Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 8/5/2007
Latin America and the Caribbean: Domestic and Transnational Insecurity
2007 February
Abstract
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the end of the Cold War coincided with transitions to democracy in Brazil and the Southern Cone, and the peaceful resolution of armed conflict in Central America.These developments, along with the intensification of globalization processes worldwide, inaugurated a hopeful era of “democratic peace” or “no war” suggesting a decreasing importance for traditional security matters. Although a series of bilateral border disputes continue to simmer in the region, the most intransient ones have been resolved. Indeed, since the 1995 war between Peru and Ecuador, interstate conflict has been all but erased, and military competition has been reduced dramatically. With the exception of Colombia’s entrenched civil war and Haiti’s faltering state, internal conflicts characterized by significant episodes of political violence have also become a distant memory.
And yet, the countries of the region confront new types of security challenges that they have been hardpressed to tackle effectively. Ungovernability and institutional weakness plague the entire continent, albeit to differing degrees. High levels of political and economic instability and social unrest have led to a number of coups, presidential resignations and cyclical institutional crises since the 1990s. Furthermore, violence and citizen insecurity have reached epidemic proportions in many latitudes, making Latin America one of the most violent regions in the world today. Compounding this situation even further, transnational criminal organizations make increasing use of the area in order to stage their illegal activities.
