Prison cell in the argentinian women prison system.

In Argentina, most people arrested for drug offenses are women or foreigners, according to study made by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and ngo Intercambios.

“Imprisoned for drug offenses in Argentina” is the title of the research that will be presented tomorrow at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires UBA (Santiago del Estero, Argentina).

The author is the lawyer Alejandro Corda , member of the ngo Intercambios, who says that “one third of detainees in prisons throughout the Federal Prison Service are in this situation because of drug offenses” and that ” drugs trafficking is the second leading cause of incarceration behind crimes against property. ”

The specialist calls for “reform of the Narcotics Law 23,737, to avoid the imprisonment of just women and foreigners, but to catch the real dealers and kingpins of the argentinian illegal drug trafficking mafia

Other relevant data that provides the research says that 7 out of 10 people arrested for drugs are consumers and third of those detained in federal prisons are small players in the drug  traffic “mules” (carriers bordering small amounts) and vendors in poor neighborhoods.

Authorities stood outside the drug rehabilitation clinic after the attack by gunmen. Photo credit Alejandro Bringas/Reuters

Cartel gangsters frequently target private and unlicensed rehabilitation centers in Mexico, due to the following factors:

a) these clinics are more likely to take in active gang members seeking to free themselves from an addiction to their own product.

b) private clinics are not associated with the penal system and have little security, leaving their patients vulnerable to attacks by gangs seeking to avenge the death of a friend or eliminate a potential police informant

c) some unlicensed clinics are front for illegal drug dealing,

d) some centers are safe houses for gangsters seeking to lay low

e) cartels are using them to recruit young people from 17 to 23 years old.

f) drug cartels cannot afford to have a former member come clean, either about himself or, worse, his bosses.

g) in some cases, organized criminal groups even run their own rehabilitation centers. The  drug trafficking organization known as the Familia Michoacana is also known to operate a series of rehab clinics as front institutions for recruiting and training centers.

h) most of the addicts in these facilities are there as a result of Mexico’s limited decriminalization law, which allows drug addicts who have committed crimes to serve their sentences in rehabilitation centers, instead of prison.

José Ángel Córdova in the Organization of American States. Photo Credit to Notimex

During a military ceremony in Mexico, the Minister of Health Jose Angel Cordova, told reporters that the administration has invested 2 billion dollars in the fight against illegal drugs addictions.

However, the federal officer acknowledged that it is worrying that in the past six years the use of cocaine has doubled and the consumption of marihuana has increased in 50%.

The health secretary said there was a tendency for those under 18 who consume alcohol and tobacco andf those youngsters are more likely to start in the consumption of illegal drugs and, therefore, efforts at family and institutional level should focus on preventing minors from testing prohibited substances and try to increase the number of  young people who can say no to drugs.

The commissioner of the National Council Against Addictions, Carlos Tena, agreed that marihuana, cocaine and other drugs are being consumed more frequently in the country, which is a social problem, but also a health issue, considering the physical and emotional situation among addicts, even among young people Mr Tena is just as concerned about the intake of alcohol.

The annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows the rate of illicit drug use rose from eight percent in 2008 to 8.7 percent in 2009. The survey also found increases in the use of ecstasy and methamphetamines.

Authorities are especially concerned about use of illicit drugs by young people. The survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found 21.2 percent of young adults experimented with illegal drugs in 2009. The report says the trend “was also driven in large part by the use of marijuana.”

National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske told CBS Radio News, young people are being exposed to “mixed messages” about marijuana including the idea that it is a medicine.

The “drug czar” said marijuana “may have properties that have medicinal values that should be tested” but he insisted it is not medicine.

Kerlikowske views marijuana as “an entry drug.” The survey found that for the first time since 2002, less than half of young people believe using marijuana is harmful.

The Obama administration remains strongly opposed to legalization of marijuana. READ MORE HERE.

This is crack cocaine shown in small baggies as it is sold on the street - U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Ottawa has a problem with crack cocaine.

Its tentacles are everywhere. In the ByWard Market, obviously, but also in the middle-class enclaves of Orléans and Barrhaven and Kanata.

Police officers, drug counsellors, community groups, politicians, outreach workers, judges and an army of others in the fight know that realistically it will never leave town.

