Drugs, Law and Conflict

A wall separating two slums in Rio de Janeiro, occupied by police after eight young people were kidnapped. Photo courtesy of Douglas Engle/Australfoto, via The Guardian.

The Guardian recently highlighted “Dancing With the Devil,” a documentary about violence in Rio de Janeiro’s slums. Professor Silvia Ramos of Brazil’s Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania writes,

Rio de Janeiro is no stranger to the sound of gunfire or to images of out-of-breath policemen sprinting into the favelas. Each week the newspapers are filled with pictures of bulletproof vehicles and automatic weapons, of gun-battles and drug busts, of people being arrested and people being killed.

But Dancing With The Devil shows us something we have never before seen on the big screen: the faces of Rio’s drug traffickers and policemen, who tell their stories staring straight into the camera, without disguises or masks.

See a clip of the film here.

Monday, June 29: Mesa de Debate: “Crimen organizado, seguridad y política transnacional.”
9am, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte en la Ciudad de México (Casa COLEF), Francisco Sosa 254. Col. Barrio de Santa Catarina, Del. Coyoacán. Limited space. RSVP at 5554-3390 or 5554-3545, or to  casacolef at colef.mx

Tuesday, June 30: “Seminario Sociología del crimen organizado, derechos humanos y sociedad civil.”
9am – 3pm, Auditorio Santa Fé del CIDE. See more information here.

Colombian daily El Tiempo reports that Colombia will be sharing some of its top public security experts with the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León. The series of talks and trainings will focus on what Mexico can learn from Colombia in the areas of anti-kidnapping efforts, the strategy to tackle organized crime, and coordination among police forces.

The state of the union address Mexican president Felipe Calderón delivered last week is now available online. The videos covering security and rule of law follow after the jump.

On security, Calderón goes into great detail about quantity of drugs seized and specific traffickers detained. Yet he does not address how these successes affect the long-term goal of his policy: in the words of Mexican security expert Jorge Chabat, “to turn the big cartels into lots of small cartels.” As Chabat explains, “If you have 50 small cartels instead of four big cartels, first you have less international pressure, and second, you will have violence in the short term, but in the long term you will have much less violence.” This is the “success” of Colombia: Escobar is dead, and cocaine is now processed and trafficked by dozens of boutique cartels.

Are Calderón’s military operations enough to fracture Mexico’s megacartels, or will this pressure only force them to reorganize? How does the security apparatus measure success in this process? What factors are being monitored and considered behind the scenes, beyond tons of drugs seized?

Finally, on building the rule of law in Mexico, Calderón mentions the creation of an “observatorio ciudadano” for his administration’s rule of law programs. Will be following this closely…
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