Central American Rulers Push for U.S.-supported Militarized Police

In the aftermath of CAFTA, the presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua have proposed creating a regional rapid-response police force with military-assault capabilities-- if, that is, the United States government will provide resources for it.

This may be a statement from Central American governments to the United States government: you want us to join you in CAFTA, so give us the money, guns, and military training to control our people.  Drugs, gangs, and the generally violent consequences of making drugs illegal are, as usual, excuses for more police and increased state power.

Whether or not to the so-called trade agreement has anything to do with the insistence that the U.S. sponsor the militarized police force, the United States' main export to Central America may end up being both sides of the drug war. Reporters Chris Kraul and Alex Renderos wrote for the Los Angelos Times (my emphasis added):

El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are waging an intense war against street gangs — including the notorious Mara Salvatrucha — whose members number about 50,000. Their activities often are transnational, involving trafficking in drugs and people.  Many are former convicts who have been deported from the United States.

Berger and Honduran President Ricardo Maduro have said that their nations' armed forces, greatly reduced after the end of armed conflict, are not up to combating organized crime on their own and that a regional approach might be the only answer.

Guatemalan Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said Monday that the force could become a reality only if the United States agreed to provide training, equipment and intelligence.

Kraul and Renderos, writing from Mexico City, indicate no CAFTA subplot (nor any awareness of economic inequality and its impact on the drug war), but do note concerns with the plan:

A proposal by Guatemalan President Oscar Berger to establish a Central American "rapid-reaction force" to fight drug traffickers and gangs is gaining strength, even as opponents say it could become a tool of U.S. interests and threaten the region's sovereignty.

Several countries in the region are going forward with plans for such a force numbering at least 500 soldiers, sailors and pilots. It would be used to interdict drug shipments in the air and on the land and sea while fighting the growing influence of gangs and organized crime in urban centers and in remote drug-trafficking areas.

But the idea has generated opposition among those who say the force could end up serving the interests of the U.S.

The official position of the four governments appears to be that this is fine as long as the U.S. pays: "the force will need the will of the Central American countries and the vital support of the United States," said Leonel Sauceda, spokesman for the Honduran Ministry of Public Security.

According to reporters Kraul and Renderos, major elements of the proposed military force -- who will command it and how, what its jurisdiction would be, and what circumstances would trigger its deployment -- have not been decided (or disclosed).

"[One] problem is that it would be a repressive, not a preventive, force," said Grisel Grapo of the Center for Guatemalan Studies in Guatemala City.  "The other is that Central American countries don't have their own agenda that establishes what the threats are to their national security.  If they did, there would be a better dialogue on adopting an appropriate front."

If the United States goes along with the plan, it may very well be making the decisions about how and when the force would deploy.

Leonel Gomez, a Salvadoran security consultant, said the danger of such a reaction force was that it might become an "out-of-control SWAT team."

"Who would come up with the intelligence on which the team would act? Would it be Guatemala? Honduras? El Salvador? Without coordination of intelligence, responding in a violent manner and without oversight, it would only engender more violence," Gomez said.