Honduras Catches los Tigres by the Toe, No-One Hollers to let Them Go
Mexico’s approach towards drug trafficking has become increasingly militaristic since it first started its “war on drugs” in 2006. Police forces have expanded and military forces have received jurisdiction to operate domestically with the goal of combating cartel influences in various states across the nation. Despite recent uptakes in violence, the change in policy succeeded in driving a significant portion of cartel membership out of Mexico.
Diminished influence in Mexico has neither eradicated the cartels nor reduced the drug trade. It has simply relocated them. Cartels’ spheres of operations have shifted south into Central Americans’ ‘Northern Triangle’ (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) inciting increased violence and pushing crime rates higher.
As drug activity has risen in the region, so too have reports of police corruption and abuse. The most recent of these allegations has come from Honduras where 21 members of the country’s elite Special Response Team and Intelligence Troop Law (Tigres) were suspended on February 16th for allegedly skimming $1.3 million from a $12.5 million bust of the Valle Valle cartel. The initial bust was conducted in October and lead to Honduran officials finding the money buried in plastic bags in the mountainside and the capture the cartel’s boss, Miguel Arnulfo Valle Valle.
Mr. Valle Valle has since been extradited to the United States with two of his brothers and his sister-in-law on drug trafficking charges. The arrested officers have remained in Honduras, where officials have indicated if convicted in court the Tigres operatives could face between 12 to 21 years in prison on charges ranging from abuse of power to aggravated assault.
Ironically, the Tigres were developed in 2013 after Honduras’ Criminal Investigation Unit (DNIC) suspended its entire 1,400 officer force for alleged ties to criminal organizations. This makes the Tigres suspension the most current in a long line of police corruption cases. Findings from a study published by the Foundation for Peace and Democracy (FUNPADEM) show how these continued police arrests have eroded the public’s trust in their police with 38.8% of Hondurans responding they had confidence in their police force, both national and military.
The issues rampant in Honduras are symptoms of the larger drug trade problem throughout the entire Western Hemisphere. Demand for drugs in the United States has incentivized groups in Andean nations to begin growing cocaine, which is funneled north through Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
The absence of government presence in most of the region has allowed cartels and insurgent groups, such as FARC in Colombia, to profit from drug trade and expand their influence at the expense of public safety and government integrity.
As tradition eradication methods financed by the United States, have failed to end the drug trade, some nations have begun turning to alternatives. Uruguay has taken the most radical approach, legalizing marijuana nationwide in 2013 with the goal of using profits from sales to combat cartel influence among government workers and the populace.
The United States has taken a different approach to the issue, with the White House announcing it would seek for $1 billion in support for Honduras to strengthen government infrastructure and improve the region’s economic environment.
While the Tigres will leave Honduras with less investigators and more problems. Unless Central America, and the rest of the hemisphere are able to find an effective way of reducing the cartels’ power and influence at the grassroots level, they will continue to be locked into the Sisyphean role of putting more officers on the street only to see them knocked down. If they keep getting knocked down, the public will become increasingly less reliant on them for security and, as has already happened in Mexico, may begin to rely on themselves for protection, instilling a greater likelihood for future violence in the region. For now, however, with no other feasible options available, Honduras can only continue to follow its current path, as the only guarantee for their country is that surrendering will make matters worse.