“It isn’t a war against drugs,” says Ottawa police Chief Vern White. “It’s a continuous battle.”

Addicts will tell you the same thing, he says: “They are in a battle and we are part of the battle. I’ve yet to meet a young person who says they can’t wait to be an addict. I’ve yet to meet an addict who says they enjoy being one.”

In their desperation, crack addicts commit crime. They steal from cars, shoplift and sell their bodies — anything for a hit.

White and others close to the problem say there are 5,000 crack addicts in the city — maybe more. And, of course, many users don’t use crack exclusively.

“I was told there are about 6,000 intravenous drug users in this city,” said White. “Probably half or more crack addicts are not intravenous. They smoke it and don’t use needles. So what’s our true number of addicts? I have no idea, but it’s huge — at least 10,000.”

Even still, White and Mayor Larry O’Brien insist the city is making progress in the cleanup.

“The year before I ran (for mayor), I couldn’t walk around the Market with my dog Remy without being approached a minimum of six or seven times by panhandlers,” said Larry O’Brien.

Drug traffickers prey on the homeless, he said, “giving them 30 minutes of happiness for $3 or $4.”

One hit of crack makes you feel like king of the world. Twenty minutes later, it drops you like a brick.

On the hunt for the next high, the desperate beg, steal or borrow. Dealers prey on the vulnerable: At $10 to $20 a hit, the price is right.

O’Brien insists there has been a gradual improvement in the Market area, “but people haven’t noticed it.”

Earlier this month, in the third major sweep in the past 18 months police arrested 84 alleged dealers in an operation they dubbed Project Woody — the nickname of a police officer involved. Police say they anticipate laying a total of 322 charges.

Critics of such sweeps say they are cosmetic, temporary solutions that shift pressure from one place to another. O’Brien, who lives in an upscale condominium near the Market, would disagree.

He points to the underpass across from the Rideau Centre. “I remember in 2006 meeting with a bunch of colleagues — Preston Manning, Monte Solberg and some others — and seeing flashing lights and discovering that some poor street kid — a young man named Cactus — had been killed in the underpass.

“It became part of my campaign to solve that single problem — to fence in that underpass and light it so kids couldn’t sleep there at night. Now, during the day, buskers and artists can go down there.

“I never give money to panhandlers,” he added, “but I’ll always put a toonie in a busker’s guitar case.”

The mayor thinks panhandlers are a conduit between well-meaning people and drug dealers.

President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

The brazilian government plans to invest $ 215 million dollars on campaigns, treatment and suppression of trafficking.  President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed on Thursday (20) a decree establishing the Comprehensive Plan to Combat Crack. In the event that signed the decree, Lula said he was especially concerned with the scope of the drug that,  according to the president, left the big cities and came to small towns.
The anti-crack plan is divided into areas such as health, security and social assistance to former addicts, and a national campaign of prevention and awareness about the risk of the drug. 
The main chapters of the plan are the following:

Combating trafficking
The Justice Department will lead the installation of 11 border posts that will help in combating trafficking in crack. According to the Minister Luiz Barreto, drugs, mostly coming from outside, and what the country wants is to prevent it from reaching Brazil. Baker pointed out that Brazil is not considered a drug producing country but a country of “transit”. Five of these stations will be installed by 2010.

 
Health
By the end of the year the Ministry of Health wants to double the number of beds that could be used by addicts. Today there are 2500 beds , and the plan will expand it up to 5,000. The ministry estimates that the cost of these specialty beds will reach $100 million per year. The plan also provides for the installation of over 136 specialized centers for alcohol and drugs, the CAPS-AD.   The Ministry also wants to expand the project Offices Street, offered to lead teams of health – social workers, nursing assistants and professionals in mental health – to the places where drug users gather. This is one of the main mechanisms for achieving the socalled “cracolândias”. 14 today are financed municipal projects. This new plan provides for 35 more.
The plan also foresees the construction of 60 houses of passage – structures designed to house alcohol abusers at risk, and also host the users of crack and other drugs. In these places, people who wish they can feed, bathe or rest.
Education
Besides advertising campaign, which will not name the federal government and will be available to all media, the plan presented on Thursday by the team of Lula’s government plans to invest in the training of specialized manpower in the fight against drugs and assistance to users.
Will be offered specialized courses and professional master’s degree in management from the treatment of crack users and other drugs. The courses will be offered in five federal universities for professionals working in the network of health care and social protection.

