Drug War Capitalism

by Dawn Paley

  68 Articulo 19, Informe 2013, March 2014, http://www.articulo19.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Art19_Informe2013web.pdf, 30.

  69 Redacción, “Panismo: 102 periodistas asesinados o desaparecidos,” Contralínea, September 13, 2011, http://contralinea.info/archivo-revista/index.php/2011/09/13/panismo-102-periodistas-asesinados-o-desaparecidos/.

  70 Committee to Protect Journalists, “Getting Away With Murder: CPJ’s 2013 Impunity Index,” May 2, 2013, https://www.cpj.org/reports/impunity_index

  2013.pdf.

  71 Hristov, Blood and Capital, 27. Stratfor was hacked, and five million internal emails were released to Wikileaks in early 2012. “The most striking revelation from the latest disclosure is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder,” wrote Pratap Chatterjee (“WikiLeaks’ Stratfor Dump Lifts Lid on Intelligence-industrial Complex,” Guardian, February 28, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/28/wikileaks

  -intelligence-industrial-complex.

  72 As students at the Masters in Journalism program at the University of British Columbia, we were taught once and again that statements from police and officials are key primary sources—enough to anchor a story on. During a brief stint at the Globe and Mail, Canada’s paper of record, I was made aware that police press releases were akin to gospel—not to be questioned or fact-checked before being reformatted and printed in the newspaper. The status quo media’s reliance on police and official sources, combined with threats, harassment, or elimination of journalists and photographers who dare operate outside this discourse ensure a near-picture-perfect reproduction of the official line on the drug war.

  73 German Alfonso Palacio Castañeda, “Institutional Crisis, Parainstitutionality, and Regime Flexibility in Colombia: The Place of Narcotraffic and Counterinsurgency,” in Vigilantism and the State in Modern Latin America: Essays on Extralegal Violence, ed. Martha Huggins (Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1991), 108.

  74 Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, “The Central America Regional Security Initiative: A Shared Partnership,” April 25, 2013, http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/fs/2013/208592.htm.

  75 The Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) covers Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

  76 Gian Carlo Delgado-Ramos and Silvina Maria Romano, “Political-Economic Factors in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Colombia Plan, the Mérida Initiative, and the Obama Administration,” Latin American Perspectives 38, no. 4 (July 2011): 93, 94.

  77 Executive Office of the President of the United States, “National Drug Control Strategy, 2012,” http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp

  /2012_ndcs.pdf 32.

  78 Correo, “Destinarán US$ 300 millones a lucha contra terrorismo y narcotráfico,” Diario Correo, December 19, 2012, http://diariocorreo.pe/movil/ultimas/noticias/2732815/edicion+lima/destinaran-us-300-millones-a-lucha-contra-t.

  79 Charlie Savage and Thom Shankar, “U.S. Drug War Expands to Africa, a Newer Hub for Cartels,” New York Times, July 21, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/world/africa/us-expands-drug-fight-in-africa.html?_r=0.

  CHAPTER 2: DEFINING THE DRUG WAR

  1 Julia Buxton, The Political Economy of Narcotics: Production, Consumption & Global Markets (Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing, 2006), 62.

  2 David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 163.

  3 Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen, Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 25.

  4 “Historians agree that efforts to limit opium smoking grew out of an effort to control Chinese immigrants and their influence on (white) Americans.” Ibid., 20.

  5 Drug Enforcement Administration, “DEA History,” http://www.justice.gov/dea/about/history.shtml.

  6 Beriah Empie and Lydia Anne Bartholow, “Raze the Walls,” in Life During Wartime, 189.

  7 Courtwright, Dark Paradise, 168.

  8 Ibid., 165.

  9 Buxton, The Political Economy of Narcotics, 61.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Kate Doyle, “Operation Intercept: The Perils of Unilateralism,” National Security Archive, April 13, 2003, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB86/.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Ted Carpenter, “Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America,” (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2003), 29.

  14 Ibid., 37.

  15 Robinson and Scherlen, Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics, 31 (emphasis in original).

  16 John Gibler, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2011), 43.

  17 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010), 15.

  18 Federal Bureau of Prisons, “Offenses,” February 22, 2014, http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp.

  19 Drug Enforcement Administration, “A Tradition of Excellence: 1970–1975,” http://www.justice.gov/dea/about/history/1970-1975.pdf.

