Most drug cartels could not make a strong claim to such activities. In using the word cartel, we also do not mean to imply that these are especially monolithic organizations, that is, ones marked by uniformity, solidarity, and pyramidal hierarchies. The Medellín cartel, for instance, has been shown to have been not nearly so centralized and unified as popularly portrayed.40 Nor has any cartel ever swept a drug-trafficking field of rivals. Given the low barriers to entry, new drug rings have tended to spring up over time. Often, these have drawn on experienced freelancers and the remnants of groups previously taken down by authorities, as well as profit-hungry newcomers, who often have relevant criminal experience outside the drug trade.41 At times serving as junior partners or paying transit route taxes, smaller organizations have coexisted, and sometimes conflicted, with much larger ones, though only a few have evolved into cartels themselves.
Indeed, perhaps the principal reason that no cartel has monopolized the cocaine trade is that the potential profits for producers, intermediaries, transshippers, and dealers have been so lucrative as to encourage entrepreneurs.42 In an era when U.S. dealers might sell a kilo of cocaine wholesale for $32,000, and their European counterparts for as much as $42,000, yet coca leaves might bring farmers $650 per kilo in Peru, any start-up organization could turn a quick substantial profit.43 And law-enforcement pressure on leading organizations has increased opportunities for competitors to gain market share. Indeed, an internal dynamic within the drug trade favors smaller organizations, because they are less likely to come to the attention of rivals and law enforcement.44
Furthermore, those relatively infrequent occasions when interdiction has succeeded in raising prices have increased the incentive to ship more of the drug.45 In addition, the closer to the source country interdiction has occurred, the less costly has it been for the traffickers to replace the lost load.46 Since market-state law enforcement has posed the greatest risk for a drug shipment, much of the value added has come after the cocaine has transited through the bridge countries. This, too, has encouraged entrepreneurs who lack retail distribution abilities but can still sell the drugs wholesale in a market country.47 Thus, although drug rings have created barriers to entry through violence aimed at maintaining or expanding their market share, even lesser networks prepared to cooperate with cartels, or with sufficient muscle and fortitude to withstand them, have soon accumulated considerable earnings.48
Groups of traffickers at work in Central America have sometimes been cells of foreign drug organizations, perhaps with a trusted representative planted in a particular zone to supervise a number of drug ventures.49 At other times, such groups have been independent, or quasi-independent, entities. For instance, a Belizean network might undertake a service such as refueling cocaine planes for multiple foreign organizations. In parts of Spanish-speaking Central America, such native transshipment networks have been referred to as cartelitos, or “mini-cartels.” For example, during the 1990s a number of cartelitos developed in Guatemala, each specializing in particular routes and methods and each with its own contacts within the larger Colombian and Mexican organizations.
In this way, Central American groups have contributed to the compartmentalizing of drug operations, enabling organizations to outsource key transportation functions, which has posed even more difficult challenges for law enforcement than more vertically integrated criminal groups doing most trafficking tasks themselves. In addition, a foreign drug organization might be active in a number of Central American countries, supplying, offering logistical support, and coordinating the activities of cartelitos or cells. Indeed, multiple cartels have often been at work simultaneously in the different bridge states, while a host of lesser networks, foreign and domestic, might be moving smaller quantities of drugs through that country as well.
Conclusion
In the chapters that follow, we explore the particular deficiencies and abilities of people, governments, and drug organizations interacting in the bridge states. Certainly, the international drug trade is very much concerned with individual and collective incapacities. The rise of the marijuana, heroin, and cocaine industries is undergirded by millions of users unwilling or incapable of freeing themselves from drug use and so reducing the steep demand curve that stimulates trafficking. Within Central America, when confronted by the prospect of quick wealth, many individuals have overlooked the potential long-term costs of involvement in the trade. Not only has there been the risk of arrest or violent death for traffickers, but their friends and family members have frequently been drawn into illegal activities to their ultimate detriment. Participation in the drug trade has also turned facilitators, such as bankers, lawyers, and accountants, into white-collar criminals and has disrupted or ended the careers of many judges, politicians, military and police officers, and other government officials.
Our examination of the Central American drug trade also reveals the extraordinary capabilities of transnational criminal organizations to multiply and thrive in the post–cold war era. Drug rings have been able to adopt for their own purposes practices undertaken by legitimate international businesses. Particular kingpins as well as the leaders of Central American cells and cartelitos have become adept at reorienting when challenged by law-enforcement officials. Equally important, they have found ways to exploit an extraordinary variety of weaknesses or opportunities within different bridge states. Thus, while authorities have compiled records of seizures and arrests that are not unimpressive, the illegal drug industry as a whole continues to prosper—moving immense quantities of drugs to major markets in North America and Europe.
To answer the question of why trafficking through Central America so resists being curbed by national efforts, regional cooperation, or extraregional assistance, we would point, in the first instance, to the power of the bribes, bullets, and intimidation that drug organizations have wielded. Huge flows of drugs have headed to market, and enormous profits have returned to bolster and further motivate their organizations. So long as demand for narcotics remains strong, criminal groups will materialize to try to reap the extraordinary profits, and they will suborn, bully, and kill to protect their interests in the illicit global economy.
Institutional weaknesses help explain why traffickers have penetrated particular countries when they did.50 Several cardinal factors have characterized government structures in the region. Virtually all lack the resources needed to carry out their functions effectively. Frequently, weak institutions are insufficiently transparent and lack the oversight necessary to ensure that officials are held accountable. Many do not have in place a formal set of operational rules and procedures adequate to provide guidance to those charged with carrying out assigned tasks or to discipline those who neglect their duties. Finally, weak institutions often have no tradition, no institutional culture, of laws, rules, and procedures generally followed and enforced in a consistent and unbiased manner. Naturally, countries with grave institutional weaknesses provide inviting targets for drug traffickers.
However, even taken together, the relative weakness of institutions in the different bridge states does not itself suffice to explain why, when, and how much drug trafficking occurs in each country. One might ask, if traffickers simply identify and exploit the countries with the weakest formal institutions, then why did the flow of cocaine actually increase through Panama after the downfall of the Noriega regime brought about governments intent on strengthening previously corrupted institutions? If institutional
