The US War on Drugs in Latin America Introduction The United States has a long history of intervention in the affairs of one it’s southern neighbor, Latin America. The war on drugs has been no exception. An investigation of US relations with Latin America in the period from 1820 to 1960, reveals the war on drugs to be a convenient extension of an almost 200 year-old policy. This investigation focuses on the commercial and political objectives of the US in fighting a war on drugs in Latin America. These objectives explain why the failing drug policy persisted despite its overwhelming failure to decrease drug production or trafficking. These objectives also explain why the US has recently exchanged a war on drugs for the war on terrorism. Fighting a Losing Battle Since it’s beginning, the war on drugs has been a series of lost battles. Failed expectations in Panama, Colombia and Bolivia provide glaring examples. The US invaded Panama in 1989 and removed leader Manuel Noriega from power. Prior to Noriega’s arrest, the Bush administration had portrayed him as a “linchpin” in the narcotics drug trade. However, after his capture and imprisonment on drug charges,the drug trade went on unaffected. Drug trafficking actually increased through Panama (Fishlow 120). In 1995, the US began to fund aerial eradication campaigns in Colombia. Military planes dumped pesticides over thousands of acres of coca fields. These campaigns turned out to be counterproductive, leading to an actual increase in the amount of coca acreage. The spraying of coca only led Colombian growers to diversify their techniques, growing coca amongst other crops or in locations that were hard to identify by radar techniques. In 2002, the CI... ... middle of paper ... ...n Mifflin Company. “Insurrection against Colombia.” Columbian Electronic Enclyopedia. Columbia University Press, 2000. Kirk, Robin. More Terrible than Death: Massacres, drugs and America’s war in Colombia. PublicAffairs, New York, 2003. Mabry, Donald. “Theodore Roosevelt's Latin American Policy.” The Historical Text Archive, 2002. McDermott, Jeremy. “US Targets Colombian Rebels as War against Terrorism Escalates.” Scottsman.com. February 10, 2002. (http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=158732002) Potter, George Ann. “Is the War on Drugs Bringing "Dignity" to Bolivia?”TheWashington Report on the Hemisphere. Vol. 19.11. July 30, 1999. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia website. (www.farc-ep.org) “US Intervention in Latin America.” Small Planet Communications, 2000. (http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/teddy.html)
... chance of survival. I have dispersed dead leaves over the battlefield, so it symbolizes withering and coming to an end. The plants are dead and this usually occurs during the cold winter months. This also explains why people would have gotten ill and died. The soldiers represented the Nazis power at the time. The interior is covered with red paint around the camp. The red paint represents blood and it is smeared in random places, so this means that death was everywhere and consistent. A huge significant symbol is the sunflower between the two worlds. Half the flower is a bright yellow and the other side is pure black with traces of blood. This flower juxtaposes the two scenes. The left side seems to be more elegant and peaceful. On the other side, the concentration camp looks more dangerous and deadly. These are the presentation technique that I have incorporated.
Youngers, Coletta. 2001. “Collateral Damage: U.S. Drug Control Efforts in the Andes.” Paper presented for the meeting of “The Latin American Studies Association,” The Washington Office on Latin America, Washington D.C., September 6-8.
...Without A Cause because I believe that the message about family is the most important message to be delivered in any decade. To help young adults face difficulties of the teenage years, they need guidance from a stable family or a model figure that they can trust and receive an honest answer on various matters. This film explains the negative consequences that can occur when teens have no guidance and sense of structure, like the deadly car crash that killed one of the teens and could have taken Jim’s life. Teens cannot be sheltered through their teenage years because it is in their nature to want to be on their own sometimes and have responsibility, but they need the guidance that will keep them from crossing the boundaries into life threatening situations. I believe this film best explains this and why I believe it is one of the most meaningful film’s I have seen.
The United States has had a long-standing policy of intervening in the affairs of other nations when the country has thought it within its best interests to do so. Since the 1970’s the United States has tried to impose its will on other nations to combat the most pressing political enemy of the day often linking the war on drugs to the matter to stoke support both domestically and abroad. In the times of the Cold War, this enemy was communism and the government tried to make the connection of the “Red Dope Menace” insinuating drug links with China, Castro’s Cuba, and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. However, as the world has evolved and communism’s prominence has waned, there is a new enemy whose existence has become intertwined with the drug war. That enemy is terrorism. The connection has gone so far that politicians and journalists have coined a new term to describe the link calling this new problem of our time “Narco-terror.” This paper will examine US efforts to control the drug trade and fight terrorism in Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan and the desired and often undesired consequences that have come about because of those efforts.
In spite of the fact that the development did not issue obvious requests, one thing rapidly got clear: that this was a leaderless movement composed of the "99%" of the expansive masses of individuals robbed of their due offer of public opinion's riches and open doors via moguls and billionaires which are the “1%” left.
