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The Economist January 1st 2022
The Americas
Illegal drugs
A new narconomics
ASUNCIO N, LIMA , MEXICO CITY AND QUITO
Latin America’s gangs have had a good pandemic
T
he event had all the trappings of a newyear celebration. Fireworks lit up the sky. Young men danced arminarm, singing, waving fl ags and blasting music. Only it was not an endofyear party, but an evening in July. The fi reworks were accom panied by rounds of gunshots. And the rev ellers in Santiago, the capital of Chile, were mourning a young man with alleged ties to drug traffi ckers during what was supposed to be a national lockdown. Chile has long been considered one of Latin America’s safest countries. Yet be tween May 2019 and December 2020 crimi nal gangs held nearly 800 socalled narcofunerales, according to the country’s chief of national police. Normally such grandi ose aff airs are associated with Mexican drug lords, but they have become ever more popular in a place which is becoming ever more violent (prison murders in Chile reached a fouryear high of at least 61 in 2020). It is just one sign that gangs are gaining clout across Latin America. In some ways this is surprising. Co vid19 hit Latin America hard. Many people
expected it to hurt drug traffi ckers, too. They were already under pressure, thanks to the legalisation of marijuana in many places and the incarceration of various kingpins in the United States and else where. When covid stopped young people from clubbing, demand for party drugs like cocaine and ecstasy was expected to fall. As the global shutdown aff ected the supply of everyday goods, many observers thought it might make it harder for gangs to lay hands on the raw materials to make drugs, or to ship their wares across borders. Instead the pandemic has confi rmed that the drug business is resilient and adaptable. Although supply chains were initially aff ected, many have bounced back. Gangs have exploited the chaos of co vid to attract fresh recruits, luring outof school children in Colombia to pick coca → Also in this section 37 Chile’s millennial president — Bello is away
and hiring young “cybermules” to move profi ts around in cryptocurrencies. They have also branched out into other crimes. As the industry has changed, so too has the policy of the United States towards it. For half a century American administra tions have tried, without success, to stem the fl ow of drugs. Now President Joe Bi den’s policy appears to prioritise stem ming the fl ow of drug money. On Decem ber 15th he signed two executive orders: one creating a national council to fi ght transnational organised crime and anoth er imposing sanctions on 24 groups in volved in the drug trade. How much diff er ence this will make remains to be seen. The crystal shipping route The profi ts from selling illegal drugs are so vast that dreaming up creative ways around the law is just a cost of business. Prohibition has so far proven ineff ective at every step in the supply chain. In Colom bia, which produces over 60% of the world’s cocaine, the army eradicated re cord amounts of coca in 2020 by hand. But cocagrowers simply planted new bushes. So despite the eradication campaign and early disruptions caused by covid, cocaine production reached record highs (see chart on next page). Similarly in Peru, the world’s second biggest producer, cocaleaf prices, at $1.40 a kilo, are half of what they were two years ago. Yet it remains more profi table than other crops, says Marianne Zavala of the
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