White House “drug czar” R. Gil Kerlikowske meets with President Obama.

The strategy calls, among other things, for allocating more federal resources to drug prevention and treatment, and alternatives to incarceration. READ MORE HERE

Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

The Organization of American States OAS  (CICAD)  and the United Nations UNODC reported on the subject at the Fifty-third Session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, Austria. This new study on drug abuse among youth in South America showed that marihuana is the most frequently used illegal drug among the population sample used.

On average, almost 11 percent of students in the countries where the study was conducted have tried it at least once, varying between four percent in Peru and almost 23 percent in Chile.

The most worrisome fact is the early age at which this substance is being consumed, given that 42 percent of consumers has experimented for the first time before the age of 15.

The study also said that cocaine showed an average use of 2.2 percent, varying between 1.4 percent in Peru and 3.5 percent in Uruguay.

READ MORE HERE.-

Assasinated French Spanish photojournalist Christian-Poveda.

Last weekend, a french-spanish filmmaker whose documentary about the violent street gang of the Maras in El Salvador provoked controversy earlier this year has been found shot in the head.

The body of Christian Poveda, 52, was discovered in a car in Tonacatepeque, a poor rural area 10 miles outside the capital San Salvador. Police say that Poveda was driving back from filming in La Campanera, an overcrowded ghetto that is a stronghold of the Mara 18 gang, when he was apparently ambushed.

Poveda first came to El Salvador in the early 1980s to cover the decade-long civil war as a photographer for Time magazine. He also reported from wars in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and other countries. He returned to El Salvador in the 1990s and dedicated himself to documentary work, concentrating on Salvadoran gangs.

Photos of La Vida Loca documentary about the Mara 18 gang

His killing has provoked anger and revulsion in many countries around the world. I deplore this repugnant and reproachable criminal act and the authorities in El Salvador should work tirelessly until they find Poveda´s killers. Mauricio Funes, the former Marxist guerrilla who became President of El Salvador in June, spoke of his shock in a statement and ordered a full investigation.

La Vida Loca (Crazy Life), Poveda’s latest film, focused on the hopeless and brutal lives of various fantastically tattooed members of the gang Mara 18. The film is critical of the heavy police crackdown on the Maras gang members, which Poveda felt failed to take account of the hopeless poverty and personal tragedy that drive young Salvadorans to turn to crime.

The assasination of Poveda shows that the Maras are in control of the crime in the region. They are able to kill anybody who is in their way.

Members of Mara Salvatrucha, since 2008 many new mara members have no more tatoos to difficult the work of the police

The Mara 18 and ad its rival Mara Salvatrucha MS gangs form part of a huge criminal network that runs down through Central America from Los Angeles, where there is a large community of Salvadoran expats.

In fact the origin of the Maras gang is in the USA. Many of the gangsters were deported from the United States after serving jail terms there. Mara Salvatrucha (commonly abbreviated as MS, Mara, and MS-13, is a criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles and has spread to Central America, other parts of the United States, and Canada. The majority of the gang is ethnically composed of Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans.

Only in El Salvador, authorities estimate there could be as many as 30,000 so-called mareros, who sell drugs, rob illegal migrants or extort money from businesses in the tiny, impoverished country of 5.7 million people. El Salvador has one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America.

Mexican drug cartels 2008

The Maras had ties to the former salvadoran guerrilla FMLN. According to Dr. J. Michael Waller, a Latin America expert with the Center for Security Policy, Mara Salvatrucha-13 has provided services to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (known by its Spanish acronym, FMLN). “MS-13 began when demobilized FMLN guerillas moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s and early 1990s,” Waller said. “MS-13 provided the muscle for the FMLN election campaign.” Former Presidential advisor Patrick Buchanan also stated in his book “State of Emergency” that many FMLN sympathizers were part of the formation of MS-13.

Their activities have caught the eye of the US agencies Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who in September 2005 initiated wide-scale raids against suspected gang members, netting 660 arrests across United States. In May 2005, ICE expanded Operation Community Shield to include all transnational organized crime and prison gangs. ICE’s Operation Community Shield has since arrested 7,655 street gang members.