The film tells a tale of the restless and somewhat misunderstood rebellious and defiant American youth. The film highlights the conformance of 1950s America, through the eyes of the main character, who faces a new school environment and unsporting or loving' parents. Though the film could be seen as bias, by portraying all 1950s youths as rebellious and engaging in "chickie runs" and knife fights, who would rather go against the grain of society, the film instead uses this bias to portray more of the internal seeking of youthful acceptance and love that all teens of this period were seeking, through rebelliousness and acts of promiscuity.
America's War on Drugs: Policy and Problems. In this paper I will evaluate America's War on Drugs. More specifically, I will outline our nation's general drug history and look critically at how Congress has influenced our current ineffective drug policy. Through this analysis, I hope to show that drug prohibition policies in the United States, for the most part, have failed.
As described in novel The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference the course of any trend, movement, social behavior, and even the spread of a virus has a general trend line that in essence resemble a parabola with 3 main critical points. Any trend line first starts from zero, grows until it crosses the first tipping point, and then spreads like wildfire. Afterwards, the trend skyrockets to its carrying capacity (Galdwell, 2000). Then the trend gradually declines before it reaches the next tipping and suddenly falls out of favor and out of memory. Gladwell defines tipping points as the “magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire” (Gladwell, 2000).
The current “War on Drugs” involves skirmishes in an arena with two fronts: The consumer and the manufacturer. The successes and failures of the battle are not clearly identified without first looking at how the battle can be ultimately won. When it comes to cocaine, the problem of punishing the whole instead of the individual is hard to define. Many countries use the raw ingredient, the coca plant, as part of a social and cultural structure. The only way to win the “War on Drugs” is to focus war efforts on fighting the manufacturer of the finished cocaine product.
Desire is a common theme depicted by almost every character and is present throughout the movie. The Stark family’s continuous relocating from town to town is their antidote for Jim’s antics, their actions make it blatantly obvious their desire for a better situation. Rather than face their issues head on, the dysfunctional family chooses to sweep their issues under the rug and hope the new environment will prompt positive changes. Plato, the friendless misfit, has a strong desire for a family. He sought out Jim and Judy for replacement parents because his own abandoned him. Later in the movie, Plato quickly reverts to violence when he is
As we have discussed throughout the semester, the United States has made it part of their foreign policy to become deeply involved in Latin American affairs. The War on Drugs is a perfect example of United States intervention through a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid. The War on Drugs is an extremely costly campaign that has been viewed with mixed results. “Even by conservative estimates, the War on Drugs now costs the United States $50 billion each year and has overcrowded prisons to the breaking point, all with little discernable impact on the drug trade” . Plan Columbia is one of the most prominent and controversial initiatives on the War on Drugs. Plan Columbia has been an ineffective use of American tax dollars due to underwhelming results, apparent U.S. involvement in supporting their political interests and the damaging of other crops and adverse health effects from aerial fumigation.
This failure is due in large part, Benson and Rasmussen explain, to drug entrepreneurs’ adoption of new production techniques, new products, and new marketing strategies in response to greater law enforcement. Their “innovations” include lengthening the drug distribution chain and using younger drug pushers and runners (to reduce the risk of arrest and punishment), increasing domestic drug production (to avoid the risk of seizure at the border), smuggling into the country less marijuana and more cocaine (which is harder to detect), development of “crack” cocaine (a low-cost substitute for higher priced powdered cocaine and for marijuana, which the drug war made harder to obtain), and development of drugs with greater potency (because they are less bulky and because punishment is based on a drug’s weight, not its potency).
I wanted to explore the area where different worlds merged through political policy, presenting complicated issues, and asking profound questions with the urgency to confront them. My curiosity led me to analyze one of the greatest challenges undertaken by the U.S. and Mexican governments - the war on drugs and illicit trade. I dedicated a semester to work with Professor Pablo Sierra in an independent study titled The Drug War in Mexico. Our course focused on the culture, production, and criminalization of drugs in Latin America, specializing in Mexico through a historical approach. I explored archival research from the late 19th to early 21st century and delved into the major debates in the field. Although I only had a taste of bilateral policies against the illegal drug trade, my exposure to archival research between both countries allowed me to develop a deeper understanding of law and diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico. In addition, my fluency in English and Spanish aided me throughout the process of interpreting scholarly
This essay will talk about the ethical standards and code of conduct in the accounting profession, in particular for CPA Australia, the importance of ethical education for accounting students, the importance for ethical financial reporting and also addresses ways to deal with conflicts that arise from ethical issues in the
The aim of this paper is to provide the framework of the current professional accounting code of ethics. What are the ethics and how we define them? In this report we try to determine the main ethical principles that will establish the right and