Western HemisphereTrump and Biden Ignore How the War on Drugs Fuels Violence in Latin America

By Luisa Farah Schwartzman

Published 31 October 2020

Increasingly, people are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to escape a cycle of violence to which the United States continues to contribute. Immigration is just the tip of the iceberg. Murder rates in Latin America have skyrocketed since the 1980s and are still among the highest in the world. This is because Latin America became the battleground for the war on drugs.

In the final presidential debate before the United States election, Democrat Joe Biden acknowledged the harmful effects of the war on drugs on racial minorities in the U.S. due to incarceration and police violence, and even suggested decriminalizing cocaine consumption.

But the immigration debate centered on familiar issues. Biden focused on the innocent children who got separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump focused on the “coyotes” — someone paid by migrants to illegally guide or assist them across the border — and drug cartels.

But neither made the link between immigration and the drug war, despite the substantial impact the U.S.-led war on drugs has had on the lives of people in Latin America.

Increasingly, people are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to escape a cycle of violence to which the United States continues to contribute. Immigration is just the tip of the iceberg.

Murder rates in Latin America have skyrocketed since the 1980s and are still among the highest in the world. This is because Latin America became the battleground for the war on drugs.

American Crackdown
Over the last 50 years, the U.S. government has pushed for increasingly restrictive international treaties on drugs, which paradoxically increased the profitability of cocaine.

In the 1980s, while Americans were locking up their fellow citizens for drug offences, the U.S. government decided to eradicate the production of coca plants and the sale of cocaine abroad. The U.S. provided political, military and financial support for Latin American governments to eradicate coca production, spraying the lands of peasant coca farmers, supporting police and militia violence against guerrilla movements and cracking down on drug businesses in urban centers.

The U.S. made foreign loans to Latin American countries conditional upon enforcing tough anti-drug policies. These tough-on-crime measures disproportionately affected marginalized populations: Peruvian peasant farmersBlack Brazilian favela dwellersSalvadorean youth sporting tattoos.

American support for violence in Latin America is not new. During the Cold War, the U.S. supported military coups and civil wars in the region. But with the end of the Cold War and the democratization of Latin American countries, the war on drugs became a legitimate excuse for continued state violence as the illicit drug economy fueled criminality.

Unsuccessful Policies
These policies did not work. Drug prohibition, combined with continued consumption, has shifted but not dismantled the drug business. The largest consumer market is still the United States.