Drug trafficking has been around for a long time, but it recently has become a major problem in the forests of Central America. Drug traffickers, or "Los Narcos", are deforesting areas in the Central America region to pave the way for their drug empires. Huge clearings in the middle of nowhere are being noticed and "narco-pistas" (air landing-strips for drug runners) can be spotted in these areas for the mobilization of their product. The landscape is being completely changed due to the drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) now being present and the deforestation. Honduras and Guatemala are the highest among those that are being deforested due to narco-trafficking. Recent studies have brought proof of the drug-trafficking that is taking a toll on the forests in Central America and new strategies need to be drawn up to alleviate this problem.
Los Narcos are deforesting areas in the Central America region to pave the way for their drug empires. Huge clearings in the middle of nowhere are being noticed and "narco-pistas" (air landing-strips for drug runners) can be spotted in these areas for the mobilization of their product. The landscape is being completely changed due to the drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) now being present and the deforestation. Honduras and Guatemala are the highest among those that are being deforested due to narco-trafficking. Recent studies have brought proof of the drug-trafficking that is taking a toll on the forests in Central America and new strategies need to be drawn up to alleviate this problem.
There is literature that surrounds this topic and allows us to deepen our understanding of the situation. In the book titled The Latin American Drug Trade: Scope, Dimensions, Impact, and Response, the chapter of "Production and Trafficking Routes" explains where cocaine comes from (production) and where it’s being trafficked. A profile of Central America and the Caribbean Islands explains the region's role in the international drug industry. The article “Corridor of Violence: The Guatemala-Honduras Border” talks about the Guatemala and Honduras border being the most dangerous within Latin America due to the drug-trafficking in the area. “The Impacts of Cocaine-Trafficking on Conservation Governance in Central America” focuses on the illicit cocaine trade and how it is responsible for extensive patterns of deforestation in Central America. The main idea of the article, "Cocaine Trafficking Is Destroying Central America's Forests", is how cocaine-trafficking has caused deforestation in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The article follows Kendra McSweeney’s findings of deforestation in these countries and how they are connected to “Los Narcos” (according to the surrounding communities of the deforested places). Looking directly at Kendra McSweeney's research, "Conservation. Drug Policy as Conservation Policy: Narco-Deforestation", the main topics include: overlapping traffic and deforestation; landing planes, laundering money; and drug policies are conservation policies. In the article, "Illicit Drivers of Land Use Change: Narcotrafficking and Forest Loss in Central America", the main highlights are: narcotraffickers clear forest to claim territory and build airstrips along transit routes; profits from cocaine transit are sometimes laundered by clearing forested land for agribusiness; increased narcotrafficking showed a casual effect on forest loss in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala; including narcotrafficking variables in forest loss models increased explained variance by 5-9%; and news media data can serve as a proxy for illicit transaction when official data is inadequate over time and space.
Taking all of this research into a count, we are able to dive into the topic and reflect on its human geography themes throughout. Deforestation is a direct theme of nature/society because humans are impacting and changing the Earth based on their own environmental perception. Therefore, the physical landscape is being shaped by the cultural landscape. The drug traffickers see the forest as a way for them to smuggle drugs easily without being detected, so they change the forest by clearing large areas to build compounds, landing strips, and storage buildings. The landing strips tell us that the drug traffickers are using planes to move their product, which brings us to the theme of mobility. The drug traffickers are mobilizing the cocaine and diffusing it into other countries. Central America and the Caribbean Islands take us to the region theme directly, but many vernacular regions can be seen throughout the research, as well. Therefore, deforestation by narco-traffickers ties into the themes of nature/society, landscape, mobility, and region because the drug traffickers are using their regions to their advantage, changing the Earth directly and figuratively, mobilizing the drugs, and diffusing them.
COCAINE
Cocaine is an addictive stimulant drug that is made from coca leaves that are native to South America. Cocaine is most commonly snorted or smoked because it is a white crystalline powder derived from the coca leaves. Or, this drug can be dissolved into a liquid and injected into one's system. This drug can cause serious damage to your health and well-being and is illegal in many countries. The map above represents the places in which cocaine production and cultivation happens. The green plant icons are placed on top of those areas. On the map, the one icon in Ecuador, and the two icons in Brazil contain photos that you can look at that show cocaine cultivation. As you can see, the production and cultivation places are located in South America, but more specifically Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia. This is because the coca leaves that cocaine is derived from are native to these countries. This directly represents how the culture here is inhabiting the Earth and modifying their natural landscape. The people here are taking their native coca leaves, cultivating them, and profiting off of them. More specifically, these countries all have something in common - connection to the Andes Mountains. This also tells us that this is a vernacular region because the coca leaves are native to this physical environment. Within this region, in the text "Production and Trafficking Routes", we learn that "Colombia currently accounts for the vast bulk of cocaine produced in Latin America and remains the principle supplier for both the United States and the world-wide market. In 2009, 116,000 hectares of coca leaf were cultivated in the country, yielding an estimated 270 metric tons of pure cocaine" (Chalk 2011: 3). Ninety percent of the cocaine produced in the Andean region is transported at some point by sea.
