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The Link Between Drug Trafficking and Poverty

drug trafficking and poverty
People who live in low-income communities often face different types of challenges than those who live in more comfortable economic situations. People who live in poverty-stricken areas often do not have access to proper education, clean running water, shelter, food or health care. Along with the lack of basic humanitarian needs is the instability of life and income. All of these factors come together into the complex relationship between drug trafficking and poverty.

El Chapo

Those who live in poverty may be in vulnerable situations that lead to their participation in the drug trade. Some examples have proven that exposure to drugs and drug trafficking can influence adolescents into doing and selling drugs. Lastly, the fact that these people do not have a stable form of income also leads them to drug trafficking because of the fast and vast amounts of money that can come from selling drugs.

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán, also known as El Chapo, is one of the world’s biggest drug lords. American actor Sean Penn was pictured with Guzmán in 2016 when they sat down for a seven-hour-long meeting. Even though Penn’s intention was to start a conversation about the war on drugs, he actually discovered the impact that Guzmán’s drug trafficking activities had on his community and personal life.

Raised in a very humble and very poor Mexican family, Guzmán grew up on a ranch called La Tuna that offered no job opportunities. The only way his family was able to survive and have food on the table was because of the growth and sale of marijuana.

Guzmán acknowledged the way that drugs ruin human lives in the sense that poverty pushes individuals into the drug trade, but it does not stop there. This destruction consists of violence and conflict, which adds on to this vicious cycle of people falling into the drug trade in exchange for money to live. Writer for the Guardian, Nick Croft, said that “poor development fuels conflict, which fuels the drug trade, which fuels conflict, which fuels poverty.”

The Unexpected Outcome

When a person has no way to make money to maintain themself or their family, drug trafficking can often seem like the fastest and easiest way to make up for those financial losses. It is interesting to see the way that Guzmán’s drug trafficking activities actually helped his town rather than tainting it. His drug deals offered many people in the area job opportunities that were not present before. It also created a safe environment for those living nearby because of the massive power Guzmán had in the drug community. Everyone had a sense of stability because of the illegal trade activity that was going on around them, and it is this paradox that highlights the complexity behind the relationship between poverty and drug trafficking.

These people who have nothing, and often do not receive anything to help themselves, increasingly must choose between two lives. One is a life full of hard work with little to no returns of money, leading to a lack of education, water and food. Meanwhile, the second is a life of illegal activity that could possibly shed light on the daily hardships that those in impoverished areas face.

What the Research Says

A study by Joshua Okundaye, Drug trafficking and addiction among low-income urban youths: An ecological perspective, provides an analysis of drug use, drug trafficking and drug addiction among low-income youths living in urban areas.

It demonstrates the way that people living in poverty can be more vulnerable to drug-related situations because of the interactions within the microsystems and mesosystems they live in. Microsystems refer to “the family, the classroom, the neighborhood, the community center and the playground” while mesosystems are the “interrelationships between two or more of the microsystems.”

By looking at drug trafficking through this ecological perspective, one can see the way that this relationship is all about the point in which “independent systems or groups meet and interact.” It is exactly this point that differentiates socioeconomic groups. Those living in areas where poverty levels are higher are more prone to becoming involved in drug dealing than those who live in more privileged areas.

The finding of this study is that after evaluating the young people studied and the facts, drug trafficking is the main source of behavioral issues. With the elements of parental drug use, communication with local dealers, the number of times people ask young people to participate, age and the actual size of the person, drug trafficking becomes a key component in poverty.

The relationship between drug trafficking and poverty is very complex in the sense that it puts families and individuals in positions where they have to choose between life or death. In this case, life is the sense that one can either remain in their impoverished life while death is where if they do not take on this illegal activity, they will die with the few resources they have.

– Isabella Gonzalez Montilla
Photo: Flickr

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Protesters March in Solidarity for El Chapo

el chapo
The bloody drug war in Mexico has been raging for over eight years now, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of cartel soldiers as well as innocent civilians. Recently, Joaquin Guzman, otherwise known as El Chapo, was caught by Mexican authorities; many protesters have displayed anger over his imprisonment.

