Organized Crime
Winter 2012 | Volume XI, Number 2
Table of Contents
Editor’s Letter →
by June Carolyn Erlick
First Take
First Take: Organized Crime in Latin America
English + Español
Dealing with transnational organized crime is now an official part of U.S. security strategy.
A strategy document, issued by the White House in July 2011, speaks of organized crime groups…
Reflections on Crime
Organized Crime as Human Rights Issue
English + Español
It was a horrifying scene— 72 people murdered all at once. One survivor bore witness to the massacre. The dead were migrants, mostly Central Americans; 58 men and 14 women trying to…
Latin American Organized Crime’s New Business Model
Human heads rolling in the street alongside affluent homes. Gory stories of mass graves unearthed in Tamaulipas and Durango. Kidnapping and ransoming of migrants. Paying…
Criminal Organizations and Enterprise
There is nothing new about organized crime. Nor is there anything new about criminal violence. What is new—at least for Mexico—is the scale. In Mexico, homicide had been falling …
Citizen Security in Latin America
There is no question that throughout Latin America crime and violence have become one of the most important subjects of public debate. And, while it is also beyond question that across the…
Mexico and Central America
Keys to Reducing Violence in Mexico
Some regions of Mexico now seem like war zones. Nineteen out of the 50 most violent cities in the world are expected to be found in the country by the end of 2011. Yet severe violence is…
Mexico’s Challenges
When Felipe Calderón took oath as Mexico’s president, he identified security policy—particularly a struggle against criminal organizations—as the flagship policy of his administration. Like…
The Zetas’ Bad Omen
In organized crime, the Zetas are like cancer. Once bad cells take a hold of an area, their metastatic nature soon spreads them in all directions. The Zetas defy smaller countries like…
The Transformation of Street Gangs in Central America
I met Franky approximately ten years ago, when he came to my office at the University of Central America in San Salvador. Franky (his name has been changed here to protect his identity) was a…
Fighting for Security in Mexico
The last time I collaborated with ReVista I wrote the introduction of an edition dedicated to Latin America’s Year of Elections (Spring/Summer 2006). In those days, the most important academic…
Daily Life on the Border
CIUDAD JUAREZ. From here, America looks very much like the innocent bystander, dressed in a nice Teflon suit. Nothing seems to rattle it…
Societal Responses
Investigating Organized Crime
Medellin, Colombia, February 2009. Two journalists, with more than twenty years of experience between them covering Latin America, were engaging in a familiar lament over a couple of beers. Nobody was paying for serious investigation of organized…
Taking Justice Into Their Own Hands
For more than two hours, five Mexicans were tortured and threatened with hanging and death. This October 2010 lynching did not take place in some remote corner of the country, but…
The Fight Against Drug Trafficking and Crime in the Americas
If you live somewhere in Latin America, chances are that what you worry about is not your paycheck or the near-constant corruption scandals, but that you or family members may be…
The Chilean Experience
When I moved to Chile more than a decade ago, I experienced a professional crisis. What would a security expert do in Chile, one of the safest countries in Latin America? For a long time I had…
Across Borders
Lessons from Colombia for Mexico?
One of the things that struck me most on my last trips to Colombia in January and June 2011 was the great level of optimism regarding the country’s security accomplishments after several…
Organized and Disorganized Crime
In some countries of the Caribbean, crime has taken on a new face. It is true that criminal violence can hardly be considered a new phenomenon in the region. Puerto Rico and Jamaica…
After the UPPs
Growing up in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, I was constantly aware of serious public safety problems. That probably played a big role in my choice of profession and specialization. Rio is a…
The 2010 Emergency and Party Politics in Kingston, Jamaica
On May 18, 2010, the government of Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding issued a warrant for the arrest of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, the reputed leader of the powerful Shower Posse gang…
Human Trafficking
Transmigration in Mexico
English + Español
En abril del 2010 una delegación oficial de El Salvador encabezada por Francis Hato Hasbún, el Secretario de Asuntos Estratégicos del gobierno del Presidente Mauricio Funes, visitó México…
Human Trafficking
In his foreword to the 2000 United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan noted the imperative of effective cross-border law…
A Crooked Gauntlet
More than a hundred Central Americans —including 21 minors and three infants—had been trapped in a forced labor camp in the city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez until discovered by Mexican…
Making a Difference
Making a Difference: Grassroots Educational Change in Mexican Public Schools
Middle-school teacher Miguel Hernández, from the state of Querétaro in Mexico, is learning math. Surprisingly, his teacher is Blanca de la Cruz, a ninth-grade student from a small rural…
Book Talk
Haiti After The Quake
There is always movement in Haiti. The political, social and ecological terrains are ever-shifting, yet they remain intrinsically connected. Thus the island’s tropical ecology once lured…
Laws of Chance: Brazil’s Clandestine Lottery and the Making of Urban Public Life
Anyone who has visited Rio de Janeiro for more than a few weeks inevitably hears about the jogo do bicho, an illegal gambling activity that has been roughly translated into English as the…