DRUG TRAFFICKING
Drug trafficking is a dangerous business and continues to stretch throughout many parts of Central America with governments cracking down on the drug trade. "Between 60 and 65% of all Latin American cocaine is trafficked to the United States, the bulk of which is smuggled via the eastern Pacific/Central American corridor" (Chalk 2011: 5). Mexico is the primary point of entry and accounts for ninety percent of all illegal imports into the United States. Central America and the Caribbean islands play a significant role in the drug trade and are considered a functional region in this case because they act as transit points and money laundering sites.
Maritime drug trafficking is the smuggling of drugs through means of sea transportation. Cocaine is the primary illegal drug smuggled through maritime routes because all of its cultivation and production is settled in the Andean region of South America. Mobility is a main theme we can see in drug trafficking because the cocaine is being hierarchically and contagiously diffused across the world. Hierarchically, it is diffused by the drug empires and drug lords and then it is contagiously diffused once it hits the streets and spreads throughout the countries from urban to suburban areas. The cocaine is being diffused by many types of sea vessels. The types of vessels preferred by drug smugglers are submarines, Go-Fast boats, fishing vessels, or pangas. In the map above, you can see the many sea routes taken by drug traffickers and the blue path lines represent those routes. Drug trafficking organizations continue making stops in different countries of Central America to replenish or to transport the product by land to the US-Mexico border in its direct routes to the United States. You can see on the map in some cases where the smugglers stop at an island and then the drugs go from there to another place. Each route is labeled by where the drug shipments leaves from. When talking about the Pacific route, the main ports of exit for drug trafficking are Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, the route has been helped by traffickers as it is a direct route to the United States, or to Mexican ports where they are finally transported to the US-Mexico border. The essence of this route is that trafficking organizations can also use it to disembark in the Central American countries to transfer it to land routes or other vessels with higher transport capacity. Cocaine is mainly smuggled by sea transportation with only small amounts of cocaine being smuggled by air to Central America. In "Profile: Central America/Caribbean" we learn that "according to U.S. officials, 'Central America's position as a land bridge between South America and Mexico, together with its thousands of miles of coastline, several container-handling ports, and limited law enforcement capability, makes the entire region a natural conduit and transshipment area for illicit drugs bound for Mexico and the United States'" (2002: 16). This region is a major player in the drug trade because of its physical landscape and cultural landscape. With governments cracking down on the drug trade, smugglers have had to adapt their landing spots for transport. In the article "Corridor of Violence: The Guatemala-Honduras Border", we learn that "the Mexican government's offensive against the cartels forced traffickers to land drugs first in Central America. The entry point of choice is often Honduras... Its long Atlantic coastline and remote interior plains, with little population or infrastructure, offer the ideal environment for drug boats and small planes to operate undetected" (Crisis Group 2016). Once the drugs land in Honduras, they are smuggled into Guatemala where family traffickers are cooperating with Mexican cartels to transport them to the United States. In the "Profile: Central America/Caribbean", it states that "the cocaine trade has created a dangerous synergy between political terror and drug trafficking, and especially in Guatemala--the region's largest country--the line between criminal and political violence has begun to blur" (2002: 16).
DEFORESTATION DUE TO DRUG TRAFFICKING
Cocaine Trafficking is destroying Central America's forests and it has been researched in recent studies. Kendra McSweeney visited the La Mosquitia region in 2011 and noticed huge clearings in the middle of nowhere. According to Mega, "when she asked the locals what was going on, they insisted on a sole culprit: "los narcos" (Mega 2017). When Mexico's war on drugs became more serious, the "traffickers in the region had to figure out a way to funnel their money into the legal economy, and land clearing- in the form of cattle ranching, agro-industrial plantations, and timber extraction- was the preferred way to do it" (Mega 2017).
