Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press.
Chapter 3: North-South/East-West Segment 10/14
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A post-invasion report on Panama presented to the UN Committee of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by Mexican Ambassador Javier Wimer reports that the economy has collapsed, with "catastrophic effects in the areas of food, housing, and basic services such as health, education, and culture." Human rights violations are on the rise as a result of the invasion and subsequent efforts to "liquidate the vestiges of the former nationalism," with labor rights under particular attack along with any institutions that might be "nuclei of civic protest and political opposition." The governments of Panama and the US are jointly responsible for "serious and systematic" human rights violations, his report concluded. According to the respected Central America Report (Guatemala, CAR ), the US drug war may be providing a cover for attacks on community activists by the security forces and other human rights abuses.

But some indicators are up. The General Accounting Office of Congress reported that drug trafficking "may have doubled" since the invasion while money laundering has "flourished," as was predicted at once by everyone who paid attention to the tiny European elite whom the US restored to their traditional rule. A study financed by USAID reported that narcotics use in Panama is the heaviest in Latin America, up by 400 percent since the invasion. The executive-secretary of the Center of Latin American Studies, which participated in the study, says that US troops "constitute a very lucrative market for drugs," contributing to the crisis. The increase is "unprecedented, ... especially among the poor and the young," the Christian Science Monitor reports.26

Another triumph of free market democracy was recorded in Nicaragua, where the Chamorro government and US Ambassador Harry Shlaudeman signed accords opening the way for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to operate there "in an attempt to control the growing drug trafficking problem," CAR reports. The DEA agent in Costa Rica declared that Nicaragua is now "being used as a corridor for transferring Colombian cocaine to the United States," and a Department of Justice prosecutor added that the Nicaraguan financial system is laundering drug money. There is also a growing drug epidemic within Nicaragua, fueled by the high level of drug use by recent returnees from Miami as well as the continued economic decline and the new avenues for drug trafficking since the US regained control. "Since the installation of the Chamorro government and the massive return of Nicaraguans from Miami," CAR reports, "drug consumption has increased substantially in a country long free from drug usage." Miskito leader Steadman Fagoth accused two members of the Chamorro cabinet, his former contra associate Brooklyn Rivera and the minister of fishing for the Atlantic Coast, of working for the Colombian cartels. The Nicaraguan delegate to the Ninth International Conference on the Control of Drug Trafficking in April 1991 alleged that Nicaragua "has now become a leading link in cocaine shipments to the US and Europe." In Managua, the number of street children is rapidly increasing, as is drug addiction, which had been virtually eliminated by 1984. Ten-year-old children sniff glue on the street, saying that "it takes away hunger."

In fairness, we should mention a sign of economic progress now that the US has regained control: marketing of shoe cement to fill the children's bottles, imported through a multinational supplier, has become a lucrative business.27

A conference attended by government officials and NGOs in Managua in August 1991 concluded that the country now has 250,000 addicts and is becoming an international bridge for drug transport, (in comparison 400,000 addicts are reported in Costa Rica, 450,000 in Guatemala, 500,000 in El Salvador). Addiction is increasing particularly among young people. A conference organizer commented that "In 1986 there wasn't one reported case of hard drugs consumption" while "in 1990, there were at least 12,000 cases." 118 drug dealing operations were identified in Managua alone, though it is the Atlantic Coast that has become the international transit point for hard drugs, leading to increased addiction. US journalist Nancy Nusser reports from Managua that cocaine has become "readily available only since president Violeta Chamorro took office in April 1990," according to dealers. "There wasn't any coke during the Sandinistas' time, just marijuana," one dealer said. Minister of Government Carlos Hurtado said that "the phenomenon of cocaine trafficking existed before, but at a low level." Now it is burgeoning, primarily through the Atlantic Coast according to "a ranking Western diplomat with knowledge of drug trafficking" (probably from the US Embassy), who describes the Coast now as "a no man's land." In the Miami Herald, Tim Johnson reports that El Salvador too "is finding itself afflicted by a new scourge: drug trafficking." It is now outranked only by Panama and Guatemala as a corridor for cocaine shipments to the US.28

Drugs are becoming "the newest growth industry in Central America," CAR reports, as a result of the "severe economic conditions in which 85 percent of the Central American population live in poverty" and the lack of jobs, conditions exacerbated by the neoliberal onslaught. But the problem has not reached the level of Colombia, where security forces armed and trained by the US are continuing their rampage of terror, torture, and disappearances, targeting political opposition figures, community activists, trade union leaders, human rights workers, and the peasant communities generally while US aid "is furthering the corruption of the Colombian security forces and strengthening the alliance of blood between right-wing politicians, military officers and ruthless narcotics traffickers," according to human rights activist Jorge Gómez Lizarazo, a former judge. The situation in Peru is still worse.29

These are only symptoms of much deeper malaise, to which we return in Part III.


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26 CAR, Sept. 27, 1991; June 5, 1992. Latinamerica press (Lima), June 4, 1992. AFP, Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 22, 1991. Sheppard, CT, June 18, May 22, Sept. 1, 1992. Proceso (Mexico), Dec. 2, 1992 (LANU.) Kenneth Sharpe, CT, Dec. 19, 1991. Andreas, op. cit. Joachim Bamrud, CSM, Jan. 24, 1991.

27 CAR, Sept.20, Nov. 29, May 3, 1991. Links (National Central America Health Rights Network), Summer 1992.

28Felipe Jaime, IPS, Subtext (Seattle), Sept. 3-16; Nusser, NYT news service, Sept. 26; Johnson, MH, Dec. 3, 1991.

29 CAR, Oct. 11, 1991. Gómez, NYT, Jan. 28, 1992. See Americas Watch, `Drug War'; WOLA, Clear and Present Dangers.