  20 Drug Enforcement Administration, “DEA History.”

  21 Amy Goodman, “‘Drugs Aren’t the Problem’: Neuroscientist Carl Hart on Brain Science & Myths About Addiction,” Democracy Now!, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/6/drugs_arent_the_problem_neuroscientist_carl.

  22 John Strang, Thomas Babor, Jonathan Caulkins, et al. “Drug Policy and the Public Good: Evidence for Effective Interventions,” The Lancet 379, no. 9810 (January 7, 2012): 71–83, www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140673611616747.pdf.

  23 Paul Gootenberg, “Talking About the Flow: Drugs, Borders, and the Discourse of Drug Control,” Cultural Critique 71 (Winter 2009): 36–37.

  24 Holder, Eric. “Retroactive Application of Department Policy on Changing Mandatory Minimum Sentences and Recidivist Enhancements in Certain Drug Cases.” Office of the Attorney General. August 29, 2013. http://www.fd.org/docs/select-topics/sentencing-resources/august-29-2013-holder-memo

  -on-retroactivity-of-mandatory-minimum-charging-policy.pdf?sfvrsn=4.

  25 Evan Munsing and Christopher Lamb, “Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood Interagency Success,” Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Perspectives 5 (July 2011), http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/pdf/strategic-perspectives/Strategic-Perspectives-5.pdf, 7–8.

  26 Paley, Dawn. “Repressive Memories: Terror, Insurgency and the Drug War.” Occupied London. Fall, 2013. dawnpaley.ca/2013/10/27/repressive

  -memories-terror-insurgency-and-the-drug-war/.

  27 David Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 3.

  28 Ibid., 4–5.

  29 Paul Gootenberg, “Talking About the Flow,” 16.

  30 Ibid.

  31 Ibid., 21.

  32 Paul Gootenberg, “Cocaine in Chains,” in From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000, eds. Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 323.

  33 Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 34.

  34 Peter Andreas, “Illicit Globalization: Myths, Misconceptions, and Historical Lessons,” Political Science Quarterly 126, no. 3 (2011): 7.

  35 Ibid., 8.

  36 Gootenberg, “Cocaine in Chains,” 330.

  37 Ibid., 325.

  38 Ibid., 329.

  39 Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 78.

  40 Joseph Spillane, “Making a Modern Drug: The Manufacture, Sale, and Control of Cocaine in the United States, 1880–1920,” in Cocaine: Global Histories, ed. Paul Gootenberg (London: Routledge, 1999),
21.

  41 Patrick O’Day, “Mexican Army as Cartel,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 17, no. 3 (2001): 284.

  42 Ibid., 286.

  43 Drug Enforcement Administration, “A Tradition of Excellence.”

  44 Ibid.

  45 Ibid.

  46 Ioan Grillo, El Narco, 49.

  47 Ibid.

  48 Moritz Tenthoff, “Coca, Petroleum and Conflict in Cofán Territory,” Transnational Institute, Drug Policy Briefing #23, September 2007, http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/brief23.pdf, 2.

  49 Asociación de familiares de detenidos, desaparecidos, Colombia, nunca más: Crímenes de lesa humanidad Zona 14a 1966, Tomo 1 (Bogata: Asfaddes, 2000), 117.

  50 Peter Andreas, “Illicit Globalization,” 5.

  51 Oeindrila Dube, Omar García-Ponce, and Kevin Thom, “From Maize to Haze: Agricultural Shocks and the Growth of the Mexican Drug Sector,” February 2014, http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/maize-haize-agricultural

  -shocks-growth-mexican-drug-sector_0.pdf.

  52 Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil and War: The US In Afghanistan, Colombia and Indochina (Oxford: Bowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 75.

  53 Arthur Benavie, “Drugs: America’s Holy War,” (London: Routledge, 2009), 37.

  54 John Kelly, “Posture Statement of General John F. Kelly, United States Marine Corps Commander, United States Southern Command: Before the 113th Congress House Armed Services Committee,” February 26, 2014, http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/2014_SOUTHCOM_

  Posture_Statement_HASC_FINAL_PDF.pdf, 6.

  55 Ibid., 7.

  56 Natalie Southwick, “Venezuela Destroys 17 Cocaine Labs Near Colombia Border,” InSight Crime, October 23, 2013, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/venezuela-destroys-17-cocaine-labs-near-colombia-border.

