BOOK TELLS OF DRUGS, CORRUPTION

During the last couple decades, a dreadful increase of drug trafficking
from some Latin American countries has been a major attack on the United
States' society, economy and security.

Drug cartels in Colombia and Peru have operated like international business
corporations with a single aim: reaching the U.S. market.

An array of U.S. institutions, including the DEA, FBI, CIA and Delta Force,
have been facing a supernatural challenge in their efforts to foil drug
trafficking.

The drug trafficking is less docile than the political and ideological
terrorism that posit some clear objectives, take responsibilities, seek
negotiations, put conditions, etc. The drug barons are motivated only from
greed and, unfortunately, due to their criminal activity, possess enormous
financial resources.

Mark Bowden's book Killing Pablo ushers us to the wild world of drug
trafficking and the joint efforts of Colombian and U.S. authorities to put
the ferocious drug lord, Pablo Escobar, on his knees or even kill him.

The first feeling you experience reading the book is that most of what has
been described on its pages just cannot be true.

It's difficult to imagine an entire nation entrapped and terrorized by a
bunch of ruthless narcos. And it's hard to imagine a nation accepting,
justifying and often even cooperating with them.

It is impossible to understand how a relatively civilized society and
democratic country lost its courage, faith and interest to fight against crime.

And it is unbelievable how Colombians yielded, and even worse, tried to
take advantage of the crime that stifled the country.

Even before gaining any political power, Escobar had contributed heavily to
establish the narcocracy, a kind of regime where major decisions have been
made under pressure from, or to satisfy the interests of, narco-traffickers.

For the still-devoted civil servants and the brave politicians, there were
two options: plata o pluma, silver or lead.

Obviously, there was not any real problem for Escobar in seizing political
power in Colombia but one: the U.S. overreaction.

Bowden argues that the involvement of the U.S. in the manhunt for Pablo

mirrored the first Bush administration's strategy to transfer abroad the
war against drug smuggling.

But there are other facts that support a deeper and larger motivation in
this enterprise.

While the manhunt and the allegedly government-supported los Pepes - mobs
motivated by vengeance against Escobar - were dismantling Pablo's empire,
the Cali drug cartel was rising. And as Bowden points out, the amount of
cocaine penetrating the U.S. border wasn't curbed at all.

Bowden does not do much to explain the very specific political and social
conditions that fueled the emergence of the drug industry in Colombia.
Nevertheless, he gives details that make it easier for readers to reach
conclusions.

The complex relationship between narcos and Marxist guerrillas in some
Latin American countries might have eventually gained the political
momentum to topple their government.

The process risked amplification into a domino effect and blowing away the
process of economic integration of the Americas in the aftermath of the
Cold War.

Furthermore, narcocracy was a great barrier for U.S.-led efforts to
establish a new international order driven by cooperation of nations,
according to rules of the newly-emerging era of globalization.

Nowadays, whereas we are enjoying the economic advantages of the market's
globalization (and the democratization stemming from that process), we are
suffering consequences of drug trafficking's globalization as well.

Like commerce that has expanded beyond the fallen walls, organized crime
has been able to enjoy these advantages. Killing Pablo is the best
exposition of the efforts to globalize the war against the already
globalized, organized criminality.