Hundreds of these angry citizens marched in streets of Culiacan, located in the Sinaloa region of Mexico; the hub of the Sinaloa cartel. The protesters are angered by Guzman’s capture mainly because cartel activity provided jobs for many of the poor in the mountainous Sinaloa region. Signs among the crowd illustrated their anger. One said “We Want Chapo Free.”

Currently, El Chapo is awaiting possible extradition to the United States for trafficking activity linked to several major American cities.

The fallout from the loss of leadership within the Sinaloa cartel could threaten economic activity in the Sinaloa region as a whole; a sad reality in a region where 74% of its residents suffer from poverty. Despite the presence of mass poverty in the region, freshly painted houses dot the countryside, mainly from the work of the cartel foot soldiers.

The residents fear the possibility of hardship if they lose the support the drug trade provides to the agricultural sector of the region. The economic support by the drug trade felt in the region is typified by the mythical status El Chapo reached among the locals. He is viewed as a hero rather than a vicious murderer.

Some draw parallels to him and a 20th century Mexican folk hero by the name of Jesus Malverde, a bandit who shared his wealth with the poor of the region.

El Chapo’s future remains uncertain as he awaits possible extradition to the U.S. Leads provided by the cell phone of his assistant, Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramirez, after his capture, eventually led authorities to the Mazatlan region of Mexico, where Guzman was evading arrest.

Some experts fear severe fallout from the drug lord’s capture. There is a possibility of an increase in violence rather than a decrease. A bloody turf war is not out of the question for many. The end result could be something similar to the previous administration’s “Kingpin Strategy,” where the focus on killing cartel drug lords led to the splintering of cartels into smaller groups that relied on more sinister and violent strategies to maintain control of their respective regions.

The drug war just beyond the United States’ southern border is a tragedy unfolding before our eyes. The majority of drugs manufactured and shipped by the cartels cross over into U.S. territory to satisfy an insatiable appetite for drugs.

The U.S. must create new policy initiatives to address this problem. Such policy changes would curb demand of illicit drugs, which seems to be the only way to reduce the manufacture of drugs and the subsequent violence associated with the illicit drug industry.

– Zachary Lindberg

Sources: Los Angeles Times
Photo: Time

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Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Captured

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After more than 13 years on the run, the infamous leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico has finally been caught. Joaquin Guzmán, known as “El Chapo” for his short stature, was caught on February 22 after joint efforts between the Mexican Marines and the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA.)

Before dawn that day, the team of Mexican marines raided Guzmán’s beachside condominium in the resort town of Mazatlán. The marines insured the occupants of the condominium were asleep using infrared and body heat scanners before entering the building.

When they entered, they found the drug king asleep shirtless next to his beauty queen wife along with an AK-47 within reach. Guzmán’s 2-year-old twin daughters and his bodyguard were also asleep in the next room.

The arrest was preceded by months of extensive findings by the DEA and Mexican authorities that led them closer to Guzmán. In recent months, authorities arrested several members of the Sinaloa cartel and discovered a system of tunnels underneath seven houses in Culiacan. Mexican marines almost captured Guzmán the previous week, but Guzmán narrowly escaped arrest by exiting one of the houses through a hatch beneath a bathtub.

Serafin Zambada-Ortiz, the son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, one of Guzmán’s lieutenants and heir-apparent of the Sinaloa Cartel, was arrested in November 2013. The arrests of cartel members, followed by an examination of their cell phone usage, led authorities ever closer to the quasi-mythical Guzmán.

Guzmán maintained a legendary status in Mexico as an impossible to capture figure. In 2001, he escaped Puente Grande prison in a laundry cart. He is known for bribing his way out of situations, and stories abound of his paying the tabs of entire restaurants in order to escape the law. Yet he is also known for his generous habit of giving out money freely to those in need.

While Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is claiming this to be a success in the war on drugs, many other still believe that this latest arrest could still spell trouble for the Mexican state. With this power vacuum, drug cartels could ramp up their violent activities in an effort to win more turf. Further, the drug business drove billions of dollars into the state of Sinaloa, which will now need to rely on another source of income.

– Jeff Meyer

Sources: Los Angeles Times, CNN, CNN
Photo: Enrique Nieto