  CHAPTER 3: A LOOK SOUTH TO COLOMBIA

  1 Consejo Municipal de Recetor, “Acuerdo No. 007,” August 24, 2011, http://cdim.esap.edu.co/BancoMedios/Documentos%20PDF/recetorcasanarepiu

  20082011.pdf, 22.

  2 Fabian Laverde Doncel, “Perfiles de algunos municipios de la zona,” in Casanare: exhumando el genocidio, ed. Javier Giraldo Moreno (Colombia: Editorial Códice, 2009), 68.

  3 Scott, Drugs, Oil and War, 75.

  4 Ibid., 74.

  5 William O. Walker, Drug Control in the Americas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 221.

  6 Noam Chomsky, Rogue States (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), 62.

  7 Forrest Hylton, “Plan Colombia: The Measure of Success,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 17, no. 1 (2010), http://democracyinamericas.org/pdfs/Hylton.pdf.

  8 Peter Chalk, The Latin American Drug Trade: Scope, Dimensions, Impact and Response (RAND Corporation [Project Air Force], 2011), 89. http://www

  .rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/ RAND_MG1076.pdf.

  9 US Government Accountability Office, “PLAN COLOMBIA: Drug Reduction Goals Were Not Fully Met, but Security Has Improved; US Agencies Need More Detailed Plans for Reducing Assistance,” October 2008, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0971.pdf, 17.

  10 Dana Priest, “Covert Action in Colombia,” The Washington Post, December 13, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/covert-action-in-colombia/.

  11 Oeindrilla Dube and Suresh Naidu, Bases, Bullets and Ballots: The Effects of U.S. Military Aid on Political Conflict in Colombia, December 2013, https://files.nyu.edu/od9/public/papers/Dube_bases_bullets.pdf, 2.

  12 Alvaro Sierra, “Seis miliones de victimas y contando,” Semana. February 6, 2014, http://www.semana.com/nacion/multimedia/seis-millones-de-victimas

  -contando/376351-3.

  13 Hugh O’Shaunessy, “Colombia: Chemical Spraying of Coca Poisoning Villages,” The Observer, June 17, 2001, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11081.

  14 Santos was elected for a second term in June 2014.

  15 Juan Forero, “Congress Approves Doubling U.S. Troops in Colombia to 800,” New York Times. October 11, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/international/americas/11colombia.html.

  16 United Nations Human Rights Council, “Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development,” February 16, 2009, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/10session/A.HRC.10.21.Add3.pdf, 17.

  17 Verdad Abierta. “Estadísticas Parapolítica.” February 2013. http://www.verdadabierta.com/cifras/3826-estadisticas-parapolitica.

  18 Nick Reding, Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 157.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Hristov, Blood and Capital.

  21 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, “Case of the ‘Mapiripán Massacre’ v. Colombia: Judgment of September 15, 2005,” http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_134_ing.pdf, 37.

  22 Ibid., 38.

  23 Javier Giraldo, Colombia: Genocidal Democracy (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1996), 17.

  24 Castañeda Palacios, “Institutional Crisis, Parainstitutionality, and Regime Flexibility in Colombia,” in Vigilantism and the State in Modern Latin America, 110.

  25 Ibid.

  26 Ibid.

  27 Jaun Diego E. Restrepo, “Álvaro Uribe, entre las ‘Convivir’ y las AUC,” Semana, September 19, 2013, http://www.semana.com/opinion/articulo/

  alvaro-uribe-entre-convivir-las-auc-opinion-juan-diego-restrepo/358144-3.

  28 U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Drug Control: US Counternarcotics Efforts in Colombia Face Continuing Challenges,” February 1998, http://www.gao.gov/archive/1998/ns98060.pdf, 6.

  29 Ibid., 28.

  30 Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, “The Colombia Strategic Development Initiative (CSDI),” April 12, 2012, http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/fs/2012/187926.html.

  31 US Government Accountability Office, “PLAN COLOMBIA: Drug Reduction Goals Were Not Fully Met,” 17.

  32 Ibid., 4.

  33 Just the Facts, “Grant Aid to Colombia through International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement,” http://justf.org/Program_Detail?program=International

  _Narcotics_Control_and_Law_Enforcement&country=Colombia. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, “2012 INCSR: Country Reports—Colombia,” March 7, 2012, http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt

  /2012/vol1/184098.htm#Colombia.

