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The illegal drug trade in Panama includes trans-shipment of cocaine to the United States. The 1989 United States invasion of Panama to topple Dictator Manuel Noriega was justified in part by the need to combat drug trafficking. Noriega, the dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989, had a relationship with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from the 1950s. More recently, Mexican cartels such as the Sinaloa Cartel have been active in Panama.
The illegal drug trade in Latin America concerns primarily the production and sale of cocaine and cannabis, including the export of these banned substances to the United States and Europe. The Coca cultivation is concentrated in the Andes of South America, particularly in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia; this is the world's only source region for coca.
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La Corporación, also known as the Santa Ana Cartel, was a Bolivian drug cartel and criminal organization, headed in the 1970s and 1980s by notorious drug lord Roberto Suárez Goméz, known as the "King of Cocaine".
The Miami drug war was a series of armed conflicts in the 1970s and 1980s, centered in the Florida city of Miami, between the United States government and multiple drug cartels, primarily the Medellín Cartel. It was predominantly fueled by the illegal trafficking of cocaine.
The cocaine boom was a stark increase in the illegal production and trade of Cocaine that developed in the 1970s and peaked in the 1980s. The boom was the result of organized smugglers who imported cocaine from Latin America to the United States, and a rising demand in cocaine due to cultural trends in the United States. Smuggling rings of Cuban exiles organized trade networks from Latin America to Miami that streamlined the import of cocaine to the United States. Americans also began favoring less the drugs popular in the 60s counterculture such as marijuana and LSD, and instead began to prefer cocaine due to a mystique of prestige that was developing around it. This increase in cocaine trade fueled the rise of the crack epidemic and government sponsored anti-drug campaigns.
References
- ↑ Haiti: Drug Trafficking Crossroads
- ↑ United States Institute of Peace, June 2007, Haiti's Drug Problem Archived 2010-08-05 at the Wayback Machine
- 1 2 3 4 Whitney, Kathleen Marie (1996), "Sin, Fraph, and the CIA: U.S. Covert Action in Haiti", Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas, Vol. 3, Issue 2 (1996), pp. 303-332
- 1 2 Ivelaw L. Griffith. Drugs and Security in the Caribbean: Sovereignty under Siege. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.), p. 74
- 1 2 New York Times , 22 April 1994, Colombian Drug Trafficker Implicates Haitian Police Chief
- ↑ Stotzky (1997:175)
- ↑ Irwin P. Stotzky. Silencing the Guns in Haiti: The Promise of Deliberative Democracy., Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1997. p. 176
