The Challenges of Studying Bridge-State Drug Trafficking
That scholars have seldom addressed even the quite fundamental issues regarding bridge-state trafficking that we have sought to explore is attributable, in part, to the fact that so much of the trade occurs outside of public view. Transnational criminal organizations have gone to considerable lengths to keep activities secret, attempting to camouflage their routes, personnel, and methods, including the manner in which they have corrupted authorities to ensure the smooth flow of drugs to market. The secrecy that cloaks this subject led many to doubt whether our research project was viable. Certainly, many standard social science tools commonly used to investigate new topics have strictly limited applicability to the drug trade. For instance, apart from a small handful of quite useful studies that have questioned imprisoned traffickers, survey research has revealed little about this brand of transnational criminal activity.26 Although polling can indicate something about public perceptions of drug corruption, the illicit nature of the subject and consequent efforts to cover up activities may well distort mass opinion.
As for statistical analyses, for decades law-enforcement officials have compiled data on drug production and seizures, drug-related arrests, and the confiscation of drug-tainted assets. While drawing on this, we recognize its limitations, various aspects of which have been well documented.27 Statistics can illuminate certain aspects of bridge-state trafficking, but not others. And, although some figures appear to be reasonably reliable—advanced only after data have been carefully collected, processed, and cross-checked—others are imprecise or even suspect. The validity of drug statistics depends on honest, thorough, and conscientious professionals reporting numbers that are compiled with logical and consistent methodologies across different countries for a number of consecutive years. Unfortunately, these attributes have rarely been evident.28
On inspection, certain statistics regarding drugs in Central America turned out to be simply rough estimates. Government data have sometimes been collected and advanced without methodological rigor. The biases of those charged with assembling the facts may have affected some figures, and political agendas may have intervened in the collecting or publicizing of some drug data.29 Certainly, those reporting figures have often had a stake in inflating or deflating particular numbers, either to gain personal promotions or to enhance the flow of resources from those funding antidrug activities.30 In any event, many statistics have been publicized without clear explanation, leading to ambiguities and misunderstandings.31 Moreover, just what many commonly tracked statistics demonstrate can be arguable. For example, that more traffickers are arrested and more drugs interdicted may indicate improving law enforcement, larger amounts of drugs being shipped to market, or some combination.32 Thus, some drug statistics are flawed, and many are open to varying interpretations.
More broadly, a recurrent problem in investigating Central American drug trafficking concerns finding reliable sources to depend on, whether statistical or otherwise. Across the region officials have failed to keep sufficiently detailed records on drug cases. Material from Central American legal archives has tended to be erratic in quantity and quality, making it difficult to follow a trafficker’s career or an organization’s life history. In some countries prison and court records have been ambiguous, fragmentary, inaccurate, or missing. Librarians in national libraries have sometimes neglected even to keep legal statutes and codes properly updated. Archival research can thus be quite challenging.
Despite these many difficulties, this book proceeds from the premise that scholars can go much further in studying the role of bridge countries in the international drug trade than has hitherto been evident. In fact, extraordinary amounts of data on bridge-state trafficking are available in open sources, particularly in the Spanish language, much of it never before synthesized and analyzed.33 Certain useful government documents, such as the periodic reports of the Costa Rican and Honduran Legislative Commissions on Narcotics Trafficking, are publicly available. Bodies of relevant laws may be reviewed as well, those dealing specifically with drugs as well as those focused on related subjects, such as bail, extradition, and search and seizure. Furthermore, various U.S. government sources, including congressional hearings and reports, once-classified documents published by the National Security Archive, and DEA and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) materials, can clarify points about regional drug transshipment.
Most important, drug rings operating in the bridge states have slipped up, and the seizures and arrests that have unraveled their operations have exposed many activities. As our extensive Index of Cases attests, much information has been published in case reports and other legal documents from criminal proceedings in market and bridge states alike. Furthermore, antidrug officials have often consented to be interviewed, and a handful have written accounts of the drug trade, as have various traffickers after arrest. And, although few secondary sources deal directly with drug smuggling via the bridge states, much of the drug literature touches indirectly on the subject.
Thus, we took on the task of canvassing a broad array of sources on Central American drug trafficking and then sifting through a wealth of data to determine just how drugs have moved across the region and with what consequences. In conducting dozens of interviews in our five case studies, we spoke with many officials, including ministers of interior and justice, diplomats, legislators, foreign ministers, and even a prime minister. In addition, we contacted a host of officials working at different levels of the criminal-justice systems, including police officers, jurists, prosecutors, defense lawyers, public defenders, human rights observers, and prison wardens. We conversed with social workers, public health officials, and clerics with insights on the drug trade. We interviewed editors of newspapers within the bridge states, along with a range of academic observers, including professors at the region’s most highly regarded universities. We met as well with various authorities from the United Nations Latin American Institute for Crime Prevention and the Treatment of Offenders, including the director of the Organized Crime and Drug Traffic program. In each of the five countries we communicated with a slew of individuals on a not-for-attribution basis, including private citizens, foreign diplomats, and law-enforcement officials.
From this research we have tried to weave together many threads—individuals and organizations, places and routes, policies and laws, antidrug failures and successes—into a single fabric that presents the Central American drug trade accurately and holistically, nationally and regionally. Although no research project concerning secret illicit activity can be foolproof, we have attempted to corroborate information by relying on multiple sources, wherever possible, while weeding out material that seemed biased, implausible, or contradictory. In hopes that our work will stimulate others to sift through this information and to qualify, correct, and amplify our findings, we have tried to be as thorough as possible in indicating the sources that substantiate our points.
Clarification of Terms
Where preexisting scholarship is scarce, clarifying the terms used takes on particular importance. In this regard, categorizing the Central American countries as bridge states, as opposed to market states, ought to be qualified by the fact that drug consumption has risen sharply in each republic. For many years traffickers have purposefully stimulated domestic markets in the region by compensating bridge-state associates with drugs rather than cash, and these were then often transferred to local dealers in local markets.34 Furthermore,