The above photo is of a huge clearing in the La Mosquitia region. But, these illegal and illicit activities are hidden and the drug cartels/traffickers are very good at avoiding attention and detection of their business. In this region, the local drug trade accounts for approximately 90% of cocaine in the United States. According to Steven Sesnie, a spatial ecologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "[Narcos] want to move large sums of money, so you're going to see big things happen: larger areas of deforestation, faster rates, and patches in zones that are isolated" (Mega 2017). In Guatemala, the Maya Reserve is a known place for drug traffickers to secure ownership of land because it is not only remote, but also near the Mexican border. The United States and Mexico borders serve as permeable barriers to the DTOs because the drug traffickers have to find different ways to smuggle the drugs into these countries since they are more inspected and secure. The DTOs are changing the natural landscape to fit their needs so they can mobilize their drugs and diffuse them to other countries. Drug traffickers that are clearing forest areas "have constructed over 100 airstrips to land shipments of cocaine from South America" (Tellman 2020) and this can be shown to other drug traffickers as a sign of power. In the article, "Illicit Drivers of Land Use Change: Narcotrafficking and Forest Loss in Central America", we learn that "narco-cattle ranches are often found along international borders in protected areas like the Laguna del Tigre National Park in Guatemala and the Honduran Mosquitia to secure air, land, and marine transit nodes." In Honduras, air (yellow lines), land (green lines), and sea (blue lines) routes have been mapped below. Each icon (blue ship, yellow plane, or green car) contains photos of imagery of each type of trafficking.
Forest loss in this vernacular region has been driven by poverty, weak governance, illegal logging, increased infrastructure, agribusiness, and climate change for a long time now. Therefore, the cultural landscape is what is allowed the changes to the natural landscape to be made. Recently, drug-trafficking has been a part of that conversation due to a few connections. According to Tellman, "rapid and unusual forest clearings were correlated with the timing of increased drug shipments in at least five Caribbean departments in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala". This correlation tells us that these clearings were made for those drug shipments so that they could make it into the country undetected. Even though Central America (specifically Honduras and Guatemala) has long been a part of the drug trade, the importance of these countries grew significantly when Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) had to move southward to continue their business. In the article "Drug Policy as Conservation Policy: Narco-Deforestation", we learn that "porous borders, corruption, and weak public institutions made Guatemala and Honduras especially attractive to DTOs, who increasingly routed 'primary' cocaine shipments into Guatemala's Petén and eastern Honduras" (McSweeney 2014: 489). This moist-forest region is perfect because it is thinly populated, very remote and has little security- therefore, it's ideal for drug traffickers because it is easier to evade authorities and stay hidden. In the results of Tellman's research, we learn that "Honduras had the greatest number of reported narcotrafficking events (826)" and that can be tied into the forest loss in the country. This study proves that narcotrafficking is a cause of forest loss in areas of Central America and not a driver. Forest loss is already happening due to many other drivers in the area, but "narcotrafficking variables explain an additional 5%-9% of the variance in forest loss" (Tellman 2020).
Figure 1. From McSweeney (2014) on deforestation in Central America.
Figure 2. From McSweeney (2014) on deforestation in Central America.
However, evidence of drug-trafficking having a hand in deforestation is still scarce due to classified documents on the illegal activities of the traffickers and the danger of doing in-person research. But, McSweeney's study gives us an insight to some evidence. So far, we've learned that deforestation spatially correlates with and near drug-transfer hubs. "For example, in 2011, Honduras' Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve was listed by UNESCO as 'World Heritage in Danger' because of the alarming rates of forest loss attributed to the presence of narco-traffickers - as signaled by multiple clandestine landing strips throughout the reserve" (McSweeney 2014: 489). Clandestine landing strips (also known as "narco-pistas") have been found throughout many Central American countries and have been identified as drug-trafficking landing strips because they are located in huge cleared areas in the middle of the forest. In McSweeney's research she claims that even though we have little hard-evidence, "a growing number of studies identify three interrelated mechanisms by which forest loss follows the establishment of a drug transit hub." These three mechanisms are: 1) "forests are cut for clandestine roads and landing strips", 2) "drug trafficking intensifies preexisting pressures on forests by infusing already weakly governed frontiers with unprecedented amounts of cash and weapons", 3) "the vast profits that traffickers earn from moving drugs appear to create powerful new incentives for DTOs themselves to convert forest to agriculture" (McSweeney 2014: 490). Deforestation can also be attributed to the lack of conservation governance in Central America. The reason these drug traffickers can take over some of the forest and do what they want with no consequence? There is little security and policy when it comes to conservation. Also, the DTOs use intimidation and corruption to keep control of this land. In the article "The Impacts of Cocaine-Trafficking on Conservation Governance in Central America", we are informed that "drug trafficking impacts conservation governance in three ways: 1) it undermines long standing conservation coalitions; 2) it fuels booms in extractive activities inside protected lands; and 3) it erodes the territorial control that conservation institutions exert, exploiting strict 'fortress' conservation governance models" (Wrathall 2020). These fortresses are run by the park agencies that are trying to protect the forest reserves. The park agents "become the new front-line for drug enforcement, even at a time when they are understaffed, underfunded, ill quipped, and unable to match the tactics and resources of DTOs" (Wrathall 2020). These agencies have been violently abused and corrupted by DTOs. The violence never stops when it comes to DTOs as they plan to keep their business alive no matter the cost. In Wrathall's research, he studies three sites: Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve, Northeastern Honduras, and Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula (*these areas keep popping up in all of the studies I've looked at). Wrathall explains to us the danger the people face against the DTOs by saying "in all three research sites, community leaders have been murdered defending community land rights." DTOs have begun to take out whoever is in their way in the forest reserves as the community leaders stand up against deforestation of their community. Lack of conservation governance leads to cocaine-trafficking, cocaine-trafficking leads to DTOs invading the land, DTOs invading the land leads to deforestation. It's a constant loop that needs to be mitigated to provide security for future generations.
