Thread: Colombianized Free Trade Drugs, Crimes and Gangs immigrating

From Freedom to Stability, More than a Leap of Faith for Central America

At age 13, Erlan Colindres has been in and out of jail more often than most kids his age have been to summer camp. The alleged leader of the Honduran gang Los Puchos and member of the internationally feared Mara 18 has been linked to 17 murders and detained six times in the last three years. Five times he has escaped, not once has he been tried.

Drugs, crimes, laws, security, Free Trade Agreements, Congress, Gangs, illegal immigrants

By Marcela Sanchez
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, August 12, 2005

Two weeks ago, Colindres was arrested again in connection with the death of Michael Timothy Markey, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent shot twice while touring a popular basilica outside Tegucigalpa. It only took until Sunday night for Colindres to escape temporary detention -- although this time, according to The Associated Press, authorities nabbed him trying to hitch a ride four miles away, handcuffs still hanging from one of his wrists.

Murder freely wrought by youth gang members such as Colindres is matched only by the mayhem of organized criminals who find Central America a convenient transit point to smuggle drugs and people north and arms and cash south. They act with impunity and manipulate regional judicial systems with ease.

Under pressure to deal with the insecurity, governments in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have adopted a mano dura (tough hand) with gangs, arresting youths even if only under suspicion of belonging to one of the maras. At a regional security summit in June, Central American leaders also laid out plans to create a fast-response special forces unit to confront gang violence, drug trafficking, terrorism or other forms of organized crime. Central American officials expect Washington to help finance the unit, considering that U.S. drug consumption and increased U.S. deportations of gang members fuel the security problem.

Indeed, to respond to increased gang violence, U.S. authorities have launched a nationwide crackdown to round up and deport illegal immigrants tied to gangs. More than 1,000 have been arrested since March. More than 200 have been charged and await trial, according to the Department of Homeland Security, and more than 700 have been deported or are in removal proceedings. The differences in the U.S. and in the Central American approaches, of course, are in the effectiveness of the judicial systems.

As Colindres' case makes clear, capture is not enough. Central American authorities must be able to hold and try suspects too. Yet the revolving door that Colindres has exploited in Honduras is just one gaping hole, albeit a large one, in a judicial system that looks more like Swiss cheese.

Honduras, like its Central American neighbors, lacks trained prosecutors and judges to bring cases against the growing number of accused. It also lacks resources to protect officers of the courts as they do their work. Judges and prosecutors in Central America are being murdered often enough for leaders to express fear that the region could "Colombianize."

Among those raising the alarm is the regionally popular Honduran Archbishop Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga. Rodriguez has been demanding that Honduran authorities do more to counter the proliferation of organized crime. He is convinced that drug trafficking and its related criminal activities are the biggest threat to the hard-earned peace in the region. His denunciations have already earned him a threat against his life.

Guatemalan President Oscar Berger has been even more direct, saying that Guatemala is "in the worst era of violence since the war.'' And longtime Salvadoran analyst Leonel Gomez Vides believes that the left-right confrontation of 20 years ago has been replaced by a confrontation between organized crime and the rest of society.

They appear to be far more pessimistic than U.S. officials. Earlier this month President Bush triumphantly celebrated Central America's success, promising that the Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement he was signing that day would only help further such progress. Freer societies brought about by agreements such as CAFTA, he said, will help "eliminate the lawlessness and instability that terrorists and criminals and drug traffickers feed on.''

Yet free trade won't be enough to create stability in Central America. A free flow of goods and services won't wipe away gang warfare or eliminate organized crime. In fact, if anything, transnational criminal activities would seem to thrive in a more open borders arrangement. And even more to the point, it is hard to think that many new U.S. investors will flock to the region as long as its security situation is what it is today.

This seems precisely the right time to recognize that for all the promises made, there are great challenges still ahead for the new trade partners.

http://www.alipac.us/article-611-thread-1-0.html

Guess someone forgot to tell presidente Bush about all this before he signed CAFTA

Yet free trade won't be enough to create stability in Central America. A free flow of goods and services won't wipe away gang warfare or eliminate organized crime. In fact, if anything, transnational criminal activities would seem to thrive in a more open borders arrangement. And even more to the point, it is hard to think that many new U.S. investors will flock to the region as long as its security situation is what it is today.

Really, because I thought if CAFTA passed that it would stop the flow of illegals, help the economy ours and theirs, save jobs, stop terrorism and create WORLD PEACE!


Give me a Break. Finally a journalist who writes the truth…

Yes JP, finally....but he wrote the truth about 3 weeks too late. Would have been nice to see it BEFORE the CAFTA vote.

REPEAL CAFTA NOW!!