The first Norlarnet seminar took place in Bergen on the 20th of October, on the topic of Illicit Trafficking, Violence and the State in Latin America. The program counted on several internationally renowned experts, including Dr. Carlos Flores (CIESAS, Mexico) Ivan Briscoe (FRIDE ,Madrid), Jennifer Schirmer (SUM, Oslo), Virgilio Alvarez (FLACSO , Guatemala), and John-Andrew McNeish (CMI, Bergen). Unfortunately Carlos Flores was unable to come. A report will be produced from the seminar and be published in a few months. In the meantime, some papers and presentations are made available below.

The seminar opened with an introduction by the Norlarnet leader, Benedicte Bull (Associate Professor, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo) where she discussed the current upsurge of violence in some Latin American countries and the close connections between this and the changes in the international drug trade and other forms of illicit trafficking. She emphasized the increasingly evident links between governmental officials, police and military forces, politicians and organized illicit networks and the impact this may have on the legitimacy of the state in particular countries in Latin America. Read paper

Benedicte Bull continued by reading parts of the paper that Carlos Flores (Senior Researcher, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS, Mexico) had prepared for the seminar. The paper offered a theoretical approach to the linkages between state weakness, democratization and the strengthening of organized crime, and a detailed introduction to the current linkages between politics and drug cartels and the resulting spiraling violence in Mexico. The paper also placed this in a historical context linking the strengthening of the cartels to the transformations of the Mexican state after 2000 and the resulting weakening of Federal Authorities. Read paper: Democracy and organized crime.

Ivan Briscoe (Senior Researcher, Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior (Fride), Madrid) gave a detailed and rich introduction to the situation of drug trafficking and violence in many parts of Latin America, including Venezuela and Guatemala. He emphasized the historical roots of the practice of “purchasing" political positions that illicit networks now practice. He also discussed the attempts at reforming police forces and reasons for their general failure. He pointed to the competition between rival forces within the police and the military, the institutional confusion of security forces, and an intensification in the operations of the illicit networks attempting to penetrate police forces, among other reasons. He argued further that the frequently heard argument that there exist “ungoverned areas" in Latin America is misplaced as many of these areas are in fact governed by parallel power structures.

Jennifer Schirmer (Senior Researcher, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo) premised her presentation by stating that drugtrafficking does not take place in a social and political vacuum. Rather, it is embedded within and, in turn, affects the political and social dynamics of these societies.  What this implies for policy is that it should not be focused solely on drugs  but must address, through social and economic reform, the underdevelopment, political exclusion and  low wages that reinforce the drug trade. In Colombia, drugs have served as a means to create political power bases by marginalized groups: the FARC guerrillas, the paramilitaries, the drugtraffickers and the cocalero peasant communities. Marginal areas are thus unfortunately viewed by the national regimes primarily  through a negative lens of drugs and insurgency, not underdevelopment and underemployment.  A brief history was outlined of links initiated in the 1980s between the FARC guerrillas and drugtraffickers; marginalized peasants in these areas of FARC control had few options of income sourcing other than coca production. Nevertheless, relations with the FARC are ambivalent, with peasants complaining about their failure to deliver on promises of social and community development.  Schirmer also set out a brief history of the expansionist paramilitaries in the 1990s, mutating from a private army of drug kingpins into an emerging landowning class with a political project, creating new alliances with narcos and regional elites, and causing an exponential spiraling of violence and massive displacement. Between 1999 and 2006, the remarkable consequence of this process was the emergence of new political groupings of “para-politicos" and the loss of the electoral majority by the liberal and conservative parties that had firmly maintained their duopolistic pact of political exclusivity for the past half century.

Virgilio Alvarez (Director of the Academic Guatemala Headquarters of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Guatemala) emphasized the linkages between the spiraling violence and the marginalization of societal groups. He argued that the main problem in Guatemala now is not increase in poverty among the indigenous population, that has been the main focus for international assistance for years, but rather the mostly “ladino" poverty in the marginalized urban peripheries. These areas are characterized by having few sources of employment as the basis of the development model is still agriculture, and a very low quality of education (in spite of an enrollment rate of 90%). This is where you find the main basis for recruitment to youth gangs (maras) that in turn in many cases are used by the larger transnational organized drug structures. Alvarez also discussed means to counter the explosion of violence in Guatemala and argued that a main reason for the failure of police reform, etc. is the authoritarian culture and the people’s ambivalent relationship to the military forces, combining fear and fascination.

John-Andrew McNeish (Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsens Institute, Bergen) gave an introduction to illicit trafficking in Bolivia arguing that this is multifaceted and has long historical roots.  Bolivia is a producer of coca production that has an important cultural role. Bolivia is also a source of illicit trafficking of a very diverse kind, but it is not a major producer of cocaine or a major home to organized drug cartels.  It has also escaped the upsurge of violence experienced in countries like Mexico, Guatemala and Venezuela.  Nonetheless, the focus on coca for cocaine production has overshadowed other development issues in its contact with foreign donors and especially the US. A large part of the economy of Bolivia is informal and the lines between formal, informal and the illicit economy are blurred. McNeish furthermore argued that many people particularly in the border areas have a different understanding of the state and few connections to the formal state. They do not necessarily view the state as the most legitimate authority structure and therefore consider illicit trafficking as a legitimate activity.

Kjersti Rødsmoen (Deputy head of the Latin America section, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) emphasized three points related to how the upsurge of violence affects Norway’s cooperation with the region. First, on development aid she pointed out that the only country that receives significant traditional development aid from Norway is Nicaragua, and that country has largely escaped the major upsurge of violence. Norwegian aid to other countries is mainly directed towards the root causes of violence and insecurity;  social and economic development, exclusion of groups, human rights, good governance and strengthened legal systems. Second, she argued that it is a consideration for the personal safety of Norwegian representatives and international partners in the region, particularly those working for non-governmental organization that often have their work in marginal areas of the countries, and that it takes energy and money away from what Norway should be focusing on in the region. Third, she emphasized that businesses and NGOs give the impression that they would be more willing to invest and operate in the region were it not for the insecurity and unpredictability they experience.