MITIGATION EFFORTS
For mitigating maritime drug trafficking, the countries involved have resorted to different mechanisms of international cooperation to reduce traffic in the marine regions of Latin America where intelligence operations and shared information systems have been the main tools for the mitigation of this activity. The people of the communities that drug traffickers smuggle through are looking to their government for help "and yet everyday they pay the price for policies that are supposed to deal with that and fail to" (Mega 2017). In the article "Corridor of Violence: The Guatemala-Honduras Border", we are told that "an urgent shift in national policy is required: the government should send not just troops and police to border regions, but also educators, community organizers, social workers, doctors, and publish health officials" (Crisis Group 2016). Tellman describes to us in "Illicit Drivers of Land Use Change: Narcotrafficking and Forest loss in Central America" that a lot needs to be done to conserve these forests. Tellman states that "existing drug policy has resulted in concentrating drug trafficking into Central America's remaining contiguous forest areas of very high cultural and environmental value. Loss of governance and local authority to maintain ancestral lands formerly protected my law and indigenous sovereignty is likely to have long lasting consequences for remaining moist forest areas targeted by traffickers. Continued supply side drug policies are likely to compromise decades of forest conservation investments in these same locations. Revising national and international drug policy in ways that favor more effective forest protection are vital to Central American conservation efforts." The name of the article "Drug Policy as Conservation Policy" explains the mitigation effort right off the bat. Having a policy on drugs will create a conservation policy without realizing it. Deforestation will never end, but having a targeted approach to drug reform could help mitigate the drug problem while also mitigating the deforestation problem. Now, the saying "killing two birds with one stone" turns into "mitigating two problems with one policy."
CONCLUSIONS
Cocaine-trafficking has huge effects on deforestation in Central America and it has been proven in many studies. Thanks to the literature, all of the information was provided for background and in-depth discussion. The DTOs are clearing large areas of the forest for their operations and mobilizing the cocaine via air, land, or sea. Two things are problems in this situation: drug-trafficking and deforestation. Together, they create a dangerous problem that cannot easily be solved. Some mitigation efforts include increased law enforcement, intelligence operations, shared information systems, and conservation policy. But, until that day comes... the best thing to do is educate the public. Explaining the human geography themes are a starting point to branch off of. The main themes looked at throughout this study were nature/society, landscape, region, and mobility. When we dig deeper into those themes, we find that deforestation by narco-traffickers (nature/society) changes the physical landscape directly and figuratively (landscape) because the drug traffickers are using their regions to their advantage (region), shipping the drugs out by land, air, or sea, and diffusing them (mobility)
REFERENCES
Chalk, Peter. “Production and Trafficking Routes.” The Latin American Drug Trade: Scope, Dimensions, Impact, and Response, RAND Corporation, 2011, pp. 3–14.
“Corridor of Violence: The Guatemala-Honduras Border.” Crisis Group, 15 Sept. 2016.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, 2017, et al. “Cocaine Trafficking Is Destroying Central America's Forests.” Science, 16 June 2017.
McSweeney, Kendra, et al. “Conservation. Drug Policy as Conservation Policy: Narco-Deforestation.” Science (New York, N.Y.), vol. 343, no. 6170, Jan. 2014, pp. 489–490.
“Profile: Central America/Caribbean.” NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. 36, no. 2, Sept. 2002.
Tellman, Beth, et al. “Illicit Drivers of Land Use Change: Narcotrafficking and Forest Loss in Central America.” Global Environmental Change Part A: Human & Policy Dimensions, vol. 63, July 2020, p. N.PAG.
Wrathall, David J., et al. “The Impacts of Cocaine-Trafficking on Conservation Governance in Central America.” Global Environmental Change, vol. 63, July 2020.EBSCOhost;doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102098.
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