Making Peace in Drug Wars : Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America

Drug wars have ravaged Latin America, from Pablo Escobar in Colombia and El Chapo in Mexico to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. This book helps social scientists, area specialists, and policymakers understand why state crackdowns often backfire, and why deterrence-based approaches have been successful but hard to implement and sustain.

Over the past thirty years, a new form of conflict has ravaged Latin America's largest countries, with well-armed drug cartels fighting not only one another but the state itself. In Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil, leaders cracked down on cartels in hopes of restoring the rule of law and the state's monopoly on force. Instead, cartels fought back - with bullets and bribes - driving spirals of violence and corruption that make mockeries of leaders' state-building aims. Fortunately, some policy reforms quickly curtailed cartel-state conflict, but they proved tragically difficult to sustain. Why do cartels fight states, if not to topple or secede from them? Why do some state crackdowns trigger and exacerbate cartel-state conflict, while others curb it? This study argues that brute-force repression generates incentives for cartels to fight back, while policies that condition repression on cartel violence can effectively deter cartel-state conflict. The politics of drug war, however, make conditional policies all too fragile.