Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Two factors which may be related to crime in Latin America are poverty and drug trafficking. Drug traffickers use violence to resolve disputes over profits or territory. Crime impedes economic growth by discouraging investment and redirecting resources from productive activities to the prevention or punishment of further crime. Data: UNODC, 2012.
The United States is the primary destination, but around 25 to 30% of global cocaine production travels from Latin America to Europe, typically via West Africa. [1] The major drug trafficking organizations (drug cartels) are Mexican and Colombian, and said to generate a total of $18 to $39bn in wholesale drug proceeds per year. [1]
The Government of Puerto Rico has struggled to combat illegal drug use and the resulting crime since the mid-1970s. [5] Their efforts have been referred to as a "War on Drugs". [6] Though drug use was uncommon in Puerto Rico in the 1950s, it markedly increased in the late 1960s.
Maritime drug trafficking in Latin America is the primary mean of transportation of illegal drugs produced in this region to global consumer markets. Cocaine is the primary illegal drug smuggled through maritime routes because all of its cultivation and production is settled in the Andean region of South America. [1] [2]
Various analysts and politicians concur that in the 2020s crime in Chile is on the rise to levels similar to the rest of Latin America. [1] Increased murder rates and illegal drug trade are attributed by some to illegal immigration , other attribute the rise of crime more generally as the result of increased globalization.
The illegal drug trade in Colombia has, since the 1970s, centered successively on four major drug trafficking cartels: Medellín, Cali, Norte del Valle, and North Coast, as well as several bandas criminales, or BACRIMs. [1] The trade eventually created a new social class and influenced several aspects of Colombian culture, economics, and politics.
Both of those types of actors can be fundamental enablers of drug trafficking groups and organized crime across Latin America, even when they may appear to be fighting the illegal narcotics business.
Each year there is an excess of 150 tonnes of cocaine seized by Colombia's defence ministry, a small portion of the 1,400 produced annually. The Medellín cartel was said to have combined with the M-19 (a guerrilla movement) in an effort to increase drug-trafficking levels, to a point where they were trafficking 80% of the U.S. cocaine market. [2]