In the United States, the gang’s strongholds have historically been in the American Southwest and West Coast states. Membership in the U.S was believed to be as many as about 50,000 as of 2005. MS-13 criminal activities include drug smuggling and sales, arms trafficking, auto theft, carjacking, home invasion, assault, aggravated assault, assault on law enforcement officials, drive-by shootings, contract killing and murder. Thanks to this police activity in the US, many Maras after doing time in prison were expelled to their countries in Latin America. This has expanded the presence of the Mara gang in Central America.

FBI seal

Today the MS is a TOC organization (Transnational organized crime). The Maras is organized across national borders. The activities of the Maras, plus other latin TOCs like the Mexican Mafia and the Mexican Drug Cartels are ´provoking serious distortions in Latin America. It can undermine democracy, disrupt free markets, drain national assets, and inhibit the development of the latinamerican societies. In doing so, these international criminal groups threaten the security of all the region. Undirectly, the latino TOCs are benefiting from the US internal repression of the gangs.

The Maras are getting international now. In that sense they are major beneficiaries of globalization. They take advantage of increased travel, trade, rapid money movements, telecommunications and computer links, and are well positioned for growth. We can now say that the US latin gangs are taking Central America and Mexico. During the last 10 years , the United States has exported its gang problem, sending Central American-born criminals back to their homelands, without warning local governments. The result has been an explosive rise of vicious, transnational gangs that now threaten the stability of the region’s fragile democracies. As Washington sleeps, the gangs are growing, spreading north into Mexico and back to the United States.

Last December, a bus driving through the northern city of Chamalecon in Honduras was stopped by gunmen. The assailants quickly surrounded the bus and opened fire with their AK-47s, killing 28 passengers. The attackers, police later revealed, had been members of a notorious street gang known as Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and had chosen their victims at random. The slaughter had nothing to do with the identities of the people onboard; it was meant as a protest and a warning against the honduran government’s crackdown on gang activities in the country. U.S. officials subsequently arrested Ebner Anibal Rivera-Paz, thought to be the mastermind of the attack, in February in the Texas town of Falfurrias.

MS means Mara Salvatrucha

The attack and the subsequent arrest were only the latest sign of the growing power of Central America’s gangs and their ability to shuttle between their home countries and the United States. In the past few years, as Washington has focused its attention on the Middle East, it has virtually ignored a dangerous phenomenon close to home. Ultraviolent youth gangs, spawned in the ghettos of Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, have slowly migrated south to Central America, where they have transformed themselves into powerful, cross-border crime networks. With the United States preoccupied elsewhere, the gangs have grown in power and numbers; today, local officials estimate their size at 70,000-100,000 members.

The marabuntas (big deadly ants), or maras, a now pose the most serious challenge to peace in the region since the end of Central America’s civil wars. Nor is the danger limited to the region. Fed by an explosive growth in the area’s youth population and by a host of social problems such as poverty and unemployment, the gangs are spreading, spilling into Mexico and beyond — even back into the United States itself.

Tatoos all over.

With them, the maras are bringing rampant crime, committing thousands of murders, and contributing to a flourishing drug trade. Central America’s governments, meanwhile, seem utterly unable to meet the challenge, lacking the skills, know-how, and money necessary to fight these supergangs. The solutions attempted so far — largely confined to military and police operations — have only aggravated the problem; prisons act as gangland finishing schools, and military operations have only dispersed the gangs’ leadership, making bosses harder than ever to track and capture.

Central America has seen few improvements in the last years, since the end of the cold war. Today the region’s seven small republics, rather than exhibiting the new harmony and prosperity that were expected to come with peace, bear only the scars and open wounds of traumatized societies: rampant corruption, gang warfare, drug smuggling, intense urban poverty and overpopulation, and neglect from the international community.

Something must be done to correct this situation, and the United States has a major responsibility on what is going with the export of the latin organized crime to Central America. .

The Merida Initiative (also known as the Mexico Plan) and the new development of the Colombia Plan gives the US a chance to design a specific Plan for Central America and the Caribbean. The 65 million dollars included in the Merida Initiative for Central America is far from being enough. In fact the war against the cartels in Mexico and the weakening of the FARC in Colombia could provoke the migration of these criminals to Central America. These criminal organizations are natural allies of the Maras.

