The Art of Trafficking: How Politics Influences Narco-Violence

• In Event: Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference III: Criminal Politics in Violent Democracies

Abstract

Why do drug trafficking sometimes result in high levels of violence, but other times occur relatively peacefully? Drawing on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2020 in key trafficking and transshipment hubs along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras, this project advances an original theory of the strategic choices that traffickers make and the implications of these strategies in terms of trafficking-related violence. The theory works across scales of governance to show how international policies, national-level institutional contexts, and local-level factors can either incentivize or restrain narcotraffickers in Central America from engaging in lethal violence. In this paper, I not only show how levels of trafficking violence vary, but also that geographic patterns, nature of targets, and visibility of violence vary depending on traffickers’ strategies. To do so, I draw on my ethnographic fieldwork, an original dataset on massacres between 2012-2022, and data from the Violence Against Public Figures (VAPF) project which tracks assassinations of public figures (politicians, activists, media workers, and judicial officials) in Central America from 2008 - 2022. Including VAPF data, as well as a novel dataset on massacres, enables me to paint a far more nuanced picture of violence in the areas where I did fieldwork. For instance, while Nicaragua has the lowest national homicide rate, both autonomous regions on the Caribbean coast where I focused my work have homicide rates above the national average (although still below rates of violence in my other field sites). Most of the violence in Nicaragua is not related to trafficking, but rather is violence perpetuated against opposition activists and Indigenous land defenders. The Costa Rican province of Limon has far lower levels of violence against public figures, despite having a higher homicide rate. In fact, given traffickers’ reliance on evasion strategies, very few public figures are killed in Limon because such acts tend to result in increases in checkpoints and policing in the province -- something that traffickers seek to elude. While Honduras overall has the highest level of violence towards activists, journalists, politicians, and judicial officials, Gracias a Dios reflects lower levels of this kind of violence. Moreover, two of the politicians from Gracias a Dios who have been killed in the last ten years were murdered outside the department, further illustrating a broader geographic pattern. While in the field, I learned that most violence impacting this Honduran department and committed against its inhabitants occurs outside the department – meaning it is not reflected in subnational homicide data. In addition to illustrating important differences in violence that result from traffickers’ distinct strategies, this chapter challenges us to move beyond homicide rates in understanding patterns of violence in Latin America.

Author

• Laura Blume, University of Nevada Reno