What The The Drug War Hitting Central America Means For The 21st Century Border

One of the guiding principals of NDN's The 21st Century Border Initiative has been that the unprecedented resources and high levels of cooperation between the United States and Mexico along the southern border has created a safer region.

The effects of this cooperation and resources are now being felt in Mexico.  The Economist has written a cover story on how many of the drug gangs who came from Columbia into Mexico are moving into Central America. The full story can be read here:

Now violence is escalating once more in Central America, for a new reason. Two decades ago the United States Coast Guard shut down the Caribbean cocaine route, so the trade shifted to Mexico. Mexico has started to fight back; and its continuing offensive against the drugs mafias has pushed them down into Central America.

The article notes that whatever the violence level felt in Mexico is nothing compared to what is now happening in Central America:

Whatever the weaknesses of the Mexican state, it is a Leviathan compared with the likes of Guatemala or Honduras. Large areas of Guatemala—including some of its prisons—are out of the government’s control; and, despite the efforts of its president, the government is infiltrated by the mafia. The countries of Central America’s northern triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) are now among the most violent places on earth, deadlier even than most conventional war zones (see article). So weak are their judicial systems that in Guatemala, for example, only one murder in 20 is punished.

While this is by no means an outright victory in what has turned into a long war in Mexico, it is a sign that some progress is being made in creating a safer region along the southern border.

Below is an interactive map of Mexico's s drug system, since the creation of this map in February of this year some of the cartel members responsible for the spikes in deaths have moved out of the region: