Chapter Eight: Latin America and the Caribbean

摘要

The use of Latin American armed forces to combat drug trafficking and other organised crime continued in 2014. New agencies combining police and military structures were created, while equipment acquisitions were often tailored to law-enforcement capabilities. Brazil and Mexico, which have the two largest economies in the region, carried out new internal military deployments amid continuing drug-related violence. Countries that have experienced increased drug trafficking in recent years, especially in the Andean region and Central America, took steps to increase their monitoring and air-interception capabilities, conforming to a regional trend towards increasing air mobility. As regional security threats have often been multidimensional in nature, and transnational in their origin and impact, there have been some recent attempts at cooperative dialogue between regional security agencies and armed forces. For example, in the first half of 2014 the Central American Integration System (SICA) announced equipment donations for Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran border-security authorities, as well as their integration into the database of Ameripol, the hemispheric police-cooperation mechanism.