  34 David Maher and Andrew Thomson, “The Terror That Underpins the ‘Peace’: The Political Economy of Colombia’s Paramilitary Demobilisation Process,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 4, no. 1 (2011): 96.

  35 Geoff Simons, Colombia: A Brutal History (London: Saqi Books, 2004), 322.

  36 María Victoria Uribe, “Dismembering and Expelling: Semantics of Political Terror in Colombia,” Public Culture 16, no. 1 (2004), 91.

  37 Ibid., 80.

  38 Ana Maria Ibánez and Carlos Eduardo Vélez, “Civil Conflict and Forced Migration: The Micro Determinants and Welfare Losses of Displacement in Colombia,” World Development 36, no. 4 (2008): 661.

  39 Alvaro Sierra, “Seis millones de victimas y contando,” Semana, February 6, 2014, http://www.semana.com/nacion/multimedia/seis-millones-de-victimas

  -contando/376351-3.

  40 Camilo Olarte, “La Guerra y la desmemoria en Colombia,” America Economía, January 21, 2014, http://www.americaeconomia.com/analisis

  -opinion/la-guerra-y-la-desmemoria-en-colombia

  41 Maher and Thomson, “The Terror that Underpins the ‘Peace,’” 96.

  42 United Nations Human Rights Council, “Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, 12.

  43 National Security Archive, “The Chiquita Papers,” April 7, 2011, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB340/index.html.

  44 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, “Case of the ‘Mapiripán Massacre’ v. Colombia,” 45.

  45 Ibid., 47.

  46 Ibid., 44.

  47 Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz, “Colombia:
Banacol, empresa implicada en paramilitarismo y acaparamiento de tierras en Curvaradó y Jiguamiandó,” May 2012, http://www.askonline.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/Thema_Wirtschaft_und_Menschenrechte/Lebensmittel_Landwirtschaft/Chiquita/Banacol-Estudio-de-Caso-ES-final.pdf, 4.

  48 US Department of Justice, “Chiquita Brands International Pleads Guilty to Making Payments to a Designated Terrorist Organization and Agrees to Pay $25 Million Fine,” March 19, 2007, http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2007/March/07_nsd_161.html.

  49 Mario A. Murillo, “Fronting for Paramilitaries: Holder, Chiquita and Colombia,” CounterPunch, November 19, 2008, http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/11/19/holder-chiquita-and-colombia/.

  50 Curt Anderson, “Chiquita Accused of Funding Colombia Terrorists,” Associated Press, May 31, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chiquita-accused

  -of-funding-colombia-terrorists/.

  51 “United States of America v. Chiquita Brands International Inc.,” http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB217/indictment.pdf, 4.

  52 William Moore, “Para-Business Gone Bananas: Chiquita Brands in Colombia,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, August 18, 2011, http://www.coha.org/para-business-gone-bananas-chiquita-brands-in-colombia/.

  53 James Bargent, “Chiquita Republic,” In These Times (January 7, 2013), http://inthesetimes.com/article/14294/chiquita_republic.

  54 Ibid.

  55 William Moore, “Para-Business Gone Bananas.”

  56 Geoff Simons, Colombia: A Brutal History, 324.

  57 Phillip MacLean, “Colombia,” in Energy Cooperation in the Western Hemisphere, ed. Sidney Weintraub (Washington, DC: CSIS Press, 2007), 196–197. Cerrejón, “Nuestra Empresa,” http://www.cerrejon.com/site/nuestra-empresa.aspx.

  58 Observatorio Social de Empresas Transnacionales Megaproyectos and Derechos Humanos, Pica y Pala: Conflictos del modelo extractivista en los sectores de la minería y los agrocombustibles (Bogatá, Ediciones Desde Abajo, 2011), 143.

  59 Oficina de las Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito, “Colombia: Monitoreo de Cultivos de Coca 2012,” June 2013, http://www.unodc.org/documents/colombia/2013/Agosto/censo_de_cultivos_de_coca_2012_BR.pdf, 11.

  60 Observatorio Social de Empresas Transnacionales Megaproyectos, Pica y Pala, 143.