Central America has become a key pipeline for drug shipments from Colombia northward.

According to U.S. law enforcement officials, 60 percent of the cocaine that entered the United States last year passed through Central America, concealed in small aircraft, fast boats, and trucks. This represents a three fold increase since 1993, and the chaos that the burgeoning drug trade has wreaked on the region has given rise to a new fear, the potential “Colombianization” of Central America.

The mexican-american Merida Initiative MI is not enough to fight against organzed crime in Central America. This Plan was and will allways be a mexican plan. The 65 million are not enough to fight the threats of drug trafficking, transnational crime and money laundering in Central America.

MS member without fingers is a common sight.

The weak US assistance includes some training, equipment and intelligence. The US govenment says that the Merida Inititative in Central America will be equipping and training local police, supporting judicial reform plans, building prosecutorial capacity, and cooperating with other key agencies–including border security, corrections, customs, and when appropriate, the military. The Initiative also addresses a broad range of needs outside of law enforcement and the judiciary–including funding drug treatment centers, gang prevention activities, education, and public outreach.

I am sorry to tell the US Department of State that the Merida Initiative is in a dead end, and has too little money for Central America. This is not a myth.

The other thing that shows how questionable is the instrumentalization of the Merida Initiative in Central America are the Letters of Agreement signed by the US and some central american republics.

The Letter of Agreement Signed between the US and the Dominican Republic is only funding with 2 million dollars, focusing on providing equipment and technical consulting services to the Financial Analysis Unit of the dominican government , a few bucks for National Police Reform Projects; Anti-Money Laundering Assistance ($300,000); to the National Directorate for the Control of Drugs Reform Projects($750,000) Development of a National Digital Criminal Database ( $550,000); Equipment for the Navy Intelligence Unit ($250,000) and a lousy sum of U$150,000 to organize a Joint Haitian-Dominican Border Security Program. Nothing concrete is said about how to fight the action of the transnational gangs, how to target the young criminals and the youth at risk, how to deal with the Us expelled dominican criminals, etc..

The Letter of Agreement signed with Costa Rica is even worse. The gangs are not a serious problem in Costa Rica, but in spite of that the US government signed an agreement with the “ticos” funding them with one million US dollars (frist year). Funding what? Well, 75% of the money goes to equipment for the police.

The Letter of Agreement with Nicaragua will provide them with $1.5M in assistance (2008), almost 50% of it to equipment for the Nicaraguan National Police.

Gang Brotherhood

Until now, the signed Letter of Intentions show that the tactics of the Merida initiative has no direct connection with the goals and strategy of the Initiative. The mother of all Letter of the Intentions should be the one to be signed with El Salvador. The problem of the Maras should be the center of this agreement. On the other hand, most part of the effort of the US agencies are focusing in the US Southwest border (El Paso Intelligence Unit-EPIC).

The FBI has showed some good results in the cooperation with law enforcement agencies in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico (the TAG). In September 2008 TAG investigators arrested five MS-13 gang members who were transporting a cache of anti-tank weapons and military small arms.

Also, FBI agents from Charlotte, N.C., worked with TAG investigators in actions that led to the indictment of 26 MS-13 gang members in June 2008, including Manuel Ayala, who allegedly directed gang activities in the United States from his jail cell in El Salvador.

Some Maras are very young.

The Central American Fingerprint Exploitation Initiative (CAFÉ), a criminal file/fingerprint retrieval initiative, is also a good initiative. The CAFE was developed by the MS-13 National Gang Task Force and the mexican Policia Nacional Civil (PNC) to store criminal fingerprints of gang members from Chiapas, Mexico, and the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.

This information is incorporated into the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services database and is available to all U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. By incorporating these records into a searchable database, law enforcement agencies like the PNC can access the data through their own Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems.

The question here is if this gang information is accesible for central american law enforcement agencies.

Since 2006, the FBI has searched, processed and incorporated more than 72,000 criminal records from El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Chiapas, Mexico, into the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

But as I said before. the Merida Initiative should have a separate central american chapter. Or the best solution is to have a specific Plan for Central America, independent from the more mexican Merida Initiative. The US can not continue to export latino criminals to the weakened region of Central America. On top of all these plans, the law enforcement agencies of the US, Mexico, Colombia and Central American governments should coordinate efforts.