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ID:
108349
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The following is a threat assessment of the seven countries that make up Central America. That region is struggling to control burgeoning street gangs and organized criminal groups which have overrun its poor and ill-prepared security forces. The results are clear: rising crime and homicide rates throughout the region; corruption and instability within the governments. The two gangs that challenge authority are transnational in nature but pose less a threat to national security than they do to everyday life. Their drug peddling and extortion have shattered entire communities and forced the governments to reallocate important resources. The governments' strategy of jailing suspected gang members en masse has arguably made them stronger rather than weaker. Meanwhile, the organized criminal groups have deeply penetrated governments at nearly every level. They control swaths of territory, co-opting these areas, as well as the local governments, for their own purposes. Opposition to them is often futile. Mexican-based organizations are increasingly using violent tactics to displace their rivals. The governments of the region seem unprepared to meet the challenge.
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| 2 |
ID:
142617
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This essay provides an overview of the eras of Mexican cinema followed by an analysis of 10 Spanish-language narco cinematic representations, an overview of the eras of American cinema followed by an analysis of 10 English language narco cinematic representations, and a conclusion that compares and contrasts the Mexican and US narco war cinematic experience. Due to divergent national trajectories – Mexico is engulfed in narco violence and corruption while the United States is not – more differences than similarities exist between these national cinematic genres. Dark spirituality themes are also increasingly evident in more recent narco war films.
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| 3 |
ID:
093831
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Narcotics and the drug trade contribute to a range of social ills. Among these are social instability, violence, corruption, and a weakening of the state. A range of criminal enterprises, including transnational gangs and drug cartels are engaged in the global trade in illicit drugs. This essay looks at measures to stem this trade through interventions directed against the drug supply and efforts to limit the violence that results from the drug trade. As such it looks at 'counter-supply' and 'counter-violence' approaches. While it emphasizes the impact on the Western Hemisphere - the United States and Latin America - it has international implications for global and national security, intelligence, and law enforcement.
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| 4 |
ID:
108342
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| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This grand strategic overview highlights and analyzes the influence of epochal change on the state and conflict and the new realities with which the United States must now contend. This deep context is being provided so that (1) the belligerent and politicized non-state entities that have emerged in Mexico and the Americas can be better understood within the larger three-front grand strategic temporal conflict the US is now engaged in; and (2) the stark realities that the US faces - such as loss of unilateral world dominance, increasing debt and ongoing deficits, shifting demographics, inability to staunch the flow of and demand for illicit drugs, and an increasing prison population - are highlighted. Finally, this essay finishes with a discussion of the many important contributions contained in this edited work.
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| 5 |
ID:
108343
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| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Driven by globalization, Internet communications technology (ICT), and new economic forms the nature of states may be changing. Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) - including what are commonly known as cartels - are early adopters to the new political/economic landscape. In addition to seeking to rule the illicit economy, criminal actors (networked cartels and gangs) are challenging states through high-order violence and leveraging nascent social/spiritual movements (narcocultura) to potentially usher in a new political dynamic. These violent non-state actors (criminal soldiers) are insurgent actors. They are waging new forms of insurgency - criminal and possibly spiritual - that have the potential to reconfigure states.
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