International Journal on Criminology Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2014 | Page 65

International Journal on Criminology - Volume 2 Issue 1 - Spring 2014
States of Change: Power and Counterpower Expressions
in Latin America’s Criminal Insurgencies
John P. Sullivan
Sustained penetration by transnational criminal networks (cartels and gangs)
of state institutions is challenging Mexico and states throughout Latin America.
This paper discusses ‘criminal insurgencies’ as a power-counterpower dynamic
where criminal combatants use violence, corruption, and information
operations (including new media) to challenge state capacity and legitimacy,
and exert territorial control for supporting their illicit economic domains. Social/environmental
modification, including information operations (e.g., narcocorridos,
narcomantas, and narcopintas), alternative belief systems (i.e.,
narcocults), targeted symbolic violence (including attacks on journalists and
government officials), direct attacks on the police and military by criminal
bands (sometimes wearing uniforms), and the provision of social goods while
adopting the mantle of social bandit or primitive rebel are stimulating a new
narcocultura. This paper examines these irregular conflicts through a comparative
ethnographic lens to inform intelligence analysis and practice supporting
an understanding of strategic shifts in sovereignty and governance.
Transnational criminal networks
(cartels and gangs) are challenging
Mexico and Latin America. Technology,
especially Internet Communications
Technology (ICT) and “new media,”
provides potentially powerful tools for actors
on all sides of the conflict. New media
can be used to transmit narcocultura to support
penetration of state institutions. New
media also influences the struggle for state
authority and can both empower and constrain
transnational criminals. Violence,
corruption, and information operations
(including new media) are culminating as
a force with the potential to challenge state
capacity and legitimacy (solvency). Together
they are an important element of the
emergence of new state-forms and tool of
criminal insurgencies in contested zones.
To assess this situation, I will briefly look
at attacks on journalists (or narco-censorship),
narcocultura, and social banditry,
and information operations (info ops) as a
means of stimulating a new narcocultura. I
will view these through the lens of criminal
insurgency (Sullivan 2012) and co-opted
state reconfiguration (CStR) (Garay Salamanca
and Salcedo-Albarán, 2010; 2011).
Transnational Illicit Networks and
State Transition
According to Moisés Naím (2006),
transnational criminal organizations
(TCOs) operate on a global
scale and derive economic and political
power from their broad reach and accumulation
of wealth. Gayraud (2005) observes
that these organizations have abandoned
operating from the margins and now seek
to operate at the core of political and economic
systems becoming a central driver of
conflict. Indeed, the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime reports on the “Threat
of Narco-Trafficking in the Americas” (UN-
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