Commentary: Discontent grows in LatAm over U.S. meddling in name of fighting drugs

Growing discontent over the U.S.-backed war against drugs has culminated in Latin America on the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, for the controversial war has brought continuing violence and U.S. meddling in internal affairs in the region in the name of the war.

The United States certainly has a dismal track record in the region, going back to the banana wars of the late 19th century and the toppling of legitimate regimes in Guatemala, Chile and beyond.

In the 1980s, broad campaigns in Peru and Bolivia saw U.S. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) agents flood into these countries, paying governments to burn down coca crops and arrest traffickers.

In 2008, the Merida Initiative, which the United States launched in Mexico and Central America to fight drug cartels, has indirectly led to the deaths or disappearances of around 100,000 Mexicans, without making any dent in the flow of drugs crossing the border.

Around one trillion U.S. dollars has been spent over the past 40 years, with little to no impact as drug consumption in the United States is rising and prices are falling.

This litany of failure has understandably fueled the ire of Colombians, Mexicans, and Bolivians alike as well as their governments.

In Central American nations, such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, a history of low taxation and rampant tax evasion worsened the situation. Anemic intakes of revenue for already weak governments left very little money to fight the drug trade, allowing cartels to run operations virtually unfettered.

This lukewarm result of fighting drug trafficking, which the U.S. government views as a national disaster, has led to Washington's adoption of yet more interventionist policies.

Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 mandated annual reviews that would determine whether Latin American countries were complying fully with U.S. drug policy or were risking seeing their aid suspended.

What is worse, the U.S. administration has threatened to put pressure on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to hold back funding from non-compliant countries.

Such strong-arming tactics were a disaster from the start. Instead of being treated as equals, nations in the region were being browbeaten, and thus seeds of resentment have been sown since then.

Today, such policies have continued in different forms, including setting up military bases in Colombia in the name of fighting drugs, which many believed were really used to monitor the region as a whole, or bond the preferential trade and tariff terms and financial aid with the achievements of combating drugs.

The truth is that the United States now needs to realize that its Latin American partners are growing increasingly impatient at what they perceived as U.S. meddling in their internal politics.

If Washington is serious about being seen as an equal partner, it cannot continue to attach paternalistic economic and political conditions to collaboration. Latin American countries need help and support, not judgment or threats.X Furthermore, it is the United States that needs to reflect on its domestic anti-drug policies, as the root of the drug trade remains the incessant demand for hard drugs across the country.

The International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking falls on Friday. Endi