As the Sixth Summit of the Americas approaches, US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have made statements extolling Colombia's security gains, suggesting they are seeking to promote that country's US-backed security model.
The threat faced by Colombia two decades ago was very different to that faced by Mexico today, and the two countries' governments, by and large, have had distinct aims in their battles against organized crime.
"A Cautionary Tale: Plan Colombia's Lessons for Mexico and Beyond," uses Colombia's lesson-learned and tries to apply them to the case of Mexico.
Several prominent Washington NGOs released a new report on how lessons from Plan Colombia can guide future U.S. policy in Mexico. The report warns against creating too close of a parallel between the Mexico and Colombia drug conflicts, then goes on to argue that repeating the Plan Colombia model in Mexico "would be a very a bad idea."
One of Colombia's most powerful paramilitary leaders has been condemned by a Miami court to 33 years in prison, convicted of "leading an international drug trafficking ring which backed a terrorist organization."
In what is becoming an increasing trend, Colombia authorities discovered a cocaine-processing laboratory in the eastern plains of the country, which they said was run by right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas.
A troubling new trend is surfacing in Mexico's fight against organized crime: deaths in confrontations between Mexican military personnel and suspected criminals are skyrocketing. The rise could mean many things, none of them good.
From Mexico to Brazil, sending the army to areas overrun by organized crime has become the default government response. However, this often does little to alter the criminal landscape in the long term, and may even make the situation worse.
Why are there no large drug cartels in the U.S.? The short answer is because it has lots of small ones. A longer answer might be that there are large drug cartels: they are called prison gangs.
