, such as murders and violence, to reinforce this perception and undermine key pillars of the democratic system, particularly the presumption of innocence and certain constitutional guarantees.

These same sectors promoted the concept of narco-terrorism and spread it across the multi “verse.” One of the leading promoters of this strategy is President Donald Trump, who, relying on the verifiable argument that large quantities of cocaine are exported from Venezuela to the United States with the sponsorship of state authorities, deployed warships and military aircraft in the Caribbean Sea and began attacking vessels allegedly carrying cocaine.

As with Manuel Noriega in Panama, U.S. judicial authorities accuse Nicolás Maduro and members of his inner circle of belonging to a criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking and of providing refuge to terrorist organizations. The political indecision of progressive parties and governments in condemning human rights violations in Venezuela is exploited by sectors aligned with Trump to promote interference in the country and the region. The growing rhetoric surrounding drug trafficking adds to accusations of human rights violations, corruption, and terrorism leveled against the Venezuelan regime, fostering consensus among certain sectors for its overthrow through military force.

CONCLUSION

Frequent and accelerated exposure to news related to drug trafficking and its consequences magnifies a problem that is already immense and complex, both internationally and domestically. The increase in drug demand and supply generates scenarios of violence to which governments, in most cases, are unable to respond due to incompetence and, in others, due to open complicity.

Opportunistic politicians offer superficial and voluntarist analyses, even when formulated in good faith. Time and again, these sectors arrive at proposals that are anything but new: harsher penalties, militarization of internal security, and the reinstatement of the death penalty. All of these measures have been applied in different historical and geographical contexts, and their outcomes are well known.

Persisting in the false dilemma between progressive denial and authoritarian punitivism — in addition to being simplistic and lacking real commitment — only guarantees the continuation of the problem. Organized crime does not expand solely due to its violent and financial capacity to infiltrate, but also because of the absence or failure of state institutions to effectively protect and promote development.

Recent history shows that every time fear becomes the axis of political intervention, exceptional responses end up consolidating as the norm. Terrorism, corruption, and drug trafficking have functioned — and continue to function — as mechanisms to justify the suspension of rights, external tutelage, and democratic degradation. If Latin America fails to build its own effective and democratic tools to confront organized crime, the risk is not only the expansion of criminal activity, but the consolidation of a new cycle of permanent exceptionality.